 Thank you so much for having me. This is my first time in London, and I'm really excited. And I think these community events, they mean so much. So I'm very appreciative to be here, especially giving this talk. Can everyone hear me? Yeah, this is by far my favorite talk. So I'm really excited. And I hope that you like it. Secret histories of women and non-binary people in Python. So we've all heard of Ada Lovelace. Everyone raise your hand if you've heard of Ada Lovelace. Yeah, so we all know about the few very famous women in the history of computer science. But actually, the origins of computer science and much of the technology we're using today, it wasn't all made by men. So you can look back even way back when computers, before we knew it, computers were people who did calculations. And those original computations were being done by women. They were known simply as Pickering's harem in this case, or the Harvard computers, because they weren't given enough respect to be given gone by their real names. So they've done a lot. This group of women did a lot to get astronomy off the ground. But at the time, their contributions weren't recognized. That's one of the reasons why I want to do this talk and why I want, as you'll see as we get into it, why I want to talk about the women and non-binary people who are contributing in Python, because if we don't talk about them, they just end up being nameless or grouped as the Harvard computers. And we should remember their names and remember their contributions, not just for diversity's sake, but also for scientists, for accuracy and to preserve things in an appropriate way. So I kind of love this one, because one of my friends is on it, so I get to troll him a little bit about not being as important as he thinks he is. Women were actually essential to the development of programming, computing, and the internet itself. But my claim is that they weren't the loudest about it. And so they have been all but erased from our narrative of who gets to lay claim to technology and its culture. And you see here in this Wired article from the 90s, who's the e-gang? The e-gang are white men who are founding companies. But those companies were, the contributions made there were done also by women. And what about the companies and the contributions that didn't make it to these magazine covers? This is my very favorite thing. I love this because everything about it is so wrong at the same time that it's so credible. This is from the New York Times. And prior to Trump in America, this was considered to be like a reputable publication. Perhaps many of you still think it is. I think there are some fine reporters at the New York Times I subscribe. And so I have high expectations from them. And that author, David Streitfield, that's a Pulitzer Prize winner. I also have high expectations for the Pulitzer Prize. Says David, men invented the internet and not just any men, men with pocket protectors, men who idolized Mr. Spock and cried when Steve Jobs died. Nerds, geeks, give them their due without men. We would never know what our friends were doing five minutes ago. The internet, he says, was made by men. And the men who have been giving credit for the internet, Tim Berners-Lee, are very happy to receive all of the credit. I'm gonna skip past this. Accurate attribution matters. And so that's why we need to do this now. Nicole Pello wrote the first browser that could run on any device. I consider that to be a significant achievement, the first browser that could run on any device. That's a big step forward, right? She doesn't even get her own photo in Wikipedia. The Wikipedia article about her is contested. It's contested whether or not she's notable because Tim Berners-Lee has received credit for the body of work that happened under his mentorship, but there were a lot of people who did that work. And even though they had someone who was guiding them, they still deserve credit for the work that they did and for their own ingenuity and their own ideas which surely they brought to the table. And so the Wikipedia article for Nicole really is mostly an article, a photo of Tim Berners-Lee. This is the problem. Radio Perlman, don't call me the mother of the internet. She's done so, so much but didn't feel the need to take credit for it. And so in many cases credit just wasn't given. And in other cases, it's just pattern recognition. People didn't really see women as the inventors. But as I said about to discover this, I was surprised to see women made these incredibly important contributions. Judith Estrin invented TCP IP. Sandra Lerner co-designed the first Cisco router. Radio Perlman, don't call me mother of the internet. People do because she did so much. And of course, Nicole Pello. These are just a few. Again, I'm a little salty about this one. Glenda Schroeder is noted for implementing the first command line user interface shell and publishing one of the earliest research papers on electronic mail systems, you know, email. So we can credit her with a lot of that, but I can't find any photos of her. So I just use one of Tim Berners-Lee here. Why not? We're starting to hit a turning point, though, which I think is really awesome, where we're making these corrections. We're digging back into the old histories and we're finally doing really complete biographies and really honoring the contributions made by people who were really hidden before. Elizabeth Smith Friedman, pioneer cryptographer. Now there's a best-selling book by Jason Margone, the woman who smashed codes. So finally, all these years later, she's starting to get her due as a code breaker. She has a very interesting story. Did anyone here see Hidden Figures? I saw it on an airplane. Yeah, really popular movie. Another example of these stories finally being told now. It's weird, right? The history of science is doing some kind of revolution where the documentation that should have happened is happening now. It's heartwarming. Catherine Johnson, the real Catherine Johnson. And as anyone who saw the movie or the trailers knows that they were very, very important in the early days of NASA. Again, more human computers. The ENIAC Programmers Project is now documenting these women with a film and other education, remembering ENIAC and the women who programmed it. The world's first electronic digital computer was programmed by six women through the history of computer science. It's just women everywhere. And so now I wanna start diving into the women of Python. I think we've done a better job than the documentarians of the 1950s in attributing work to our members. But this is a good opportunity for us to acknowledge and cheerfully the people in our community doing this work and take careful notes so they'll be appropriately acknowledged and remembered in the future. Carol Willing is a Python software foundation fellow and former director, a core developer for CPython and Project Jupiter and a research software engineer at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. She's also geek in residence at Fab Lab San Diego and co-organizes PyLady San Diego. So I spoke to these various contributors and I wanted to get their thoughts and their insights on what was interesting and challenging in Python in 2018. Carol says, personally, I think we have barely scratched the surface of how Project Jupiter will impact education in the coming years. The open standard of the Jupiter messaging protocol allows many different computer languages to be supported. Now, at the same time, allowing others to tally the front end user interface. As for advice, try to be kind, be humble and help others along the way, contribute to the rich ecosystem of Python libraries beyond the core language to build your skills. It's the success of the ecosystem that feeds back into core development and improvement of CPython. I spoke with Olga, a bioinformatics data scientist known for her open source contributions and she's chair of the biology and bioinformatics at PsyPython, PsyPyCon. She says, I'm excited about NumPy and Jupiter deciding to push the scientific community into the future and support only Python 3 and their future releases. There's a lot of awesome things in Python 3 that many scientists are missing out on. And the Python community is warm and welcoming. Fixing documentation is an awesome way to get into an open source project and if you're confused by a particular wording, then probably a lot of other people are too. I love that, by the way. I think when we think of contributing, we think of code, but organizing and contributing words, I think, can also be really useful. We all have something different to contribute. Lynn Root. Lynn Root, I think, is a really interesting and important personality. She's an SRE at Spotify and she was recognized by the Python Software Foundation for her work co-founding PyLadies. And I wrote this down because I thought it was worth noting what the Python Software Foundation had to say about her work. From founding her local PyLadies chapter to volunteering at PyCon to catalyzing other initiatives like the Django Software Foundation, Lynn has been an unwavering advocate for women in the Python community and for the broader Python community itself. This is a highlight from her talk last year, tracing fast and slow, digging into and improving your web services performance from PyCon 2017. If you run microservices, you should be tracing them. It's otherwise very difficult to understand an entire system's performance. Animalistic behavior, resource usage, among other aspects. However, good luck with that. Whether you choose a self-hosted solution or a provided service, documentation is lacking. It's still a young space, but there's a lack of these things. But there is an open spec that can be influenced or used to implement your own if you're so inclined. Again, more encouragement to contribute to documentation. I guess there's a need for that. I also included Lindsey Dragon, who I met at Py Caribbean. Lindsey was doing a lot of talks around accessibility. And Lindsey says, for inclusion of disabled people, a lot of conferences aren't captioning their videos when they post them up on YouTube, let alone live captioning. And a lot of venues aren't wheelchair accessible. And speakers throw around words like crazy. I found that the captioning's really cool because if I days out for a minute, I can also catch back up, so it ends up being really useful for everyone. And what's exciting about Python in 2018, the amazing growth in Africa of Python. And specifically around Django like Django Girls. Africa is very much a place to watch for Python. I've seen that's true. I went looking around Twitter and the internet to see who I might want to include in this talk. And there's so much happening in Africa. And in the next version, I think I really need to include them. Also Eva, I love the inclusivity and the kindness of the community. Every time I attend a local event or go to a PyCon conference, I feel motivated and inspired to continue to serve the community as best I can. And she's Director of Operations for the Python Software Foundation. As for advice, my advice to those getting started in the Python community is to attend events and network. Hey, you're already here. If face-to-face interactions are not your thing, I suggest joining a couple mailing lists or the Python IRC channel, also a great way to meet Pythonistas. I'm actually really introverted, which is why I go on stage. It may not make sense, but I get to tap all of my social stuff in a very intense way, like half an hour. Then I can go hide in a corner. And you can come say hi if you want, and that helps me. So yeah, it's okay to sometimes be a little shy, I think. We're introverted, which is a little different. And Lorena, member of the Board for NumFocus, the umbrella organization that provides fiscal sponsorship for many of the most prominent Python libraries in scientific computing and data scientists. And Lorena says, the challenge we must solve with Python in 2018 is securing the needed support for open source projects that provide foundational infrastructure for national R&D. Money, we need money. And Marietta, I've met Marietta so many times. I'd like to think she's becoming a friend, she's great. She's a Python Core developer, congratulations on that. Co-organizer of Vancouver PyLadies and PyCascades Conference and contributes to Python documentation. I guess that's a recurring theme here. The Python Developers Guide, Python Core Workflow and Python.org. And Marietta said, she was excited about her own tutorial at the PyCon Build a GitHub bot workshop. She's very excited about Python 3.6. And Tanubi's in Python. The truth is, even after many years of programming with Python, I still feel like a newbie and it's okay. You probably won't be good at it right away. Don't give up. The good thing is Python is not just code, it's community. The community can help you participate and contribute. And to women in tech, please, stay. We all need you here. I think so. So let's go back. Ah, I didn't mean to shut them off. That's right. We get a check on time 10 minutes, perfect. So what I wanted to do now was just solicit some contributions from you, the audience, about people who you think should be included in here. And I have three copies of my book. And if you don't want it, you don't have to take it. But I'll give a copy to the first three people who have a contribution. Who was first? Can someone help me with this over there? Yes. Oh, I'm so sorry to clarify, of women or non-binary people making important contributions in Python. Yes. Can you tell me about her? And I got both of you. Can you tell me about her? It's been a very impactful organization for sure. Yeah. And they've made it all around the world. When I was at PyCaribbean, we had a workshop there. Very big. That's amazing. Yes, I read about her yesterday. Time to say a word on what you think is exciting or challenging in Python in 2018. That was the interview question for this. Basically, in empowering both men and women, and certainly, there are a lot of women that are building these as a way to improve their lives as a way to solve their problems. That's the part of it. That's awesome. Yes. OK, excellent. Does anyone else have names they'd like to? Thank you. That's amazing. That's cool. Thank you. And I think we have room for two more. Yes. Either editor, she's American, and I hope that she will be quickly co-developed. I hope so too. From Nigeria, along with Jessica O'Canny from Namibia, Rosé from Zimbabwe, who are two of them are also directors of the Django and Python software foundations. And between the four of them, they've been doing over the last four years an immense amount of work to solve it. That's remarkable. And I will have to reach out to them and get quotes and include them in the next round. Thank you so much for the suggestions. I think it's really important. We have maybe two minutes if anyone has. I guess we can take one question with a question. Then let's give a round of applause for the women and non-binary and trans people who are helping to build this community and for also everyone here for PyLondinium, for the organizers, and for everyone who came and made this possible. And also to Alyssa for a really interesting, to start a really interesting conversation. Thank you.