PyOhio 2018 was a free python conference hosted at Ohio State University in Columbus, OH from July 28-29. I had the pleasure of not only attending but also speaking at PyOhio, and my company, PrecisionLender , graciously covered my travel expenses. I had a great time. Here’s my retrospective on the conference.
My TalkThe main reason I went to PyOhio was because I was honored to be a speaker. When I was at an Instagram dinner atPyCon 2018, I met a few conference organizers who encouraged me to propose talks at other Python conferences. On a whim the next morning, I spitballed an idea for a talk about building a test automation solution from the ground up in Python. After talking with a number of people, I realized how test automation is such a struggle everywhere. I took inspiration from Ying Li’s keynote and crafted a story about how Amanda the Panda, a Bamboozle employee, becomes a test automation champion. And, BOOM! My talk proposal was accepted for PyOhio and PyGotham! The video recording for my talk, “Egad! How Do We Start Writing (Better) Tests?”, is below:
ArrivalGood news: Raleigh and Columbus have direct flights. Bad news: they are either early-morning or late-night direct flights. So, I left Raleigh on Friday morning before the conference and spent the day in Columbus. Surprisingly, the security line at RDU wrapped around 2/3 of the Terminal 2 perimeter, but I still boarded the flight on time. Once I landed in Columbus, I took the COTA AirConnect bus downtown for the low price of $2.75.
My goal for Friday was personal development. I rarely get a chance to escape the rigors of everyday life to focus on myself. Personal retreats let me clear my mind, dream big, and begin taking action. And on this day, I started writing my first test automation book a dream I’ve held for over a year now. I spent a few hours at Wolf’s Ridge Brewery , sampling beers with lunch as I developed a rough outline for my project.
My evening was low-key. I took a nap at my hotel, the Blackwell Inn and Pfahl Conference Center . For dinner, I ate at White Castle for the first time and it was pretty darn good. After practicing my talk, I got a tiramisu bubble tea from Vivi as a night cap.
The ConferencePyOhio was a much smaller conference than PyCon. There were fewer vendor tables but nevertheless a wide selection of stellar talks. As a result, the conference felt more intimate and more focused. Perhaps that feeling was due also to the venue: the third floor of the Ohio Union had full rooms with “cozy” hallways. Hats off to the organizers, too everything ran smoothly and professionally.
As soon as I arrived, I scored my name badge, my swag bag, and my official PyOhio 2018 t-shirt. The opening keynote fromAdrienne Lowe, “From Support to Engineering and Beyond: What to Take with You, and What to Leave Behind,” about the highs and lows of trying to make it as a developer was exceptionally inspiring. Engineers often don’t talk about how hard the job is, especially for newcomers to the industry. Everybody suffers from imposter syndrome . Everybody feels inadequate. Everybody is tempted to quit, even to the point of tears. The vulnerability in hearing others say, “Me, too,” is so relatable and so relieving.
The first talk-talk I attended was Trey Hunner’s “Easier Classes: Python Classes Without All the Cruft.” Trey gave an excellent overview of writing more sophisticated Python classes. TL;DR: upgrade to 3.7 and use dataclasses.
The next talk I attended was Leo Guinan’s “Go with the Flow: Automating Your Workflows with Airflow.” Apache Airflow is a platform for automating workflows. As an automationeer, it struck me as being like a continuous integration system generalized for non-build purposes. The Q&A portion of the talk was lit.
After finding an authentic Chinese restaurant for lunch, my friend Matt arrived! I worked with Matt in the testing space at LexisNexis. He drove all the way from Dayton to see my talk and hang out. We spent the early afternoon catching up, and we went to Hook Hearted Brewing for dinner after the conference because we’re beer buddies. I was so thankful he came to support me it meant a lot!
My talk was at 3:45pm. Other than discovering my Thunderbolt-to-HDMI adapter was a dud, the talk went very well. I decided to stick to a script for this talk because most of it followed a story, and I’m glad I did. (For my PyCon talk, I chose instead to speak without a script and rely instead on the slides alone.) There were about 30 people in the audience. Many expressed appreciation for my presentation!
The last talk of the day for me was Jace Browning’s “Automated Regression Testing with Splinter and Jupyter.” It was the perfect follow-up to my talk. Whereas mine was mostly high-level, Jace showed implementation and execution. I loved how he compared raw Selenium WebDriver calls to splinter calls, and I was thrilled to see hands-on test execution using Jupyter . One of the things that makes Python so great for automation is that modules can be called from the interpreter and Jupyter notebooks make that so easy.
The Second DaySunday was a shorter conference day. The opening keynote, Lorena Mesa’s “Now is better than Never: What the Zen of Python can teach us about Data Ethics,” didn’t start until 11:40am. Lorena showed us what the Zen of Python can teach us about data ethics in a scary, modern world.
I got lunch at Chatime: dan dan noodles (or rather, an imitation thereof) and a matcha latte with grass jelly. Yum! After lunch, I attendedDaniel Lindeman’s “Python in Serverless Architectures.” Now I know what the buzzword “serverless” means! I even found out that I had already developed a serverless app using Django and Heroku . There are some really cool ways test automation could take advantage of serverless architectures.
Another one of my favorite talks of the afternoon was Vince Salvino’s “Containers Without the Magic.” Vince broke down how easy containers are to use. It was a great refresher for me.
Open Spaces At 3:15 on Sunday, I tried something new: I hosted an open space for test automation. “Open spaces” are rooms that can be reserved for a time slot to meet up informally about a common interest. (For example, PyCon had a juggling open space!) At first, nobody showed up to my open space, but after a few minutes, one lady walked in. She had been a software tester for years and wanted to start doing automation. I walked her through as much info as I could before time was up. She was very grateful for