Announcing our Keynote Speakers

We’re so excited about the keynote speakers for DjangoCon US 2016!

Saron Yitbarek

Saron Saron is a developer and the founder of CodeNewbie, the most supportive community of programmers and people learning to code. You can learn more about her in her original cartoon!

Saron will be presenting her talk “Lucky: Examining the barriers to contributing to open source”:

Being an open source contributor requires many resources we often take for granted: technical knowledge, confidence in that knowledge, access to technical tools, and a socioeconomic status that allows us to code without financial compensation. These resources are inaccessible to many, if not most. Shifting the face of our community to better represent our increasingly global user base requires us to examine what groups are least likely to have access to these resources and how different organizations and initiatives are working to remove these barriers and create entry points for groups of people who face the biggest obstacles in their journey to becoming creators in our community.

Saron discusses specific issues around socioeconomic status, location, access to education, and access to high-speed Internet and explains how these factors affect the likelihood of being able to contribute to the open source community. Saron unpacks the privilege most of us have as developers in the developed world. By understanding the barriers many face to becoming creators in our community and discussing actionable steps we can take to help, we will be better equipped to create on-ramps for more people, leading to a more inclusive space and a stronger coding community.

Andrew Godwin

Andrew Andrew is a Django core developer, the main force behind Channels, South and Django's migrations, and in his day job works as a Senior Software Engineer at Eventbrite, tackling architectural and backend problems. When he's not trying to work out how to make computers do the right thing, he enjoys flying small planes, archery and visiting lots of mountains.

Andrew will be presenting his talk “Architecting with Channels”:

Django Channels came in with one headline feature - WebSockets - but the impact on Django and the projects you can now write using it is far greater.

Andrew will explain the overall architecture of Channels, and how it fundamentally changes Django in ways that allow for new kinds of code to be written while keeping familiar APIs and being entirely backwards compatible, before going on to showcase some advanced feature examples, scaling methods and concerns, and deployment strategies.

Among other things, you’ll discover how to use Channels to data-bind WebSockets against Django models, see how consumers can work with incoming emails rather than just web protocols, and how to integrate your own asynchronous code for low-level networking with a Channels-based project.

Janice Levenhagen-Seeley

Janice Janice is the Founder and CEO of ChickTech, a national nonprofit dedicated to empowering girls and women in the technology industry and creating a more inclusive technology culture. Janice holds a BS degree in computer engineering and an MBA. Her passion lies in creating change to improve women’s lives. She founded ChickTech in 2012 based on her experiences as a woman in technology and is driven to provide a more positive experience in the technology industry for others.

Janice will be presenting her talk “Breaking Through the Glass Walls of Tech”:

54% of women leave tech by year 10 in their career. Our industry is losing great talent, diverse perspectives, and opportunities daily. We aren’t moving the needle as fast as we need to, and organizations and industry leaders alike are trying to figure out why. In her talk, Janice will tell you the history of and inspiration behind ChickTech, the top three issues that are holding back progress towards gender equity in tech, and how we can start breaking through those barriers.