Summary
One of the great strengths of the Python community is the diversity of backgrounds that our practitioners come from. This week Lorena Mesa talks about how her focus on political science and civic engagement led her to a career in software engineering and data analysis. In addition to her professional career she founded the Chicago chapter of PyLadies, helps teach women and kids how to program, and was voted onto the board of the PSF.
Brief Introduction
- Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great.
- I would like to thank everyone who has donated to the show. Your contributions help us make the show sustainable.
- Check out our sponsor Linode for running your awesome new Python apps. Check them out at linode.com/podcastinit and get a $20 credit to try out their fast and reliable Linux virtual servers for your next project
- You want to make sure your apps are error-free so give our other sponsor, Rollbar, a look. Rollbar is a service for tracking and aggregating your application errors so that you can find and fix the bugs in your application before your users notice they exist. Use the link rollbar.com/podcastinit to get 90 days and 300,000 errors for free on their bootstrap plan.
- Visit our site to subscribe to our show, sign up for our newsletter, read the show notes, and get in touch.
- By leaving a review on iTunes, or Google Play Music it becomes easier for other people to find us.
- Join our community! Visit discourse.pythonpodcast.com to help us grow and connect our wonderful audience.
- Your host as usual is Tobias Macey
- Today we’re interviewing Lorena Mesa about what inspires her in her work as a software engineer and data analyst.
Interview with Lorena Mesa
- Introductions
- How did you get introduced to Python?
- How did your original interests in political science and community outreach lead to your current role as a software engineer?
- You dedicate a lot of your time to organizations that help teach programming to women and kids. What are some of the most meaningful experiences that you have been able to facilitate?
- Can you talk a bit about your work getting the PyLadies chapter in Chicago off the ground and what the reaction has been like?
- Now that you are a member of the board for the PSF, what are your goals in that position?
- What is it about software development that made you want to change your career path?
- What are some of the most interesting projects that you have worked on, whether for your employer or for fun?
- Do you think that the bootcamp you attended did a good job of preparing you for a position in industry?
- What is your view on the concept that software development is the modern form of literacy? Do you think that everyone should learn how to program?
Keep In Touch
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The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
[00:00:14]
Unknown:
Hello, and welcome to podcast.init,
[00:00:16] Unknown:
the podcast about Python and the people who make it great. I would like to thank everyone who has donated to the show. Your contributions help us make the show sustainable. Linode is sponsoring us this week. Check them out at linode.com/podcastinit and get a $20 credit to try out their fast and reliable Linux virtual servers for your next project. We are also sponsored by Rollbar. Rollbar is a service for tracking and aggregating your application errors so that you can find and fix the bugs in your application before your users notice they exist. Use the link rollbar.com/podcastinit to get 90 days 300,000 errors tracked for free on their Bootstrap plan. You can also visit our site at pythonpodcastdot com to subscribe to our show, sign up for our newsletter, read the show notes, and get in touch. And to help other people find the show, you can leave a review on iTunes or Google Play Music and tell your friends and coworkers. You can also join our community at discourse.pythonpodcast.com to find out about upcoming guests, suggest questions, and propose show ideas.
You host as usual is Tobias Macy. And today, I'm interviewing Lorena Mesa about what inspires her and her work as a software engineer and data analyst.
[00:01:14] Unknown:
So Lorena, could you please introduce yourself? Yeah. My name's Lorena Mesa, and I'm hailing from Chicago. So I think the best part of how I like to introduce myself a little bit is I like to preface by saying I am a career changer and Python is actually a huge reason why I moved from in the space I was in before, which is social science applied research, into actually working day to day as a software engineer. So very excited to be here.
[00:01:41] Unknown:
And how did you first get introduced to Python? Yeah. So my journey with Python,
[00:01:46] Unknown:
so let's see. I had worked at the Obama for America campaign in the first and the second 1, and as I was an undergrad student when the first 1 began, a lot of that for me at the time, was very exciting because I think that campaign really started to open my eyes about how we could use data in ways that I previously hadn't really understood. So for me as a undergrad studying political science, a lot of, like, the work that I would be doing when it came to kinda data collection was a little bit more manual, massaging, working with Excel, nothing nothing as exciting as that. But on the campaign, specifically, I worked on voter outreach in the Latino vote section. We did a lot of work with Python and actually cleaning up data sets to think about voting, voter outreach, voter messaging, and things like that to try to track our data points and better understand how we can have informed message and reach the population that we want to reach. So, yeah, the the Obama campaign was actually my first introduction to Python.
[00:02:39] Unknown:
Yeah. It's always great when you have a practical use for learning some sort of programming language, especially something that can be used so effectively for scripting like Python because it sort of helps you bridge the gap between something that you know and you're familiar with to the unknown because it sort of anchors it together, and then it gives you a launching off point to dig deeper if it's something that interests you.
[00:03:00] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. I think what was kind of interesting, particularly when I was an undergrad at that time, you know, you you see now or rather there's a lot of discussion around, so, like, at University of Chicago, you have Raya Gandhi, who's done the good data for social, for social good at the University of Chicago. So you do see a lot more of this kind of intersectionality of how can technology answer civic minded questions. So I think a lot of these efforts actually came out of this space of the Obama campaign really thinking from a quantitative perspective, what does it mean to have a data driven solution for social need? Why? You know, fill in the blank and you can do it. So I think what was really interesting at that time for me was really starting to think about, well, what does it mean for me to be someone who cares about these social issues and and use code, or use tools that involve code to help me to help me build a tool or to do a thing.
So today, we do have more intersectionality and more undergrad programs that I think has a good balance of offering programming alongside skill sets or programs that are in the kind of social science research space. But at that time it was pretty new and for me, it's it felt really out of, at least it felt out of my element, but it was really exciting to try.
[00:04:08] Unknown:
Yeah. And I think things like the Code for America campaign has also helped sort of bring together a lot of that civic duty and civic responsibility along with the capabilities that software development brings to the table and how it can really be a force multiplier for causes like that?
[00:04:25] Unknown:
Yeah. Definitely. The code for America chapter here is pretty strong, and it's, still maintained in and has a offshoot, which every week there is a weekly meeting for Shy Hack Night, which is run by some of the, folks who brought Code for America and the Code for America Brigade here in Chicago. So I think really Chicago has been in some context at the forefront of thinking about the intersectionality of what code can do in the civic space. So I was always really interested in that, and that really is what whetted my appetite for wanting to go deeper into it.
[00:04:53] Unknown:
And I know that when I was looking at some of your background, I mentioned that you were originally studying political science. And I know that that factors strongly into, you know, your work with the Obama campaign and how that first got you introduced to Python. But I'm wondering what sort of motivating factor that plays now that you're working more in industry and sort of how that ties into your work both in your professional career as well as a lot of the volunteering work that you do. Yeah. Yeah. So it's pretty I work at a company called Sprat Social in Chicago, which is like a business to business social media management and analytics tool. So actually the kinda data collection stuff and thinking about social and how could I use code to kinda lift up some of that actually kinda came from that skill set that I built,
[00:05:33] Unknown:
during my my time at Obama for America. So ironically, it kind of fed into what I do day to day at my current position. And I also do work as a data engineer supporting our data our data science team. So I think the kind of cool thing there is we, when our team is prototyping models, it does try to think about the space of social. And it still does have that lens of, you know, what it's not so much that we're saying, oh, hey. Let's, like, write a sorting algorithm, like, list content, but a little bit more about how can we have authentic engagement with with social content in in your unified stream, kind of like a Gmail for social media, if you will, in our products. So I think it's, you know, in in the context that it's still like human facing problems, I think that's still there. So my day to day, that that historical kind of backdrop of trying to think about, well, how can I ask the proper questions and use the data to tell that story? I think that's always been there and has and actually has been very good training for me in my in my professional space, but also then the the kind of community outreach component. I'm very passionate about women in tech and underrepresented folks in tech. And so I think outside of work, there's a lot of people who have those values as well. And the Python community has been incredibly, incredibly proactive on thinking about these ideas, thinking about how can we get more more folks who are underrepresented, you know, minorities, people of color, women, and that has always been something that I is very near and dear to my heart. I'm 1st generation college. I'm a career changer.
I identify as Latina. I I am a woman in tech. So I think that there's that capacity also in the broader community as well, and Python's really been at the forefront of that.
[00:07:06] Unknown:
Yeah. There's definitely been a lot of focus and attention paid to sort of trying to be inclusive of minorities and women and, you know, also trying to get people interested young. So bringing children into the workshops that a lot of people put on that generally use Python. And so aside from the work that you're doing professionally, I know that you also have helped found some groups in the Chicago area to to teach programming to people who aren't generally classified as the norm for what you would think as a software engineer. So I'm wondering if you can dig a bit into how you got involved in that, what your experience has been like getting some of those organizations put together, and sort of what your strategies have been to raise awareness and try and grow that community.
[00:07:49] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. So interestingly, when I was kind of at that I was kind of at that tipping point of of saying, you know, hey, what do I really wanna do? I like code. Is this a good career for me to pursue working as a software engineer day in, day out? Actually the first product I worked on in Chicago came out of a civic minded hackathon, this being, oh my gosh, over 3 years ago. Dates allude me, but it was a it was a hackathon that was that was focused on building disaster response, disaster response tools specifically for the lacrosse. And what was really exciting about some of that was, again, it really brought me back to this to the reality that there's a lot of people doing really cool things. And there's a need for someone who can communicate and educate and who wants to teach. To help get folks who may be, in the nonprofit space to help them understand how they can ask questions to surface insights in their data, help help them recognize where the holes are in their data. So my entrance into this, in working with that project and the Red Cross, which I've still done work with them intermittently over the years, really did emphasize again that there is a place for people who are, you know, maybe newer to the field or who who've been doing it since they were 5.
So coming into that, 1 of the first groups that I helped found in Chicago when I realized I really wanted to to more than just like a 1 off, I'm working on a hackathon or or am in some capacity doing like a 1 off, like, commitment. What could I do that was more sustainable? So the pilot is chapter actually in Chicago was originally founded by me and some other folks of which, I'm the main organizer still who's working with them. And that was about almost about 2 years ago, which is and that's been pretty successful. Because I think that there are some women in tech groups in Chicago, but what what I have found to be a little lacking was trying to have a space for people who may not just be in web development, who may not just be people who have that traditional kind of computer science background, but instead offers a place for people who may be working in finance, people who may be, pursuing graduate degrees that require them to have some kind of, scripting tech some kind of scripting capacity and they're looking for other places where they can learn that. So I think Pyeladies has been really instrumental in helping create a space for people who have some of those skill sets who aren't kind of classified as the as the tech, even just within the idea of that, you know, their day to day job isn't per se code. So I think PyLadies has been really really exciting for me in that regard. And then from there, we've been also able to do some bigger group organizing, 1 of the fun projects in Chicago that has kind of been born of the women in tech space. We have now a we've now kind of created a governed code of, a a a meta slack, if you will, for Chicago Tech Diversity Initiative is kind of what we're calling it. But it's at least 1 Slack community that is governed by a code of conduct and is meant to be a safe space for all these organizations in Chicago that really do care about diversity and really do care about promoting a safe space for people to talk. So, you know, some of these efforts are more consistent. So pilot use gives us that, gives me the umbrella to do that. And through that, I've been able to do more teaching with youth. Every year, piloties, we like to do an hour of code with the local high schools here. I've been doing some work with Chick Tech, which is a pretty exciting organization that's based on the West Coast. They just brought a chapter here in Chicago.
Essentially, it's a year long mentorship mentorship program for high school aged women, where this last cohort, I believe, was around 20. But, ideally, they wanna bring it up to a 100 and ideas a year long kind of exposure to stem, for folks who are, like, sophomore about sophomore, junior year, and high school who may not otherwise have been exposed to coding. So I think what's been really cool is, PyLadies at least created a space for people to have more of this kind of broad discussions about what's it mean to be a coder and how do I keep working on that skill set in a way that tapped into the already vibrant community of civic tech of Python in Chicago. We have a very awesome, lovely Python user group here, but then that has led to us doing more broad, coalition building, which I'm really excited about.
[00:11:46] Unknown:
Yeah. And 1 of the things too that can be a difficult perception to overcome time. It can be useful in so many different arenas outside of actually being a full time software engineer, whether it's just task automation of, you know, maybe automatically pulling and calculating some data out of an Excel sheet or automatically, you know, retrieving data from a website that would be tedious to do by hand. Precisely. Yeah. I know that, some of the stuff that you do with PyLadies is just sort of introductory coding. And so I'm curious if that's seen a lot of, uptake from people who don't necessarily identify as software engineers or even want to identify as software engineers but have been able to come away with useful skills that have that have allowed them to make their daily lives easier. Yeah. I think that's a that's a great question. Thanks for asking it. And I I I would say yes. So 1 of the areas that we're really trying to
[00:12:42] Unknown:
have more content be delivered is in the space for kinda like the date. I don't wanna say it's per se exactly data science with a capital d and a capital s, but for folks who are trying to understand better what what the bubble of data science is and the and the bubble of data engineering. Because these are folks who may be researchers in, we have we've we've had a few people who are actually grad students in, you know, be it an astrophysics program or an astronomy program who are coming and they're like, I need to better know how to use Python because I have these libraries and these tools but I don't really I never really did that in my undergrad classes. So I think that's really exciting. Personally, I I geek out about I geek out about the stars. I think that's really nifty. But yeah. I mean we've seen people like that come through come through some of our events. We've also seen people who are like in the actuarial sciences who are kind of pivoting and they might have that strong stats background, but wanna pivot into making that transition of being a data scientist and they're looking for those spaces that can give them some exposure to you know like what are classification algorithms, what does that actually mean when you're applying it in the field, and why is Python the language that I should be learning. So we just had a speaker who did a, did a talk, actually that was last week, for PyLadies. I was talking about, you know, classification. It's not classification algorithms. It's not magic with, like, the with the 1 sentence cut well, I shouldn't say the 1 sentence takeaway, but to an effect of a 1 sentence takeaway. Is that it's kind of like drawing a line through and depending on how you draw that line, you have different questions and different algorithms you can apply, which I thought was very insightful. It kind these are folks who who do have a lot of exposure to the statistical kind of components, but they're like, okay. Well, what does that actually mean about? Do I have to know everything? Or how do I how do I start thinking about finding projects to do in this transition? So we're kind of trying to do, balanced classes that allow people to do a little a little deep a little a little exploration be it like in a Jupyter Python notebook with a like the Iris data, the Iris data set or something from from another data science competition website alongside having speakers who kind of talk and diversify a little bit what what it is they do with Python in the data engineering, data science space. So I think that's been, like, 1 really cool thing because I don't know if I've seen that as much, or rather maybe in, in some of the other women tech spaces. I don't know if I've seen that conversation as much. I'm sure it's out there. It's just I know that's something that I see a lot with the pilot news chapter in Chicago.
[00:15:02] Unknown:
And in addition to your full time job and all of the work that you do with these other organizations, you've also decided to take on the role of a board member for the PSF. So I'm wondering what your experience has been like so far with that, and, what are some of your goals, while you're in that position? Yeah.
[00:15:21] Unknown:
Yeah. I, I laugh a little because I think the the first thing that took me I knew it was gonna be a lot of email because I had reached out to some folks I knew who had been on the board or or at that time were on the board. And I knew it was gonna be a lot of email, but the I I I just wanna say that I have so much respect for the folks who've been doing this for a few years because it really is a lot of email. You have people from, you know, we have some board members in India. We have a board member in South Korea. We have a board member in England. And so that conversation is kind of always going. So I have a lot of respect for the PSF in in being very proactive with with that dialogue and the PSF having a very lean but super awesome board, super awesome staff. So I think for me, like, the first thing was, wow, there's a lot of email. How do I keep up with it all?
So that was a little bit of an adjustment. But once I started kinda getting my footing underneath and folks like Carol Willing have been super great and, you know, there's been a big push to try to, you know, I said this word about demystifying data science. I think that's also applicable to the Python Software Foundation where you you there's some people who are aware of what it does. But I think there's also a lot of people who are like, I know it's a thing. So I think 1 of the big push, 1 of the big pushes I understood of the board or at last at least last year's last year's board mem board from 2015, 2016 was to try to start really being more transparent about what the board does and how we can support the community. And 1 way I've really been trying to think about that is through through the blog. What does it mean to actually communicate and and have content that people can read and it's applicable to them, such that they realize they can get money for grants, and do that first workshop that they wanna do, or do that cool youth programming thing they wanna do for kids. So, I mean, that's a huge a huge perk of the PSF is you can write in and get a grant. You should do it if you haven't. And if you have more questions, I'm I encourage everyone to tweet me. I'm more than happy to answer questions. But, yeah, so 1 of the things I've been working on, I'm 1 of the 2 communications people, the other being Kushal who's in India. So where I've kind of been focusing on is trying to get more folks who are from different, regional spaces, and from different identities so that we can have a broader discussion about what Python means in those in those areas. And so far, we've invited 2 folks who's who are joining the staff. 1 is a woman from the Pacific Northwest who's also a piloting. That makes me very exciting, but she's she uses Python in the GIS space, which is pretty cool. And then we have another woman who's joining us from India who's, the I believe the main organizer of the PyLadies chapter in her local area. So I'm really excited that we're we're gonna be trying to think more about what does it mean to broaden the message of what it what Python means to people around the world and hopefully the blog can be a space to do that. And in tandem, we're trying, the PyLadies kind of, the first PyLadies conference is gonna happen next year, and I'm excited to say that it's gonna be in India next year. And so, my fellow Python Software Foundation director, Anupam Rima, is going to be putting that together in India. So I'm hoping that we can also kinda join efforts, the Pyles blog, and the PSF blog to kinda start thinking about some of this, you know, think more about not just Python in the United States or in Canada or in West Europe, but what does Python mean in other places in the world. So that to me is what I would like to focus a bit on, and we'll see how it goes.
[00:18:45] Unknown:
Yeah. And talking a bit more about Python in the global context, it's always been used around the world, but the visibility of that seems to have been increasing lately with a lot more regional PyCon Conferences. Like, I know that there has been, PyCon Caribbean down in Puerto Rico. You know, there's obviously PyCon US. I spoke a little spoke recently with the organizers for PyCon Canada who have been running that for a few years. I'm actually hoping to make it up this year. You know, there's PyCon Russia. There's, Europicon, PyCon New Zealand.
[00:19:17] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. I've I I'm pretty excited. I'm going to be participating in the 1st picon Jamaica, which happens the 17th 18th. And the I think that's very close to the picon Canada because I was thinking about that and then I saw Jamaica and I was like, I want to explore beautiful Jamaica. But that's really exciting. Right? So I'm actually in touch with the folks who are running, PyCaribbean. So Leonardo, who I've who's been the main person I've been chatting with, is just so full of ideas and so excited. And and that's actually another another thing with the Python Software Foundation that we're working on is trying to, at least we're trying to to define a format for creating an open source PyCon Organizers Manual. So while this is starting with folks from the PSF board, we are trying to define a format that ideally we're hoping that we can connect and have regional specific information.
And with the, obviously, with the consent of someone making a poll request because we think we wanna do this as a Git book. I hopefully have people make contributions to say, hey. I I led this event, and this is the the last date I did it, so contact me if you have questions. So 1 big 1 big takeaway with that beyond it just being like, I wanna do my first PyCon event or Python themed conference, is really trying to again empower back the regional space. As you mentioned with EuroPython, they've got the working group there in Europe. And and then the EuroPython Society is just, you know, I I think a great way in which you can bring the power back to the local space because they understand the nuances of how people are using Python in their area. What what Python needs are being addressed and are not being addressed. And I think that's kind of also what the the PSF is trying to do is try to make sure that we're promoting those regional spaces to think more about, to have that more micro lens such that we can facilitate a broader discussion between regions. So that that is another thing. Also, if anyone is interested in contributing to the PyCon Organizers Manual, I'm also super excited to talk to you because anytime I know I go and I search for things, so I'm bilingual, I speak Spanish, I stumbled across a beautiful a beautiful git repository of someone and I think it was I think it was scipython latinamerica.
And someone has started putting together a list of active Python groups in Central and South America. And a lot of these and some of these being countries that I actually hadn't seen, I hadn't seen these pipeline groups pop up before. So I feel like there's a lot of people who are doing these small little efforts, which really, it's it's so much about it is, you know, I if you wanna start a thing, instead of reinventing the wheel, how do we empower 1 another? Let's centralize that information. I'm hoping that I think the hope is with those of us who are working on the onetenth time revision of a PyCon Organizers Manual, because I know that there's some folks who've done things like this in the past. We're hoping to at least bring that all together, make it a 1 stop shop, and ideally really channel the power of open source to get folks to come here to get info and to share cool things happening in the original space.
[00:22:17] Unknown:
Speaking about sort of creating somewhat of a franchise of PyCon and sort of unifying the organization of it in terms of the resources available for people who want to get engaged. You might also look to the DevOps Days organization because I know that they've been pretty successful in having a sort of unified branding that different locations are able to take advantage of and build their own local conferences under that same umbrella but really still make advertising perhaps locally, but it can be a little harder to get the word out. Whereas if you have that umbrella that you can, you know, go to a single landing page and see all the different places that something's happening, it makes it a little bit easier for to bring in people who aren't quite as local to maybe, you know, grow your local community or, you know, grow your networks beyond the bounds of your town, things like that. Yeah. I I actually laugh that you say that because in Chicago this past,
[00:23:13] Unknown:
wow, this past June already, there's an organization called the Bright Speak, Code, which they have, like, they have meet up chapters throughout the United States, but they also do a conference for women who identify as coders. And they, with the conference being in Chicago because it had been twice in New York before, but first time in Chicago, We, I was an organizer for that conference and the folks that we turned to to kind of have some of this discourse were the local people running Chicago DevOps DevOps days. So I love that you say that because I I can speak to the awesomeness of what they do. And I think I also like Django Girls. Django Girls, I did, pilot of Chicago, did the did 1 version of that last year and we're gonna be doing it again in December. But they really do have that. They they have a very clean introduction to here's here's the splash page, here's where everything's happening, here's what you need, boom, go. And sadly, I don't think we're quite there yet with, with the PyCons.
Granted, PyCons can be incredibly, incredibly large in a way that maybe Django Girls workshops are not since that's a 1 day thing and then you're done. So but but I think that you definitely hit the nail on the head. DevOps is and Django Girls have done a really good job in crafting their message and making it very accessible.
[00:24:23] Unknown:
And going back to sort of your transition from, sort of political science and political and civic engagement and transitioning to software. I'm wondering, I guess, what's been the most rewarding aspect of making that career transition and wondering if you can highlight some of the most interesting projects that you've worked on whether it's professionally or just for fun as a side project.
[00:24:46] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. So actually, 1 of the things I've been super happy to say that I've been able to see for over time has actually been the Red Cross with their so the Red Cross, I don't know if you know much about the way that they run, but they are all volunteer. Like very, very heavy on volunteers. And you get volunteers from young folk in high school doing stuff to folks who are retired who are very committed to the cause at hand. And they do things that they offer services that primary responders do not. So in Chicago, the big the biggest thing that you see is there's a lot of fires. So they go there and they offer things like, oh, like, you know, your entire home burned down. So we're gonna give you we're gonna give you shelter for a few evenings. We're gonna make sure you have food. You know? You have kids with you? Hey. Take a teddy bear. So they offer that supplement and then also like, you know, maybe maybe something kinda scary happened so you need some, maybe you need some counseling. So they offer those kinds of things for fires, for people who have had their home burned down, and and that's what's most prominent in Chicago. But it's really impressive when you see how the organization has done everything. It's all different kinds of Excel worksheets with, you know, this person doing their their macros like this. This other person has a custom a custom color code thing, and you've got 10 people doing that, and then you have the dispatchers who are calling all the volunteers being like, hey, you're on, you're on the calendar tonight. Can you go out there and go and do the assessment? So the Red Cross has been has great dedicated volunteers, but everything is, at least up to a few years ago, a lot of the processes were manual, were redundant, and very, very manual.
Manual, a lot of manual labor. So I think what's been kind of cool in terms of projects is being able to see how open source tools, just, you know, a few folks come in and doing some development has allowed them to better streamline their processes. And it really has started asking questions about volunteer engagement. Once we make how how has open source made volunteer engagement better for organizations like like Direct Cross? So what actually I helped, what I helped work on was kind of bringing like a scheduling tool and that might not seem as so rewarding or so, you know, just diff that might seem simple to to someone who's a coder. It's a go. I I can I can automate my life with scheduling software? But but creating that and creating it where they didn't have to spend a crazy budget on on some kind of proprietary enterprise software that doesn't fit their needs, but instead is custom created to what they need, and can can integrate with other murky, kinda quirky, legacy software has been a huge win for them. And what's really cool now is the idea is we wanna try to do intelligent scheduling and say, okay, cool. We know these areas historically have fires with these seasons. Can we do some like predictive analytics around it to see if we could tie this with other preventative, programs that the Red Cross has. So I think that's been really cool, kind of helping contribute to just the basic tools that volunteers need, and then using those basic tools to then say, okay. Now, can we actually start collecting data points that we weren't able to before to have more intelligent decisions, and how we we do non profit administration and campaign creation. So I think that's been a super cool thing. Something else that I've been really excited about with with coding in general, so we did do a in Chicago, we did do a shy ladies hack. So not that hackathons are always the best format. Again, there's kind of the it'll run it it again kinda flex out the idea that there's people who being able to commit a a a whole weekend or a whole day takes a lot of time. So if you're, for example, a mother or a primary caregiver, that can be difficult. But I'm happy to say that with that hackathon, it was 1 day, we we picked we picked projects that impacted, had a had a civic edge, broadly speaking, something that was targeting, women's issues.
And we offer childcare. So I think from the organizing perspective, thinking about, well, what's identity? You know, I as a woman, what do I need if I'm gonna be able to participate? Because some of the things that I think are easy to overlook are things like offering childcare or offering a place, you know, if you're breastfeeding like a like a pumping room. Things like that. So I'm a huge lover of open source and I think it's really cool that I can go, like, I can go find a tool and I'm like, that looks awesome and I wanna contribute. So I think for me, those kind of projects are super neat. I recently came across a project that is a joint project of 2 grad students at Harvard, they're politic they're poli size students and they're trying to think about, the erasure of the erasure of tradition and oral, like of oral traditions. Right? And thinking about what does it mean to document, what does it mean to document tradition, to document, culture? How can we maybe make a tool that allows us to, like, collect these kind of things and centralize it and and think about the idea of a museum, but kind of in a digital way. So they're trying to kinda play with us a little bit and think about what that may mean. And again, I kinda stumbled across it on idealist.org, which is a place for, for nonprofits. If you know, they have internships, they have random coding things that you wanna do. So I don't know, I think it's, I think that the coolest thing about now pivoting full time into coding is, you know, if I wanna ask a question there's probably people out there working on it or if I wanna learn about something there is probably a group of people who are doing something really awesome around it. And I can do something like just work on a small subset of the of the broader issue but but really in the collect the collective power of of open source can really change the way that we navigate. We navigate our communities the ways we help 1 another.
So for me, it's that's always been the most rewarding stuff.
[00:30:24] Unknown:
And I know that when you were making your transition into doing full time software development, you intended a boot camp to Mhmm. Sort of upskill and learn some of the fundamental technologies, things like that. And I'm wondering if you think that the boot camp did a good job of preparing you for a position in the industry. And, you know, if you were in the same position, would you do it again? Or are there any other approaches that you would have rather taken? Yeah. Yeah. That's that is a really good question.
[00:30:49] Unknown:
So I'm always I I'm actually sought out a lot on this because I think a lot of people, you know, at least when I did my when I did my immersion program, it we have a there was there's many more options now. So there was only really 1 option in Chicago at the time. And I had gone to grad school, so I have a masters, and in my masters program I had a fellowship. So I was fortunate in that context, and I did take I took a lot of programming classes, and actually what I was working on, what I was working in was R, and I found R to be a little a little steep for me because while I do have a background in stats, I'm not a statistician. So I found that to be a little jarring for me. So, the desire to wanna go to a coding program was because I spent a lot of time thinking about if this was gonna be the life for me, if coding was something I wanna do. So I always say, coding programs are only as good as you make them. I think it's completely contingent on the individual.
And clearly, there's programs out there that you've gotta be weary of. I think just like with anything, it's like, oh, you know, the idea of like with Oprah giving a car, you win a car, you win a car. I don't think it exactly works like that. But I do think that, I do think that for people who are serious about their learning really are able to cry, you know, I always explain coding programs or at least the ones that have good reputations. I always explain them as going up the wall through the wall, up the wall through the wall, and then when you finish your very exhausting program, you've gained some knowledge. But it's it's a lifelong it's a lifelong learning process. And I think that's the truth of tech in general that, you know, just because someone finishes a 4 year degree doesn't mean that they never have to learn another language or another skill set.
They've gotta keep that going. The difference I I think of this as, you know, clearly a computer science degree is going to, you know, that that that first job, the expectations of what that person can do for that for that first software engineering job, your output is gonna be very different than someone who comes out of a out of a coding program. So I think that I think that coding programs are beneficial for folks who've got the correct mentality and the correct expectations of what they can get from it. And I think with the with the proper understanding of knowing that this gives you practical knowledge and it's going to be a very generally these tend to be very very specific. So you can find ones that are full stack. You can find ones that just do front end, back end. You know, there's some that do like more data stuff. You know, you you kinda name it. There's probably a variation that that will speak to you. But I think if you go into it knowing what it is you wanna do with code, what kind of career you you would like to you would like to pursue, as long as those goals align and that and that you've actually met people who've gone through the program, they have, you know, they speak well about the program, you can actually trust that they've that they are saying the truth, then I think yes, a a coding program can give you a an accelerated an accelerated introduction in a way that you might not otherwise have. On the other hand though, I do know people who are completely self taught with coding.
So you know, I think it it all has continued on the person. And also coding programs, some of them are free. So you've got like the Adins 2 in, which is free and it's like a 6 month up to a year. Actually, it might be a year. I can't remember off the top of my head, but they pair you like with an organization. And then there's some that are a lot more money. So I again, you know, I think that just like with anything, think of it as an investment, and if you don't look at it as an investment yourself, then I don't know if that you should be thinking about an immersion program. So, I always I always give it that kind of discussion and I think people are aware of that. But may at times, I think people are like, You know, maybe I didn't think about it like that before. So do it if you think it's a if you think that you will.
If you know what you wanna do and you think that that format works for you.
[00:34:35] Unknown:
And as somebody who spends a lot of your time teaching other people how to program, whether it's just for solving, you know, day to day issues or also people who are interested in doing it as a career. I'm wondering what your view is on the idea that software development is the modern day form of basic literacy and whether you think that everybody should learn how to program.
[00:34:55] Unknown:
Oh, goodness. I you know, I think I've already I think I've already made the punch and I'm serving it to other folks where I believe it is to do literacy. Just because I think so, Isaac Walt, Isaac Walterson who actually wrote Steve Jobs autobiography, he has a book out called, it's like oh, goodness. The name is kinda quirky. It's something like Geeks the Digi Geeks Freaks the Digital Revolution, something to that effect. But he he tells us beautiful story about it's kinda like the not stem steam kind of thing where it's like when we think about the the personal computer and what it is, it it really it really is an outlet for human creativity and is a tool that's meant to amplify our creative process.
And I think that's really kind of an interesting way to look at it. So for me, if, if I think of the personal computer in that way and how it has inspired a renaissance, so to speak, in the ways that we communicate, I mean, look at Netflix. Like how that's, you know, Netflix and chill, that whole thing. You know, that that has completely changed and disrupted traditional, traditional spaces like, you know, how we how we consume media, what that looks like. If you look at if you look at the Obama for America, our expectations of how political campaigns work. If you look at, you know, if you look at the these kind of big game changer like Amazon. I'm, you know, Amazon Prime and like how we even get our groceries delivered to us or like Insta I think that really code is going to be something maybe I think code might change over time. It might not be where we're so heavily involved in, like, you know, do this, do that, do this. As we build more tools and we add more abstractions, how much knowledge you need to have, can be less depending on what you wanna do with Code, but I do think having that having the capacity to think about what does it mean to to create a task and be able to like do it. That that process of of taking something large and bringing it down to smaller units that then can be repurposed and you can make these super important because I see it super important because I see it growing in so many spaces.
And really, when I think of the kind of people who who can benefit from from from moving their career from, you know, maybe that maybe they're working in office administration, but then they take it they're taking a career in coding that, you know, I I think about folks who aren't represented in tech and then they get that coding skill set. It's also incredibly powerful what kind of economic emancipation and security you can get with it. It really is, you know, it's in high demand. We don't have a lot of folks who or there are folks who understand it, but I think there's folks who still think it's you gotta wear the white trench coat and work in a basement and not see the damn light. And that's not true. Right? I mean, coding can mean can mean so much. It can mean very different things depending on what you're doing. But I do think coding teaches us really cool ways of how we see the world, and teaches us fundamental problem, problem solving skills. So I would advocate that yes, it is the way of the future.
How we write code is definitely gonna change And how that code is going to impact us will change. But you know, but I I'm not gonna make any predictions on that except to say that I've already seen how how moving from someone who kind of touched code a little bit to doing code quite a lot, how it's immediately had immediate impacts on my life. So, yeah, I definitely do think it's the new literacy.
[00:38:10] Unknown:
So are there any other topics that you think we should cover or any other questions that I didn't ask you think I should have? No. I think this is a good range. I'm I'm more than happy with what we chatted about. So for anybody who wants to keep up to date with what you're doing and get in touch, what would be the best way for them to do that? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm on Twitter, and,
[00:38:29] Unknown:
don't be shocked if you tweet me. And so I'm in Chicago as I said. If you tweet me at like I might tweet you back really fast. I guess is what I'm trying to say. I'm pretty active on there. So I have a very silly GitHub handle, which is Lorena Nicole with a bunch of o's. And for those of you who do not personally know me, I like soccer, and I like watching it in Spanish. So you ever hear like, goal? It's like goal. You can just think of that when you think of my Twitter handle. So it's lorena nicole, l 0 0 0 0 r e n a n I c o l e. I'm more than happy to answer any questions that you send my way.
[00:39:05] Unknown:
And so with that, I'll take us into the picks. For my pick today, I'm just gonna pick the service called Zencastr, which is something that I've been using for recording the podcasts lately. I've been experimenting with it. And so far, it's been pretty nice to use. Simplifies a lot of the logistics of
[00:39:22] Unknown:
recording direct audio. Whereas, you know, normally, you would maybe record a Skype conversation and get 1 side of it. It's to just sort of makes things a little simpler and, keeps everything unified. So I've been enjoying that. And, with that, I will pass it to you. What do you have for picks for us today? Cool. So I feel like I don't do enough reading that isn't technical by nature. So I'm gonna pick 2 reads. 1 that is technical by nature because I can't help myself and another that isn't. So the the technical read, and I just got the book. So I haven't actually started reading it, but it it from folks who've reviewed it, it's supposed to be awesome. It's Cathy O'Neil's Weapons of Math Destruction, How Big Data Increases in Inequality and Threatens Democracy.
For anyone who knows about the meetup group, Papers We Love, they have their first conference as a precomp at Strange Loop and 1 of the speakers spoke about kind of like the abuse of algorithms and how our algorithms have a real social impact, and we've got to start thinking about that. So that's how I actually came across Cathy O'Neil's book. It's kinda talking about the ethics of like what does big data mean and what we do with it. And then for my nontechnical read, I'm an avid runner. I'm doing my 10th Chicago marathon this Sunday. I would highly encourage anyone who wants to run or who's intrigued by folks who are weird and like to run that much, check out What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.
It's a memoir by a Japanese author and it's his discussion about you know, how he kinda got into running and how the reflection of kind of like life and what life is to him and and how running is kind of a metaphor for it. It's pretty short. It's like a 100 pages. His name, his last name is Murakami. He writes also amazing fantastical
[00:41:07] Unknown:
destruction, another person who speaks out about sort of the broader impact that algorithms and software development can have on people's day to day lives that are often overlooked by the people writing the software is, Carina c Zona, 1 of her talks that she's given is She's a very awesome speaker. Schemas for the real world. Oh, that's a great name. Yeah. Definitely a great talk. She's also appeared on the Ruby Rogues podcast a couple of times, including 1 episode recently. So definitely worth checking out some of her work as well. I've definitely seen her speak before, so I encourage y'all to check that 1 out. And I am going to check that 1 out too. Great. Well, I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to join me and talk to me about some of the work that you've done and your experience moving into the coding space and helping other people bridge that gap. So I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening. Thanks. Have a good 1.
Hello, and welcome to podcast.init,
[00:00:16] Unknown:
the podcast about Python and the people who make it great. I would like to thank everyone who has donated to the show. Your contributions help us make the show sustainable. Linode is sponsoring us this week. Check them out at linode.com/podcastinit and get a $20 credit to try out their fast and reliable Linux virtual servers for your next project. We are also sponsored by Rollbar. Rollbar is a service for tracking and aggregating your application errors so that you can find and fix the bugs in your application before your users notice they exist. Use the link rollbar.com/podcastinit to get 90 days 300,000 errors tracked for free on their Bootstrap plan. You can also visit our site at pythonpodcastdot com to subscribe to our show, sign up for our newsletter, read the show notes, and get in touch. And to help other people find the show, you can leave a review on iTunes or Google Play Music and tell your friends and coworkers. You can also join our community at discourse.pythonpodcast.com to find out about upcoming guests, suggest questions, and propose show ideas.
You host as usual is Tobias Macy. And today, I'm interviewing Lorena Mesa about what inspires her and her work as a software engineer and data analyst.
[00:01:14] Unknown:
So Lorena, could you please introduce yourself? Yeah. My name's Lorena Mesa, and I'm hailing from Chicago. So I think the best part of how I like to introduce myself a little bit is I like to preface by saying I am a career changer and Python is actually a huge reason why I moved from in the space I was in before, which is social science applied research, into actually working day to day as a software engineer. So very excited to be here.
[00:01:41] Unknown:
And how did you first get introduced to Python? Yeah. So my journey with Python,
[00:01:46] Unknown:
so let's see. I had worked at the Obama for America campaign in the first and the second 1, and as I was an undergrad student when the first 1 began, a lot of that for me at the time, was very exciting because I think that campaign really started to open my eyes about how we could use data in ways that I previously hadn't really understood. So for me as a undergrad studying political science, a lot of, like, the work that I would be doing when it came to kinda data collection was a little bit more manual, massaging, working with Excel, nothing nothing as exciting as that. But on the campaign, specifically, I worked on voter outreach in the Latino vote section. We did a lot of work with Python and actually cleaning up data sets to think about voting, voter outreach, voter messaging, and things like that to try to track our data points and better understand how we can have informed message and reach the population that we want to reach. So, yeah, the the Obama campaign was actually my first introduction to Python.
[00:02:39] Unknown:
Yeah. It's always great when you have a practical use for learning some sort of programming language, especially something that can be used so effectively for scripting like Python because it sort of helps you bridge the gap between something that you know and you're familiar with to the unknown because it sort of anchors it together, and then it gives you a launching off point to dig deeper if it's something that interests you.
[00:03:00] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. I think what was kind of interesting, particularly when I was an undergrad at that time, you know, you you see now or rather there's a lot of discussion around, so, like, at University of Chicago, you have Raya Gandhi, who's done the good data for social, for social good at the University of Chicago. So you do see a lot more of this kind of intersectionality of how can technology answer civic minded questions. So I think a lot of these efforts actually came out of this space of the Obama campaign really thinking from a quantitative perspective, what does it mean to have a data driven solution for social need? Why? You know, fill in the blank and you can do it. So I think what was really interesting at that time for me was really starting to think about, well, what does it mean for me to be someone who cares about these social issues and and use code, or use tools that involve code to help me to help me build a tool or to do a thing.
So today, we do have more intersectionality and more undergrad programs that I think has a good balance of offering programming alongside skill sets or programs that are in the kind of social science research space. But at that time it was pretty new and for me, it's it felt really out of, at least it felt out of my element, but it was really exciting to try.
[00:04:08] Unknown:
Yeah. And I think things like the Code for America campaign has also helped sort of bring together a lot of that civic duty and civic responsibility along with the capabilities that software development brings to the table and how it can really be a force multiplier for causes like that?
[00:04:25] Unknown:
Yeah. Definitely. The code for America chapter here is pretty strong, and it's, still maintained in and has a offshoot, which every week there is a weekly meeting for Shy Hack Night, which is run by some of the, folks who brought Code for America and the Code for America Brigade here in Chicago. So I think really Chicago has been in some context at the forefront of thinking about the intersectionality of what code can do in the civic space. So I was always really interested in that, and that really is what whetted my appetite for wanting to go deeper into it.
[00:04:53] Unknown:
And I know that when I was looking at some of your background, I mentioned that you were originally studying political science. And I know that that factors strongly into, you know, your work with the Obama campaign and how that first got you introduced to Python. But I'm wondering what sort of motivating factor that plays now that you're working more in industry and sort of how that ties into your work both in your professional career as well as a lot of the volunteering work that you do. Yeah. Yeah. So it's pretty I work at a company called Sprat Social in Chicago, which is like a business to business social media management and analytics tool. So actually the kinda data collection stuff and thinking about social and how could I use code to kinda lift up some of that actually kinda came from that skill set that I built,
[00:05:33] Unknown:
during my my time at Obama for America. So ironically, it kind of fed into what I do day to day at my current position. And I also do work as a data engineer supporting our data our data science team. So I think the kind of cool thing there is we, when our team is prototyping models, it does try to think about the space of social. And it still does have that lens of, you know, what it's not so much that we're saying, oh, hey. Let's, like, write a sorting algorithm, like, list content, but a little bit more about how can we have authentic engagement with with social content in in your unified stream, kind of like a Gmail for social media, if you will, in our products. So I think it's, you know, in in the context that it's still like human facing problems, I think that's still there. So my day to day, that that historical kind of backdrop of trying to think about, well, how can I ask the proper questions and use the data to tell that story? I think that's always been there and has and actually has been very good training for me in my in my professional space, but also then the the kind of community outreach component. I'm very passionate about women in tech and underrepresented folks in tech. And so I think outside of work, there's a lot of people who have those values as well. And the Python community has been incredibly, incredibly proactive on thinking about these ideas, thinking about how can we get more more folks who are underrepresented, you know, minorities, people of color, women, and that has always been something that I is very near and dear to my heart. I'm 1st generation college. I'm a career changer.
I identify as Latina. I I am a woman in tech. So I think that there's that capacity also in the broader community as well, and Python's really been at the forefront of that.
[00:07:06] Unknown:
Yeah. There's definitely been a lot of focus and attention paid to sort of trying to be inclusive of minorities and women and, you know, also trying to get people interested young. So bringing children into the workshops that a lot of people put on that generally use Python. And so aside from the work that you're doing professionally, I know that you also have helped found some groups in the Chicago area to to teach programming to people who aren't generally classified as the norm for what you would think as a software engineer. So I'm wondering if you can dig a bit into how you got involved in that, what your experience has been like getting some of those organizations put together, and sort of what your strategies have been to raise awareness and try and grow that community.
[00:07:49] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. So interestingly, when I was kind of at that I was kind of at that tipping point of of saying, you know, hey, what do I really wanna do? I like code. Is this a good career for me to pursue working as a software engineer day in, day out? Actually the first product I worked on in Chicago came out of a civic minded hackathon, this being, oh my gosh, over 3 years ago. Dates allude me, but it was a it was a hackathon that was that was focused on building disaster response, disaster response tools specifically for the lacrosse. And what was really exciting about some of that was, again, it really brought me back to this to the reality that there's a lot of people doing really cool things. And there's a need for someone who can communicate and educate and who wants to teach. To help get folks who may be, in the nonprofit space to help them understand how they can ask questions to surface insights in their data, help help them recognize where the holes are in their data. So my entrance into this, in working with that project and the Red Cross, which I've still done work with them intermittently over the years, really did emphasize again that there is a place for people who are, you know, maybe newer to the field or who who've been doing it since they were 5.
So coming into that, 1 of the first groups that I helped found in Chicago when I realized I really wanted to to more than just like a 1 off, I'm working on a hackathon or or am in some capacity doing like a 1 off, like, commitment. What could I do that was more sustainable? So the pilot is chapter actually in Chicago was originally founded by me and some other folks of which, I'm the main organizer still who's working with them. And that was about almost about 2 years ago, which is and that's been pretty successful. Because I think that there are some women in tech groups in Chicago, but what what I have found to be a little lacking was trying to have a space for people who may not just be in web development, who may not just be people who have that traditional kind of computer science background, but instead offers a place for people who may be working in finance, people who may be, pursuing graduate degrees that require them to have some kind of, scripting tech some kind of scripting capacity and they're looking for other places where they can learn that. So I think Pyeladies has been really instrumental in helping create a space for people who have some of those skill sets who aren't kind of classified as the as the tech, even just within the idea of that, you know, their day to day job isn't per se code. So I think PyLadies has been really really exciting for me in that regard. And then from there, we've been also able to do some bigger group organizing, 1 of the fun projects in Chicago that has kind of been born of the women in tech space. We have now a we've now kind of created a governed code of, a a a meta slack, if you will, for Chicago Tech Diversity Initiative is kind of what we're calling it. But it's at least 1 Slack community that is governed by a code of conduct and is meant to be a safe space for all these organizations in Chicago that really do care about diversity and really do care about promoting a safe space for people to talk. So, you know, some of these efforts are more consistent. So pilot use gives us that, gives me the umbrella to do that. And through that, I've been able to do more teaching with youth. Every year, piloties, we like to do an hour of code with the local high schools here. I've been doing some work with Chick Tech, which is a pretty exciting organization that's based on the West Coast. They just brought a chapter here in Chicago.
Essentially, it's a year long mentorship mentorship program for high school aged women, where this last cohort, I believe, was around 20. But, ideally, they wanna bring it up to a 100 and ideas a year long kind of exposure to stem, for folks who are, like, sophomore about sophomore, junior year, and high school who may not otherwise have been exposed to coding. So I think what's been really cool is, PyLadies at least created a space for people to have more of this kind of broad discussions about what's it mean to be a coder and how do I keep working on that skill set in a way that tapped into the already vibrant community of civic tech of Python in Chicago. We have a very awesome, lovely Python user group here, but then that has led to us doing more broad, coalition building, which I'm really excited about.
[00:11:46] Unknown:
Yeah. And 1 of the things too that can be a difficult perception to overcome time. It can be useful in so many different arenas outside of actually being a full time software engineer, whether it's just task automation of, you know, maybe automatically pulling and calculating some data out of an Excel sheet or automatically, you know, retrieving data from a website that would be tedious to do by hand. Precisely. Yeah. I know that, some of the stuff that you do with PyLadies is just sort of introductory coding. And so I'm curious if that's seen a lot of, uptake from people who don't necessarily identify as software engineers or even want to identify as software engineers but have been able to come away with useful skills that have that have allowed them to make their daily lives easier. Yeah. I think that's a that's a great question. Thanks for asking it. And I I I would say yes. So 1 of the areas that we're really trying to
[00:12:42] Unknown:
have more content be delivered is in the space for kinda like the date. I don't wanna say it's per se exactly data science with a capital d and a capital s, but for folks who are trying to understand better what what the bubble of data science is and the and the bubble of data engineering. Because these are folks who may be researchers in, we have we've we've had a few people who are actually grad students in, you know, be it an astrophysics program or an astronomy program who are coming and they're like, I need to better know how to use Python because I have these libraries and these tools but I don't really I never really did that in my undergrad classes. So I think that's really exciting. Personally, I I geek out about I geek out about the stars. I think that's really nifty. But yeah. I mean we've seen people like that come through come through some of our events. We've also seen people who are like in the actuarial sciences who are kind of pivoting and they might have that strong stats background, but wanna pivot into making that transition of being a data scientist and they're looking for those spaces that can give them some exposure to you know like what are classification algorithms, what does that actually mean when you're applying it in the field, and why is Python the language that I should be learning. So we just had a speaker who did a, did a talk, actually that was last week, for PyLadies. I was talking about, you know, classification. It's not classification algorithms. It's not magic with, like, the with the 1 sentence cut well, I shouldn't say the 1 sentence takeaway, but to an effect of a 1 sentence takeaway. Is that it's kind of like drawing a line through and depending on how you draw that line, you have different questions and different algorithms you can apply, which I thought was very insightful. It kind these are folks who who do have a lot of exposure to the statistical kind of components, but they're like, okay. Well, what does that actually mean about? Do I have to know everything? Or how do I how do I start thinking about finding projects to do in this transition? So we're kind of trying to do, balanced classes that allow people to do a little a little deep a little a little exploration be it like in a Jupyter Python notebook with a like the Iris data, the Iris data set or something from from another data science competition website alongside having speakers who kind of talk and diversify a little bit what what it is they do with Python in the data engineering, data science space. So I think that's been, like, 1 really cool thing because I don't know if I've seen that as much, or rather maybe in, in some of the other women tech spaces. I don't know if I've seen that conversation as much. I'm sure it's out there. It's just I know that's something that I see a lot with the pilot news chapter in Chicago.
[00:15:02] Unknown:
And in addition to your full time job and all of the work that you do with these other organizations, you've also decided to take on the role of a board member for the PSF. So I'm wondering what your experience has been like so far with that, and, what are some of your goals, while you're in that position? Yeah.
[00:15:21] Unknown:
Yeah. I, I laugh a little because I think the the first thing that took me I knew it was gonna be a lot of email because I had reached out to some folks I knew who had been on the board or or at that time were on the board. And I knew it was gonna be a lot of email, but the I I I just wanna say that I have so much respect for the folks who've been doing this for a few years because it really is a lot of email. You have people from, you know, we have some board members in India. We have a board member in South Korea. We have a board member in England. And so that conversation is kind of always going. So I have a lot of respect for the PSF in in being very proactive with with that dialogue and the PSF having a very lean but super awesome board, super awesome staff. So I think for me, like, the first thing was, wow, there's a lot of email. How do I keep up with it all?
So that was a little bit of an adjustment. But once I started kinda getting my footing underneath and folks like Carol Willing have been super great and, you know, there's been a big push to try to, you know, I said this word about demystifying data science. I think that's also applicable to the Python Software Foundation where you you there's some people who are aware of what it does. But I think there's also a lot of people who are like, I know it's a thing. So I think 1 of the big push, 1 of the big pushes I understood of the board or at last at least last year's last year's board mem board from 2015, 2016 was to try to start really being more transparent about what the board does and how we can support the community. And 1 way I've really been trying to think about that is through through the blog. What does it mean to actually communicate and and have content that people can read and it's applicable to them, such that they realize they can get money for grants, and do that first workshop that they wanna do, or do that cool youth programming thing they wanna do for kids. So, I mean, that's a huge a huge perk of the PSF is you can write in and get a grant. You should do it if you haven't. And if you have more questions, I'm I encourage everyone to tweet me. I'm more than happy to answer questions. But, yeah, so 1 of the things I've been working on, I'm 1 of the 2 communications people, the other being Kushal who's in India. So where I've kind of been focusing on is trying to get more folks who are from different, regional spaces, and from different identities so that we can have a broader discussion about what Python means in those in those areas. And so far, we've invited 2 folks who's who are joining the staff. 1 is a woman from the Pacific Northwest who's also a piloting. That makes me very exciting, but she's she uses Python in the GIS space, which is pretty cool. And then we have another woman who's joining us from India who's, the I believe the main organizer of the PyLadies chapter in her local area. So I'm really excited that we're we're gonna be trying to think more about what does it mean to broaden the message of what it what Python means to people around the world and hopefully the blog can be a space to do that. And in tandem, we're trying, the PyLadies kind of, the first PyLadies conference is gonna happen next year, and I'm excited to say that it's gonna be in India next year. And so, my fellow Python Software Foundation director, Anupam Rima, is going to be putting that together in India. So I'm hoping that we can also kinda join efforts, the Pyles blog, and the PSF blog to kinda start thinking about some of this, you know, think more about not just Python in the United States or in Canada or in West Europe, but what does Python mean in other places in the world. So that to me is what I would like to focus a bit on, and we'll see how it goes.
[00:18:45] Unknown:
Yeah. And talking a bit more about Python in the global context, it's always been used around the world, but the visibility of that seems to have been increasing lately with a lot more regional PyCon Conferences. Like, I know that there has been, PyCon Caribbean down in Puerto Rico. You know, there's obviously PyCon US. I spoke a little spoke recently with the organizers for PyCon Canada who have been running that for a few years. I'm actually hoping to make it up this year. You know, there's PyCon Russia. There's, Europicon, PyCon New Zealand.
[00:19:17] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. I've I I'm pretty excited. I'm going to be participating in the 1st picon Jamaica, which happens the 17th 18th. And the I think that's very close to the picon Canada because I was thinking about that and then I saw Jamaica and I was like, I want to explore beautiful Jamaica. But that's really exciting. Right? So I'm actually in touch with the folks who are running, PyCaribbean. So Leonardo, who I've who's been the main person I've been chatting with, is just so full of ideas and so excited. And and that's actually another another thing with the Python Software Foundation that we're working on is trying to, at least we're trying to to define a format for creating an open source PyCon Organizers Manual. So while this is starting with folks from the PSF board, we are trying to define a format that ideally we're hoping that we can connect and have regional specific information.
And with the, obviously, with the consent of someone making a poll request because we think we wanna do this as a Git book. I hopefully have people make contributions to say, hey. I I led this event, and this is the the last date I did it, so contact me if you have questions. So 1 big 1 big takeaway with that beyond it just being like, I wanna do my first PyCon event or Python themed conference, is really trying to again empower back the regional space. As you mentioned with EuroPython, they've got the working group there in Europe. And and then the EuroPython Society is just, you know, I I think a great way in which you can bring the power back to the local space because they understand the nuances of how people are using Python in their area. What what Python needs are being addressed and are not being addressed. And I think that's kind of also what the the PSF is trying to do is try to make sure that we're promoting those regional spaces to think more about, to have that more micro lens such that we can facilitate a broader discussion between regions. So that that is another thing. Also, if anyone is interested in contributing to the PyCon Organizers Manual, I'm also super excited to talk to you because anytime I know I go and I search for things, so I'm bilingual, I speak Spanish, I stumbled across a beautiful a beautiful git repository of someone and I think it was I think it was scipython latinamerica.
And someone has started putting together a list of active Python groups in Central and South America. And a lot of these and some of these being countries that I actually hadn't seen, I hadn't seen these pipeline groups pop up before. So I feel like there's a lot of people who are doing these small little efforts, which really, it's it's so much about it is, you know, I if you wanna start a thing, instead of reinventing the wheel, how do we empower 1 another? Let's centralize that information. I'm hoping that I think the hope is with those of us who are working on the onetenth time revision of a PyCon Organizers Manual, because I know that there's some folks who've done things like this in the past. We're hoping to at least bring that all together, make it a 1 stop shop, and ideally really channel the power of open source to get folks to come here to get info and to share cool things happening in the original space.
[00:22:17] Unknown:
Speaking about sort of creating somewhat of a franchise of PyCon and sort of unifying the organization of it in terms of the resources available for people who want to get engaged. You might also look to the DevOps Days organization because I know that they've been pretty successful in having a sort of unified branding that different locations are able to take advantage of and build their own local conferences under that same umbrella but really still make advertising perhaps locally, but it can be a little harder to get the word out. Whereas if you have that umbrella that you can, you know, go to a single landing page and see all the different places that something's happening, it makes it a little bit easier for to bring in people who aren't quite as local to maybe, you know, grow your local community or, you know, grow your networks beyond the bounds of your town, things like that. Yeah. I I actually laugh that you say that because in Chicago this past,
[00:23:13] Unknown:
wow, this past June already, there's an organization called the Bright Speak, Code, which they have, like, they have meet up chapters throughout the United States, but they also do a conference for women who identify as coders. And they, with the conference being in Chicago because it had been twice in New York before, but first time in Chicago, We, I was an organizer for that conference and the folks that we turned to to kind of have some of this discourse were the local people running Chicago DevOps DevOps days. So I love that you say that because I I can speak to the awesomeness of what they do. And I think I also like Django Girls. Django Girls, I did, pilot of Chicago, did the did 1 version of that last year and we're gonna be doing it again in December. But they really do have that. They they have a very clean introduction to here's here's the splash page, here's where everything's happening, here's what you need, boom, go. And sadly, I don't think we're quite there yet with, with the PyCons.
Granted, PyCons can be incredibly, incredibly large in a way that maybe Django Girls workshops are not since that's a 1 day thing and then you're done. So but but I think that you definitely hit the nail on the head. DevOps is and Django Girls have done a really good job in crafting their message and making it very accessible.
[00:24:23] Unknown:
And going back to sort of your transition from, sort of political science and political and civic engagement and transitioning to software. I'm wondering, I guess, what's been the most rewarding aspect of making that career transition and wondering if you can highlight some of the most interesting projects that you've worked on whether it's professionally or just for fun as a side project.
[00:24:46] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. So actually, 1 of the things I've been super happy to say that I've been able to see for over time has actually been the Red Cross with their so the Red Cross, I don't know if you know much about the way that they run, but they are all volunteer. Like very, very heavy on volunteers. And you get volunteers from young folk in high school doing stuff to folks who are retired who are very committed to the cause at hand. And they do things that they offer services that primary responders do not. So in Chicago, the big the biggest thing that you see is there's a lot of fires. So they go there and they offer things like, oh, like, you know, your entire home burned down. So we're gonna give you we're gonna give you shelter for a few evenings. We're gonna make sure you have food. You know? You have kids with you? Hey. Take a teddy bear. So they offer that supplement and then also like, you know, maybe maybe something kinda scary happened so you need some, maybe you need some counseling. So they offer those kinds of things for fires, for people who have had their home burned down, and and that's what's most prominent in Chicago. But it's really impressive when you see how the organization has done everything. It's all different kinds of Excel worksheets with, you know, this person doing their their macros like this. This other person has a custom a custom color code thing, and you've got 10 people doing that, and then you have the dispatchers who are calling all the volunteers being like, hey, you're on, you're on the calendar tonight. Can you go out there and go and do the assessment? So the Red Cross has been has great dedicated volunteers, but everything is, at least up to a few years ago, a lot of the processes were manual, were redundant, and very, very manual.
Manual, a lot of manual labor. So I think what's been kind of cool in terms of projects is being able to see how open source tools, just, you know, a few folks come in and doing some development has allowed them to better streamline their processes. And it really has started asking questions about volunteer engagement. Once we make how how has open source made volunteer engagement better for organizations like like Direct Cross? So what actually I helped, what I helped work on was kind of bringing like a scheduling tool and that might not seem as so rewarding or so, you know, just diff that might seem simple to to someone who's a coder. It's a go. I I can I can automate my life with scheduling software? But but creating that and creating it where they didn't have to spend a crazy budget on on some kind of proprietary enterprise software that doesn't fit their needs, but instead is custom created to what they need, and can can integrate with other murky, kinda quirky, legacy software has been a huge win for them. And what's really cool now is the idea is we wanna try to do intelligent scheduling and say, okay, cool. We know these areas historically have fires with these seasons. Can we do some like predictive analytics around it to see if we could tie this with other preventative, programs that the Red Cross has. So I think that's been really cool, kind of helping contribute to just the basic tools that volunteers need, and then using those basic tools to then say, okay. Now, can we actually start collecting data points that we weren't able to before to have more intelligent decisions, and how we we do non profit administration and campaign creation. So I think that's been a super cool thing. Something else that I've been really excited about with with coding in general, so we did do a in Chicago, we did do a shy ladies hack. So not that hackathons are always the best format. Again, there's kind of the it'll run it it again kinda flex out the idea that there's people who being able to commit a a a whole weekend or a whole day takes a lot of time. So if you're, for example, a mother or a primary caregiver, that can be difficult. But I'm happy to say that with that hackathon, it was 1 day, we we picked we picked projects that impacted, had a had a civic edge, broadly speaking, something that was targeting, women's issues.
And we offer childcare. So I think from the organizing perspective, thinking about, well, what's identity? You know, I as a woman, what do I need if I'm gonna be able to participate? Because some of the things that I think are easy to overlook are things like offering childcare or offering a place, you know, if you're breastfeeding like a like a pumping room. Things like that. So I'm a huge lover of open source and I think it's really cool that I can go, like, I can go find a tool and I'm like, that looks awesome and I wanna contribute. So I think for me, those kind of projects are super neat. I recently came across a project that is a joint project of 2 grad students at Harvard, they're politic they're poli size students and they're trying to think about, the erasure of the erasure of tradition and oral, like of oral traditions. Right? And thinking about what does it mean to document, what does it mean to document tradition, to document, culture? How can we maybe make a tool that allows us to, like, collect these kind of things and centralize it and and think about the idea of a museum, but kind of in a digital way. So they're trying to kinda play with us a little bit and think about what that may mean. And again, I kinda stumbled across it on idealist.org, which is a place for, for nonprofits. If you know, they have internships, they have random coding things that you wanna do. So I don't know, I think it's, I think that the coolest thing about now pivoting full time into coding is, you know, if I wanna ask a question there's probably people out there working on it or if I wanna learn about something there is probably a group of people who are doing something really awesome around it. And I can do something like just work on a small subset of the of the broader issue but but really in the collect the collective power of of open source can really change the way that we navigate. We navigate our communities the ways we help 1 another.
So for me, it's that's always been the most rewarding stuff.
[00:30:24] Unknown:
And I know that when you were making your transition into doing full time software development, you intended a boot camp to Mhmm. Sort of upskill and learn some of the fundamental technologies, things like that. And I'm wondering if you think that the boot camp did a good job of preparing you for a position in the industry. And, you know, if you were in the same position, would you do it again? Or are there any other approaches that you would have rather taken? Yeah. Yeah. That's that is a really good question.
[00:30:49] Unknown:
So I'm always I I'm actually sought out a lot on this because I think a lot of people, you know, at least when I did my when I did my immersion program, it we have a there was there's many more options now. So there was only really 1 option in Chicago at the time. And I had gone to grad school, so I have a masters, and in my masters program I had a fellowship. So I was fortunate in that context, and I did take I took a lot of programming classes, and actually what I was working on, what I was working in was R, and I found R to be a little a little steep for me because while I do have a background in stats, I'm not a statistician. So I found that to be a little jarring for me. So, the desire to wanna go to a coding program was because I spent a lot of time thinking about if this was gonna be the life for me, if coding was something I wanna do. So I always say, coding programs are only as good as you make them. I think it's completely contingent on the individual.
And clearly, there's programs out there that you've gotta be weary of. I think just like with anything, it's like, oh, you know, the idea of like with Oprah giving a car, you win a car, you win a car. I don't think it exactly works like that. But I do think that, I do think that for people who are serious about their learning really are able to cry, you know, I always explain coding programs or at least the ones that have good reputations. I always explain them as going up the wall through the wall, up the wall through the wall, and then when you finish your very exhausting program, you've gained some knowledge. But it's it's a lifelong it's a lifelong learning process. And I think that's the truth of tech in general that, you know, just because someone finishes a 4 year degree doesn't mean that they never have to learn another language or another skill set.
They've gotta keep that going. The difference I I think of this as, you know, clearly a computer science degree is going to, you know, that that that first job, the expectations of what that person can do for that for that first software engineering job, your output is gonna be very different than someone who comes out of a out of a coding program. So I think that I think that coding programs are beneficial for folks who've got the correct mentality and the correct expectations of what they can get from it. And I think with the with the proper understanding of knowing that this gives you practical knowledge and it's going to be a very generally these tend to be very very specific. So you can find ones that are full stack. You can find ones that just do front end, back end. You know, there's some that do like more data stuff. You know, you you kinda name it. There's probably a variation that that will speak to you. But I think if you go into it knowing what it is you wanna do with code, what kind of career you you would like to you would like to pursue, as long as those goals align and that and that you've actually met people who've gone through the program, they have, you know, they speak well about the program, you can actually trust that they've that they are saying the truth, then I think yes, a a coding program can give you a an accelerated an accelerated introduction in a way that you might not otherwise have. On the other hand though, I do know people who are completely self taught with coding.
So you know, I think it it all has continued on the person. And also coding programs, some of them are free. So you've got like the Adins 2 in, which is free and it's like a 6 month up to a year. Actually, it might be a year. I can't remember off the top of my head, but they pair you like with an organization. And then there's some that are a lot more money. So I again, you know, I think that just like with anything, think of it as an investment, and if you don't look at it as an investment yourself, then I don't know if that you should be thinking about an immersion program. So, I always I always give it that kind of discussion and I think people are aware of that. But may at times, I think people are like, You know, maybe I didn't think about it like that before. So do it if you think it's a if you think that you will.
If you know what you wanna do and you think that that format works for you.
[00:34:35] Unknown:
And as somebody who spends a lot of your time teaching other people how to program, whether it's just for solving, you know, day to day issues or also people who are interested in doing it as a career. I'm wondering what your view is on the idea that software development is the modern day form of basic literacy and whether you think that everybody should learn how to program.
[00:34:55] Unknown:
Oh, goodness. I you know, I think I've already I think I've already made the punch and I'm serving it to other folks where I believe it is to do literacy. Just because I think so, Isaac Walt, Isaac Walterson who actually wrote Steve Jobs autobiography, he has a book out called, it's like oh, goodness. The name is kinda quirky. It's something like Geeks the Digi Geeks Freaks the Digital Revolution, something to that effect. But he he tells us beautiful story about it's kinda like the not stem steam kind of thing where it's like when we think about the the personal computer and what it is, it it really it really is an outlet for human creativity and is a tool that's meant to amplify our creative process.
And I think that's really kind of an interesting way to look at it. So for me, if, if I think of the personal computer in that way and how it has inspired a renaissance, so to speak, in the ways that we communicate, I mean, look at Netflix. Like how that's, you know, Netflix and chill, that whole thing. You know, that that has completely changed and disrupted traditional, traditional spaces like, you know, how we how we consume media, what that looks like. If you look at if you look at the Obama for America, our expectations of how political campaigns work. If you look at, you know, if you look at the these kind of big game changer like Amazon. I'm, you know, Amazon Prime and like how we even get our groceries delivered to us or like Insta I think that really code is going to be something maybe I think code might change over time. It might not be where we're so heavily involved in, like, you know, do this, do that, do this. As we build more tools and we add more abstractions, how much knowledge you need to have, can be less depending on what you wanna do with Code, but I do think having that having the capacity to think about what does it mean to to create a task and be able to like do it. That that process of of taking something large and bringing it down to smaller units that then can be repurposed and you can make these super important because I see it super important because I see it growing in so many spaces.
And really, when I think of the kind of people who who can benefit from from from moving their career from, you know, maybe that maybe they're working in office administration, but then they take it they're taking a career in coding that, you know, I I think about folks who aren't represented in tech and then they get that coding skill set. It's also incredibly powerful what kind of economic emancipation and security you can get with it. It really is, you know, it's in high demand. We don't have a lot of folks who or there are folks who understand it, but I think there's folks who still think it's you gotta wear the white trench coat and work in a basement and not see the damn light. And that's not true. Right? I mean, coding can mean can mean so much. It can mean very different things depending on what you're doing. But I do think coding teaches us really cool ways of how we see the world, and teaches us fundamental problem, problem solving skills. So I would advocate that yes, it is the way of the future.
How we write code is definitely gonna change And how that code is going to impact us will change. But you know, but I I'm not gonna make any predictions on that except to say that I've already seen how how moving from someone who kind of touched code a little bit to doing code quite a lot, how it's immediately had immediate impacts on my life. So, yeah, I definitely do think it's the new literacy.
[00:38:10] Unknown:
So are there any other topics that you think we should cover or any other questions that I didn't ask you think I should have? No. I think this is a good range. I'm I'm more than happy with what we chatted about. So for anybody who wants to keep up to date with what you're doing and get in touch, what would be the best way for them to do that? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm on Twitter, and,
[00:38:29] Unknown:
don't be shocked if you tweet me. And so I'm in Chicago as I said. If you tweet me at like I might tweet you back really fast. I guess is what I'm trying to say. I'm pretty active on there. So I have a very silly GitHub handle, which is Lorena Nicole with a bunch of o's. And for those of you who do not personally know me, I like soccer, and I like watching it in Spanish. So you ever hear like, goal? It's like goal. You can just think of that when you think of my Twitter handle. So it's lorena nicole, l 0 0 0 0 r e n a n I c o l e. I'm more than happy to answer any questions that you send my way.
[00:39:05] Unknown:
And so with that, I'll take us into the picks. For my pick today, I'm just gonna pick the service called Zencastr, which is something that I've been using for recording the podcasts lately. I've been experimenting with it. And so far, it's been pretty nice to use. Simplifies a lot of the logistics of
[00:39:22] Unknown:
recording direct audio. Whereas, you know, normally, you would maybe record a Skype conversation and get 1 side of it. It's to just sort of makes things a little simpler and, keeps everything unified. So I've been enjoying that. And, with that, I will pass it to you. What do you have for picks for us today? Cool. So I feel like I don't do enough reading that isn't technical by nature. So I'm gonna pick 2 reads. 1 that is technical by nature because I can't help myself and another that isn't. So the the technical read, and I just got the book. So I haven't actually started reading it, but it it from folks who've reviewed it, it's supposed to be awesome. It's Cathy O'Neil's Weapons of Math Destruction, How Big Data Increases in Inequality and Threatens Democracy.
For anyone who knows about the meetup group, Papers We Love, they have their first conference as a precomp at Strange Loop and 1 of the speakers spoke about kind of like the abuse of algorithms and how our algorithms have a real social impact, and we've got to start thinking about that. So that's how I actually came across Cathy O'Neil's book. It's kinda talking about the ethics of like what does big data mean and what we do with it. And then for my nontechnical read, I'm an avid runner. I'm doing my 10th Chicago marathon this Sunday. I would highly encourage anyone who wants to run or who's intrigued by folks who are weird and like to run that much, check out What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.
It's a memoir by a Japanese author and it's his discussion about you know, how he kinda got into running and how the reflection of kind of like life and what life is to him and and how running is kind of a metaphor for it. It's pretty short. It's like a 100 pages. His name, his last name is Murakami. He writes also amazing fantastical
[00:41:07] Unknown:
destruction, another person who speaks out about sort of the broader impact that algorithms and software development can have on people's day to day lives that are often overlooked by the people writing the software is, Carina c Zona, 1 of her talks that she's given is She's a very awesome speaker. Schemas for the real world. Oh, that's a great name. Yeah. Definitely a great talk. She's also appeared on the Ruby Rogues podcast a couple of times, including 1 episode recently. So definitely worth checking out some of her work as well. I've definitely seen her speak before, so I encourage y'all to check that 1 out. And I am going to check that 1 out too. Great. Well, I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to join me and talk to me about some of the work that you've done and your experience moving into the coding space and helping other people bridge that gap. So I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening. Thanks. Have a good 1.
Introduction and Sponsors
Interview with Lorena Mesa Begins
Lorena Mesa's Background and Career Change
Intersection of Technology and Civic Duty
Work at Sprout Social and Data Engineering
Community Outreach and Women in Tech
Role as a PSF Board Member
Global Python Community and Regional PyCons
Organizing and Empowering Local Tech Communities
Most Rewarding Projects and Civic Tech
Experience with Coding Bootcamps
Programming as Modern Literacy
Closing Remarks and Contact Information
