DjangoCon: DjangoCon US Talks I’d Like To See

Last year, I threw together a list of DjangoCon Talk ideas and in that spirit, I wanted to update it for 2016.

When someone visit the Django Project website for the first time, they are greeted by:

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. Built by experienced developers, it takes care of much of the hassle of Web development, so you can focus on writing your app without needing to reinvent the wheel. It’s free and open source.

Source: The Django Project home page

I emphasized the Web portion of that sentence because over the years DjangoCon has over-emphasized the Pythonic side of Django. Developers would encourage designers to attend DjangoCon to learn how to code while while limiting/neglecting backend developers who would like to be exposed to frontend technology.

Conference budgets vary from company to company and the average developer is lucky if their company will reimburse them for one conference which directly relates to their day jobs. Sending a backend developer to a Javascript-only conference is a hard sell in a lot of Django/Python shops. We get it.

We’d like to curve the practice of declaring a perfectly good talk as not being Pythonic or Django(nic) enough even though it directly benefits web citizens.

Please send us your React.js, Vue.js, or whatever-is-new.js talks along with talks about Django, Python, design, community, social wellbeing, or anything that relates and adds value to the Django community. If it benefits the community, we’d love to hear it!

2016 Ideas

Django Technology Pairings

• Javascript or JS Frameworks: React.js, Vue.js, or whatever is new today or next week or the week after .js
• Flux or Reflux
• CSS or CSS Frameworks? Bootstrap 4?
• Mobile apps: Talking to Django with iOS or Android (React Native might be fun)
• Virtual Reality (WebVR)
• “frontend tl;dr for backend developers” – e.g. a summarized, highly opinionated summary of the state-of-the-art on the front-end, for busy backend developers who don’t have time to sort through all the frameworks-of-the-week via Jacob

Real-time Web: Channels, Channels, Channels

• for beginners
• for experts
• Example: High Performance Channels (with Celery)
• “data binding + django” (w/either channels, or DRF would be cool) via Jacob

API / REST (Django Rest Framework, etc)

• for beginners
• for experts
• Example: Flux or Reflux with DRF

What’s new in Django 1.10?

• An overview of the good parts
• Deep dive into one major feature

Panel Ideas

Frequently, panels are difficult to do well. They require more planning and better moderation than one might think. However, 2015’s authors panel was very successful and helpful. We’re definitely open to having more panels that are done the right way. Please keep in mind we want to see panelists with diverse backgrounds.

• Project Funding
• Marketing Open Source Projects
• Well being

What’s missing?

More importantly, what do you want to see?

2015 Ideas

Here is our list from last year.

General

• Community building
• Django Code Features
• High-performance Django
• Indirectly Django related?
• Integration with Other Frameworks
• Learning Experiences
• Performance Monitoring and Optimization
• Real World Django
• Testing and Integration
• What’s new in Django 1.9?

Community input (what you tweeted)

• Accessibility via @williln
• Django 2.0 (looking FAR ahead!) via @williln
• Diversity efforts in the larger community that aren’t just about women via @williln
• More talks geared towards novices
• How is Django being replaced by other technologies such as… via @rickduarte
• “Getting stats and fun info only from Django’s git repo.” via @bmispelon
• “Redis/RabbitMQ for task queues with Celery” via @AronYsidoro

Thanks to Lacey Williams Henschel for advice on and corrections to this article.