PyCon Pittsburgh. April 15-23, 2020.

Python Trainers Summit

Python Trainers Summit

The Python Trainers Summit is a new hatchery program for PyCon 2020! We will have a virtual format for this year on Thursday, April 23 from 1-4pm (Chicago time).

Hashtag

Please use the #pytrainerssummit for any social media.

About

As Python grows as a language, both in popularity and complexity, so too must training for existing users. While this area does fall under education, one-off short form training and professional development have unique needs, questions, and expertise. Being related to education, but not always identifying primarily as educators, many trainers are isolated from the broader community of expertise on teaching and learning. Many operate as independent freelancers, so they may lack a network of colleagues to connect with and learn from. This means that they are missing out on key discoveries and practices from the traditional education community, and the educator community is missing out on the expertise of teaching adult professional learners.

Who is a trainer?

For our purposes, a trainer is anyone who provides structured training and education around Python, or is interested in doing so. We are specifically planning to focus on training contexts outside of a formal classroom with summative assessment (e.g. grading) and toward degrees. This includes corporate trainers, bootcamp instructors, content creators, makerspace instructors, classroom educators, etc. This is meant to target and scope the conversation while including as many people as possible.

Connections

This summit seeks to forge connections within the trainers from all practices to formalize their community of practice and connect them with others working within education contexts. This summit will provide the space and platform for professional trainers to engage with the more formal education practices, and those educators to connect with the needs of corporate and professional development audiences.

Goals

Given that this is a pilot event, we want to see your creativity in your proposals! The most important goal is that this event is useful to the trainer community. Below are some ideas:

Preliminary Schedule

All in Central (Chicago) time!

Talk Descriptions and Speaker Bios

Reuven Lerner, The business of training: An introduction

As trainers, we want to help people learn. But training is a business, and success as a trainer requires knowing that business. In this talk, I’ll tell you about the business of training: Who makes decisions, pitching to and getting clients, pricing, and ensuring repeat business.

Trey Hunner, My teaching setup: the pros and cons

I will to briefly show off my slide-free live-coding teaching setup and explain how it works and why I prefer it, but why I don’t usually recommend it for others.

Moshe Zadka, Giving a Tutorial at a Python Conference: Unexpected Challenges

Tutorials at Python conferences are challenging. High cost, three hours, one shot: there is no time to get to know the students, to make sure their Python set ups are working, and calibrating the material is a shot in the dark. I will dig into all of these challenges in detail.

Karen Word & Kari Jordan, Adapting In Person Trainings to Online

In response to the COVID-19 precautions, The Carpentries has put out guidelines for adapting their in-person live coding workshops to synchronous online trainings. Their guidelines and development process will be reviewed.

Questions? Comments?

Feedback is always welcome! Elizabeth Wickes (she/her, wickes1@illinois.edu) proposed and is chairing this event.