Thank-you's from DjangoCon US 2022

During my first DjangoCon US back in 2022, I wrote a bunch of thank-you’s at the end of the conference. I have gone back and forth on whether to publish them. I finally landed on wanting to share them.

And if you were at DjangoCon US 2022 in San Diego, thank you! That event set me on the course to where I am today, and I’m grateful for that.

Cripes, DjangoCon US was an interesting experience, to say the least. Everyone’s energy was infectious and uplifting. While I am still in the process of reflecting on the experience as a whole, I do want to thank some specific people.

Over dinner, Melanie Arbor told me about a dinner activity where people say what they are grateful for. I immediately professed my own gratitude, where I used it to poke fun at her and Karen Tracey, who were poking fun at my accent (bay-gs, not bah-gs). Thank you to Melanie for providing amazing insights into how to be a good human by sharing gratitude at dinner. Her honesty and forthrightness with her thinking and joys were reassuring. The way she navigated our conversation and helped push it in a direction that everyone enjoyed was something I haven’t seen before. I like to consider myself pretty empathetic, but she used her empathy and self-assuredness to create a better environment for everyone.

Thanks to Catherine, who helped me get situated for my tutorial and for some great conversation. We’re all better off that way with her as a part of the community. We need to make her contributions and all non-coding contributions to Django more widely known (Kojo, Carlton, and Will have a great episode on non-coding contributors).

Thanks to Ken. He had to experience a few moments of awkwardness on my part but was super polite about it. I was excited to meet him at the registration desk for the conference. It felt like a rite of passage. Plus I know how he is the most helpful Djangonaut on the forum. I’m also thankful for the recommendations on programming toys for my niece. He’s a great embodiment of the Django community and culture.

Thanks to Eric, for his wonderful conversation and presentation. He has a way of speaking that is a joy to listen to. Moreover, his opinions, ideas, and arguments were some of my favorites. His passion for education is something that I am carrying home and hope to build off.

Thanks to Lacey Henschel for her tremendous lightning talk on mentoring. It was extremely inspirational, and I hope to use that energy for an ambitious community project when I’m home.

A general thank you to the team at Black Tux for welcoming me at their table and letting me pontificate about the debug toolbar and my tutorial.

I need to change up the intro to these lines. Thanks to the whole Caktus team for being tremendously positive across the board. Specifically Ronard for always smiling and waving at me when we crossed paths, and Karen Tracey who shared stories about her kittens. I wish I would have realized sooner that she was the guest on the Django Chat episode covering docstring testing.

I want to thank Fernando for being a fellow Djangonaut and for sharing his experiences as a senior developer looking for ways to help in the ecosystems.

A special thank you to Lee Trout for his gentle reminder that we need to take care of ourselves: see Kojo’s self-care sprint.

There were a couple of super impressive projects at DjangoCon US. One of them was Umuzi. Thank you to Sheena for her work in South Africa helping to educate future developers. I’m really excited for the future!

Thank you to Tony Vu for his insights as a security engineer. I’m looking forward to seeing his involvement in the community flourish.

Thanks to Jim (or Rick, depending on how socially inept I am being) and Luke, for providing me with feedback on my tutorial. It’s difficult to gauge how useful a live tutorial is in the moment, so that feedback is greatly appreciated.

Thank you to Dawn for being the same amazing human that she is online. I am so thankful that she hosted the panel. Her charisma helped it all flow together, and the hot takes whiteboard idea was perfection!

I’m thankful to have the chance to listen to Trey explain the inner workings of Python, his goals for Python Morsels, and some of the challenges he’s currently experiencing with it. And for introducing me to Tom Kah soup from Grains, which I had managed to recommend to five different people, including two non-Django folks, before leaving San Diego.

Thank you to Kati for coming up to talk to me and helping me understand how to maximize a conference’s utility. It’s amazing how dinners at DjangoCon US seem to spawn from the ether and then contain some wonderful conversation.

Thanks to Tim Allen for his wonderful talk on Miracles in Anarchy. There were a number of takeaways, but the specific points for me were 1) servant leadership means taking a step down and putting the membership above you and 2) we need to continue to trust each other.

Thank you to Kojo Idrissa for being a spectacular and thoughtful organizer of the conference. Everything he said about how to have a great conference is true. Reflecting on what I wanted from the conference, exercising and performing self-care sprints as needed were all 100% on the money.

We’re getting near the end, I promise. Thank you to Drew for chairing and co-chairing the conference. The schedule and selection of talks were superb, and we’re all better for it. I hope to be of some more help next year.

To the entirety of the organizing team, volunteer staff, conference dads, and conference moms, thank you for being the embodiment of servant leadership. Thank you for providing a safe space for people to express their positivity and amplify our community’s energy. There have only been a handful of times in my life where I felt comfortable starting a conversation with someone because I knew that it would only be a matter of time until we found common ground to build a friendship on.

Finally, I’m thankful for everyone who participated in the conference. The energy you brought was uplifting and exciting. Thank you for being a member of the community and striving to make it better!

And if any of you have experienced some awkwardness around me, don’t worry; that’s normal.