Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
"Python Grab Bag: A Set of Short Plays" Accepted for PyGotham 2018
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2018 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Fresh from the waitlist onto the schedule: Jason Owen and I will be performing "Python Grab Bag: A Set of Short Plays" at PyGotham in early October. If you want to come see us perform, you should probably register soon. I don't yet know whether we'll perform on Friday, Oct. 5 or Saturday, Oct. 6.
(The format will be similar to the format I used in "Lessons, Myths, and Lenses: What I Wish I'd Known in 1998" (video, partial notes), but some plays will be more elaborate and theatrical -- much more like our inspiration "The Infinite Wrench".)
To quote the session description:
A frenetic combination of educational and entertaining segments, as chosen by the audience! In between segments, audience members will shout out numbers from a menu, and we'll perform the selected segment. It may be a short monologue, it may be a play, it may be a physical demo, or it may be a tiny traditional conference talk.Audience members should walk away with some additional understanding of the history of Python, knowledge of some tools and libraries available in the Python ecosystem, and some Python-related amusement.
So now Jason and I just have to find a director, write and memorize and rehearse and block probably 15-20 Python-related plays/songs?/dances?/presentations, acquire and set up some number of props, figure out lights and sound and visuals, possibly recruit volunteers to join us for a few bits, run some preview performances to see whether the lessons and jokes land, and perform our opening (also closing) performance. In 68 days.
(Simultaneously: I have three clients, and want to do my bit before the midterm elections, and work on a fairly major apartment-related project with Leonard, and and and and.)
Jason, thank you for the way your eyes lit up on the way back from PyCon when I mentioned this PyGotham session idea -- I think your enthusiasm will energize me when I'm feeling overwhelmed by the ambition of this project, and I predict I'll reciprocate the favor! PyGotham program committee & voters, thank you for your vote of confidence. Leonard, thanks in advance for your patience with me bouncing out of bed to write down a new idea, and probably running many painfully bad concepts past you. Future Sumana, it's gonna be ok. It will, possibly, be great. You're going to give that audience an experience they've never had before.
