Conferences, though sometimes exhausting, can be immensely valuable to us as individuals. They reinforce our sense of belonging to a community. Conferences can also be valuable to companies like Slack, as they provide an opportunity to show that we value and support these communities.
These are the communities who are building the foundations on which our success is built. They are an opportunity to meet up in real life, get to know people you find inspiring and discover new people and projects you may not have found otherwise.
This post surveys Slack’s history with PyCon, focusing on what we get out of it, and how important it is for us to give back.
Why PyCon is important
As a developer, PyCon is one of my favorite events. The Python community is what other communities should and often do strive to be. The feeling of approachability and inclusivity that you experience as a first time attendee is what drives excitement in the talks and engagement on the floor. This event gets folks excited to build things, eager to learn, and provides a venue to showcase and share the amazing things they’ve built.
This event gets folks excited to build things, eager to learn, and provides a venue to showcase and share the amazing things they’ve built.
2017: The breakout
In 2017, I (Jason Roche) attended PyCon for the first time. I was relatively new to Python. I ‘d spent about a year building Python developer tools at Slack and had recently released our Python Slack Events API Adapter for Flask. I saw Pycon as an opportunity to get feedback from folks in the Python community.
Wandering around the conference, I discovered the break-out session board and asked if it would be okay to demo something I’d built for Slack developers. The organizers agreed and I put up a notecard.
That afternoon I set up in the breakout room, expecting a couple people to join me. 15–20 people showed up excited to hear about what I’d built and learn how to build things on Slack. I was amazed. I had a great time, got some excellent user feedback and brainstormed on changes and improvements to the library. I went back to work with a buzz of optimism and duty to give back to the community I’d become part of.
2018: __init__
In 2018, we did a sponsored workshop teaching how to build a Slack app. The workshop sold out at 85 seats, with more folks standing in the back. We heard a lot of feedback from the community asking where our booth was.
In that moment, we made a promise to double down on supporting this community in 2019.
2019: A warm welcome
This year, at PyCon 2019, we went all in. We did another workshop and lightning talk about how we build Python tools. We built a booth and filled it with Python enthusiasts and advocates for the developer community.
Slack app workshop
Rodney Urquhart and I provided an introduction to the Slack Platform and the concept of apps, followed by Rodney’s presentation on the major changes we’ve recently made to the Python SDK. This was a major architectural overhaul of the SDK, after two years of incremental updates and improvements released as minor versions. Rodney wrote a whole blog post about the changes.
The talk went well. The seats were full. People were focused, laughed at my terrible jokes and followed along with us as we built a simple Slack app. We had time for a brief Q&A where folks asked about the SDKs and gave us some valuable feedback. Rodney even pushed a patch to the SDK during the workshop after an attendee found a bug!
By packaging our slide deck and workshop content into a sharable format and publishing it on GitHub, we allowed folks to follow along and skip around at their own pace. This also becomes immensely valuable when the conference WiFi goes down in the middle of a developer workshop (not that that ever happens).
Our booth
Since this was our first time at PyCon at this scale, we wanted to make a splash. We set out to provide a welcoming station where folks could stop by and chat about their experience with Slack, learn about our Python SDKs and tools, and show us what they’ve built.
The layout of the booth was open and inviting, with a small sitting area for longer meetings and product demos. These product demos weren’t limited to Slack — we had a couple folks stop by to demo their Slack apps and one developer stopped by to show us their code coverage product.
We spent 3 full days engaging in conversations and demos with folks who use Slack, folks who build apps, tools, and integrations on Slack, and folks who are excited to learn what the platform can do for them. We made a lot of great connections, inspired some Slack app developers and basked in the energy of the Python community.
We were also so thankful for all the folks who came to speak with our excellent recruiters at the Job Fair on Sunday! There’s lots of excellent work to be done at Slack, and we’re excited to hire folks from this community to help us accomplish great work!
Our commitment to the developer community is strengthened and reaffirmed by the positive interactions and actionable feedback at events like this. We thank you for providing such a warm welcome to PyCon and we can’t wait to see you all again in Pittsburgh PA at PyCon 2020! #slacklovespython
