Python for Java Developers
(15 Minutes)
By: Heather White
Experience Level: Novice

According to the StackOverflow annual survey, Python and Java are ranked in the top ten programming languages in terms of popularity.  This talk will contrast these languages, with the goal of helping those coming from Java understand the key features of Python.

Decoding “Fedspeak” With Python
(14 Minutes)
By: jorgoose
Experience Level: Intermediate
Slides Link

Every word from the Federal Reserve moves markets, but their statements are often cryptic. In this talk, I’ll aim to break down my work for a class I took in college on using machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to analyze Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) statements and minutes to “predict” interest rate changes. By applying sentiment analysis, text processing, and neural network modeling, I tried to explore whether AI can help us potentially decode central bank language and anticipate monetary policy shifts. I will share some key findings and challenges.

Biggest Job Search Mistakes & How to Avoid Them
(15 Minutes)
By: Aline Lerner
Experience Level: Intermediate

I'm one of the authors of Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview (the official sequel to CTCI) and the founder of interviewing.io.

I've been around eng hiring for almost 20 years, as a candidate, and eng leader, a recruiter (both in-house and agency), and finally as the founder of a mock interview and recruiting platform.

I keep seeing engineers make the same, very avoidable mistakes. In this talk, I'll walk you through them. Note that there are no shortcuts to getting good at technical interviews. There, you have to practice. But, there are a bunch of job search things that you can get good at after a short talk, and those are the ones I'll focus on.

Using devcontainers for Ansible development
(20 Minutes)
By: Colin Vallance
Experience Level: Intermediate

Development (and execution) environments for Ansible can be tricky. I’ll go over how utilizing the devcontainer spec can make it easy to develop Ansible plugins, run Ansible, and share environments with a team so that everyone has the same experience. This concept also extends to python environments in general and can help with complex setups that might include databases, web front ends, and so on.   

xsNumPy: Curiosity to Code
(45 Minutes)
By: Akshay Mestry
Experience Level: Intermediate

In this talk, I’ll take you on a journey through the creation of xsNumPy, a minimalist implementation of core NumPy features using Python’s standard library. I’ll begin by sharing the inspiration behind the project — my curiosity to unravel the mechanics of NumPy and deepen my understanding of numerical computing. Then, we’ll explore the step-by-step development process, including designing a basic array object, implementing element-wise operations, and tackling challenges like scalability and performance optimization without external libraries. Along the way, I’ll highlight the Pythonic principles and best practices that guided the project, compare xsNumPy’s functionality with NumPy, and reflect on the lessons learned. Finally, I’ll discuss how xsNumPy can serve as a learning tool for developers and educators, and invite the community to join this open-source experiment in computational discovery.