PyCon proposals I'd like to see

PyCon 2013 is current accepting proposals. I'm looking forward to helping review the proposals.

So, what proposals would *I* like to see?

Anything science related, especially bio and chemistry and neuroscience stuff
Anything health related
Anything homestead related - how do you use Python in your home, your garden, your office, your private hobby, knitting, weaving, ...
How Python is being/or could be used in the office and support areas (HR, Marketing, Admin Assistants, Finance)
Anything with robots
Anything about Making stuff
Anything about GAE
Hacking your fitness with Python

Accessibility how-tos
HCI

Here's where to submit your proposal


I'm planning on proposing a talk on "Hello GAE" - an overview for folks who  haven't used it before. Also a "You can be a speaker at PyCon!" session for folks who are considering being a speaker in 2014 but don't know how to start.

I know there will be plenty of my favorite speakers at PyCon - we're starting to get proposals from some of you already.  I'm especially interested in getting proposals from a wide variety of new folks. Entrepreneurs, web designers, interaction designers, chemists, rocket scientists, secretaries, WHO (you know who you are!), fitness geeks, women, people of color, neuroscientists, and anybody else I've never heard speak at PyCon before.

They're not "short adults"

Great post on introducing kids to programming that reminds us to not treat kids like "short adults" and gives a great set of suggestions of ways to introduce a kid, from html to scratch to RUR-PLE. I love that Ned starts by talking about finding out what the kid is interested in. Too many folks forget this part when trying to introduce a new person to programming - wiift (what's in it for them).

My typical response

So, I had to code a program using bigrams to generate sentences based on two very different corpora (wsj and shakespeare). I coded it up yesterday afternoon and evening. It took about 2 hours (aside from discussing data structures with Alex - I got to use the collections.defaultdict for the first time.) I sent it, and then suddenly panicked. What if I misunderstood the assignment? I do that sort of thing pretty often (particularly in this class, for some reason). What worried me was, it was so easy to code. I must be doing something wrong. I had actually done it okay. I just had trouble *believing* that I'd done it right.

I run into this regularly - if it's hard, I worry I won't be able to do it at all, or that I'll need too much help from Alex; if it's easy, I worry I did it wrong. It couldn't possibly be that I'm finally getting enough practice and experience coding to be able to do easy things reasonably easily... could it? Nah. That would require me to admit that maybe I do know some programming after all. And, as I've repeatedly stated, "I'm not a programmer; I just use python to get things done."

I'm beginning to think I may have to change that motto. I am not a professional programmer. But, I do program. So, does that make me "a programmer"? I'll have to let that one percolate for a while...