Episode 11: with Sheena O'Connell

Episode 11: with Sheena O'Connell
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00:19 Hi
00:20 Hi everybody and welcome to our PyPodcats
00:23 series of Hidden Figures of Python
00:26 and today we have as a guest Sheena O'Connell
00:30 all the way from South Africa
00:32 PyPodcats in case anybody forgot
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00:37 and our aim is to highlight voices
00:39 from underrepresented groups
00:41 in the Python community
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01:01 when you interact with our material online
01:03 so today's hosts are Cheuk and me
01:07 so I'm uh Tereza
01:09 I live in Hamburg and I'm part of the PyLadies Hamburg
01:13 and I'm also data and the career coach
01:17 and data freelancer
01:18 hi I'm Cheuk and um
01:20 I am I love Python
01:22 ha ha ha ha
01:23 OK that's it
01:24 so uh
01:25 we have our guest Sheena here
01:26 so Sheena do you want to introduce yourself
01:28 I've been coding for a long time in Python
01:30 it is my love language um
01:33 and I got to spend about 5 years working in tech
01:36 education uh
01:37 in the non profit space in South Africa
01:39 and it was great and I learned a lot there
01:42 so now what I'm doing is I teach for a living and I try
01:46 try to get other educators um
01:49 connected and leveling up in
01:51 nice ways um
01:52 so I've got a company that does
01:54 advanced Django training and soft skills training
01:56 because that stuff is actually pretty hard um
01:59 and I have
02:01 I run a community called the Guild of Educators where
02:04 um anybody who teaches code
02:07 or wants to teach code can come and join and hang out
02:10 um we're starting a teacher's mentorship program
02:12 so if you wanna help a teacher level up
02:14 then you can join that or um
02:16 if you're a teacher who wants to get better at code
02:18 come and join that um
02:20 and then the last thing that I'm
02:22 involved with at the moment is PyCon Africa
02:24 so I'm currently the local chair of
02:27 of PyCon Africa
02:28 it's happening in my hometown in Johannesburg
02:31 South Africa and actually I
02:32 I do have a lot of question about Johannesburg
02:35 and PyCon Africa shall we start with PyCon Africa
02:38 and then we can also talk more about your work
02:42 sounds good
02:43 yeah so for PyCon Africa I
02:46 I wonder like
02:47 so for for folks who never heard of it
02:50 like is it always going to be in
02:54 you know
02:54 South Africa or is it going to be travelling around
02:58 and do you have an other organisation behind it
03:01 and how does it work good questions
03:04 it does travel around
03:05 so it's not always in the same country
03:06 um
03:07 this is the first time we're doing it in South Africa
03:10 it's the first time we're doing a major
03:11 like International Python conference in
03:13 southern Africa
03:14 so it's quite a I think it's gonna be quite impactful
03:17 but yes it travels around um
03:19 I'm not actually sure where we'll do it next year
03:21 PyCon Africa
03:22 is basically run by two separate organizations
03:25 there's the international committee um
03:27 and those are the folks who just like
03:29 stay with the conference wherever it goes
03:31 and then there's the local committee
03:32 so the people on the ground who know what's
03:36 what to organise the venue and
03:38 and all of that so our local committee um
03:41 generally organizes PyCon South Africa every year
03:44 and like it's quite an experienced team um
03:47 it's quite a small team but do good stuff um yeah
03:51 so that's how it works
03:52 so we're basically joining forces yeah
03:54 what do you expect to be different from like
03:56 let's say last year PyCon South Africa
03:59 alright so it's gonna be a bigger conference um
04:01 we are reaching further
04:03 we're getting a lot more international attention
04:05 and we've got some um
04:07 interesting people who are attending so for example
04:09 Dawn Wages is one of our key notes and she's the uh
04:13 president of the PSF and that's wonderful
04:16 and it's gonna be great to bring her here
04:18 so I I don't think we would be able to get as
04:20 like high profile people in a
04:22 for PyCon South Africa generally um
04:25 so that's one of the things
04:26 but the other thing is that
04:27 we're putting a lot more effort into giving
04:29 financial assistance to folks who otherwise would
04:31 not be able to come so
04:32 we're working
04:33 hard to try and bring people in from the surrounding
04:35 southern African countries
04:37 and folks from across Africa as well
04:38 but we really wanna like because this is the first um
04:41 big
04:41 international conference in southern Africa for Python
04:44 we wanna just make good use of that so yeah
04:48 a lot of effort is being put into financial assistance
04:50 and that's expensive
04:52 so we're doing a lot more around fundraising
04:55 we've got a donations drive as well
04:57 that's gonna help with that yeah
04:58 those are the main differences
05:00 what are the challenges of organizing a conference
05:02 in Africa because you have world travel right
05:05 you have seen PyConUS
05:06 EuroPython all these different conferences
05:08 so what are the challenges to organize
05:10 a conference in Africa compared to
05:12 let's say you know PyConUS or a European conference
05:16 so I think
05:17 I've never organized a conference anywhere else
05:19 so I can't give a direct comparison
05:21 but I can say that
05:23 there are probably challenges that are
05:25 standard across the board
05:26 I mean PyCon Africa is in a way a a newish conference
05:29 it's been going on for a little while
05:31 but it's had some gaps and and things like that
05:33 so like
05:34 a more established conference
05:35 has better systems in place
05:36 and has um
05:37 better documentation in place and things like that
05:40 and so
05:40 there's a lot of just figuring things out and swarming
05:43 and whenever you want to get
05:47 it's a large group of people who are involved
05:49 like there's
05:49 there's a lot of people on the international committee
05:51 and if you've got a large group of volunteers
05:55 then it's kind of hard to figure out
05:57 like wrangling volunteers is hard in general
06:00 um especially if you want to do things to a deadline
06:03 and to a high standard
06:04 and not end up doing everything yourself
06:06 and things like that
06:07 so there's a lot of just like management challenges
06:09 like figuring out who
06:11 who are the productive people and what's
06:14 what skills does everybody bring to the table
06:16 and things like that
06:17 like that's been that's been tricky
06:18 and I think in Africa, Africa specifically there
06:22 there are challenges around like
06:23 network connectivity and things like that
06:25 that comes up and it's also somewhat challenging
06:27 because we do have people who are organizing
06:29 who are in different time zones
06:31 and so we need to wrangle schedules quite a lot
06:33 and some people have jobs
06:35 some people don't have jobs
06:36 some people are students
06:37 and so that's all that's all challenging to wrangle
06:40 and there's also a lot of cultural differences
06:42 so our International Committee
06:44 it's spread across multiple countries
06:46 and a lot of the time when people think of Africa
06:48 they think of it as like
06:49 just like a blob and everything's the same
06:51 and it's really not like
06:52 there are very big cultural differences
06:54 between different African countries
06:55 and
06:56 those cultural differences come with different norms
06:59 and therefore different expectations
07:00 and um
07:01 different misunderstandings
07:03 so it's
07:04 important to just take a lot of care in communicating
07:06 like chaos is the default state
07:09 and so you have to work hard to
07:12 make sure that things are well organized
07:15 I think those are the main things
07:16 I wanted to ask a little bit about
07:18 you've been in different communities and also in Europe
07:21 and as Cheuk said also in the States
07:24 you saw PyConUS
07:25 how is the community different in Africa
07:27 or South Africa so can you speak for both or
07:31 yeah so I've
07:32 I've only been to PyCon South Africa and PyCon Namibia
07:35 in Africa and even these two communities are very
07:39 very different so in South Africa
07:41 Python is already a very well established language
07:44 so most of the big corporates are using it in some way
07:47 um most of our attendees are professional people
07:50 they're they're pretty sorted
07:51 um and we do get a lot of young folks as well
07:53 who are keen to get into Python in different ways so
07:56 so that's great but it's
07:58 the fact that it's established
07:59 and there's a lot of knowledge in the country already
08:01 um a lot of skill there it
08:03 it makes things easier
08:05 if you go to somewhere like Namibia
08:06 where it's not an industry standard
08:08 then things get more difficult
08:09 it's like it's a fledgling community in a way
08:12 like the community is is strong and connected and they
08:16 they do stuff and they run their conference and
08:19 and it's all wonderful
08:21 that's like
08:21 people need somebody to learn from a lot of the time
08:23 and so with something like pack on Namibia
08:26 one of the things it's
08:28 one of the goals there is to bring skills in
08:30 so that we can share skills with
08:33 the Namibian community yeah
08:34 so so it varies from place to place
08:36 and I'm sure that a lot of African countries
08:38 are more similar to Namibia
08:39 than to South Africa and we've
08:40 we've got it like it's it's pretty good here
08:43 when did you get started with Python and how?
08:47 so I got started um
08:49 when I was in university I was coding for food
08:52 I I started I learned to code um
08:54 like as a teenager and I really liked it
08:56 so when I was studying I needed money and um
09:00 so I was just taking on these odd jobs
09:02 and at one point
09:03 somebody offered me a Django development gig um
09:07 they wanted to build this
09:08 like soccer membership website thing
09:11 and they were like can you write a Django website
09:13 and I said yes
09:15 and then I figured out how to
09:17 and through learning Django
09:19 like there
09:20 there was this book called The Django Book um
09:22 but now it's very out of date
09:23 and it's not a thing anymore
09:25 but that was my introduction to Python yeah
09:28 so I learned that and I learned Python
09:30 sort of as a side effect of trying to do this
09:32 and it was great it just fitted my
09:34 brain really well since then
09:36 like Python
09:37 wasn't taught in university or anything like that when
09:39 when I was there after university
09:41 I gravitated towards software development jobs
09:44 and I just I did a bunch of different things
09:46 but I always missed Python
09:47 and then as soon as I could work with Python again
09:49 I jumped on it yeah
09:51 I mean
09:52 I can ask more stuff but you read a programming book
09:55 do you still read programming books
09:59 bits and pieces sometimes um
10:01 but it's very rare for me to read a whole programming
10:03 book I read a book on PHP once for a job
10:06 but like I haven't learned a lot of languages
10:07 since I learned Python um
10:09 I've
10:09 I've done a bunch of different things
10:11 I've learned PHP and I think C#
10:13 I find that I learn best
10:15 often by getting my hands dirty
10:17 so I'll dig into documentation
10:20 and something that I find as well is that like
10:23 a lot of the concepts
10:24 from one language are transferable to another
10:26 so if like a functions a functions a function um
10:30 so
10:30 a lot of the time when learning a different language
10:32 it's like you wanna
10:33 figure out how the concepts you already know
10:35 map to this other thing
10:36 and then you wanna find out what
10:37 kind of the idioms are of
10:39 of the new language
10:41 so often my way of learning is very um
10:44 I wouldn't say it's chaotic
10:45 it's it's directed towards a goal
10:47 I'll want to do a specific thing
10:49 and then I'll go and find out how to do like
10:52 all the little pieces
10:53 that I need to know in order to achieve that thing
10:55 yeah I think I
10:56 I did read the Kubernetes book
10:58 um yeah
10:59 what else I don't know
11:02 I actually wonder how many people are like
11:04 learn things like that cause I am the same
11:07 like I, I can only learn if I am doing it
11:10 cause otherwise I would just be
11:11 you know this side in
11:13 that side out right
11:14 like ha ha ha cause like
11:15 oh yeah it's
11:16 it's a it's a good read
11:17 but then like uh
11:18 what is it about hmm
11:19 can't remember ha ha
11:21 so yeah I think for me
11:23 project driven learning is very helpful
11:25 so it's like you learn you wanna learn a thing
11:27 like
11:28 let's say when I learnt react or something like that
11:31 like I've learnt a bunch of different tools
11:33 um and these tools have different tutorials
11:36 that you can follow and you can follow the tutorial
11:39 and you can stay on that golden path
11:40 and learn what they want you to learn
11:42 and you get the major concepts
11:43 and you get the major building blocks
11:44 and you're like okay cool
11:45 how do I get it to do this other thing
11:47 and then you research that and you end up learning more
11:50 um and you find out where you need to go deeper
11:53 so that's useful for me
11:56 but I, I do think that books are helpful
11:58 in a lot of places as well
12:00 because it does give you a
12:01 a narrative flow
12:02 and it helps you to kind of stay on task
12:04 for folks who are newer to programming language
12:06 I would usually say like
12:08 find a structured resource to learn from
12:11 because there's just so much stuff out there
12:14 the signal to noise ratio is really bad
12:17 so if you just find like one good trusted source
12:19 and you use that as a starting point
12:22 then that's probably good yeah
12:24 is this why you got into teaching as well as
12:27 because you
12:28 you felt like the material out there is more noise than
12:32 hmm not really
12:33 so so even in the noise
12:35 there's a lot of good stuff
12:36 uh it's just that there's like
12:37 people pull
12:38 each other in all sorts of different directions
12:40 for me
12:41 teaching was something that I always wanted to do
12:43 in some way like I um
12:45 I've always been teaching like when I was a little kid
12:48 I used to teach grownups Excel skills
12:51 and I taught the other kids maths and tutored them
12:54 and I've taught people different sports
12:56 and it's always been a thing in my life
12:57 but it's not something that I like pursued as a career
13:00 but it's always been something that I've cared about
13:02 like it's always clicked with me really well
13:04 so I was a really awkward kid and helping people with
13:07 their homework was a good source of connection
13:09 so I think a lot of it comes from that yeah
13:12 then wait you did that for free um
13:15 some people paid me but I also just
13:17 you did that for free and when I was in school
13:19 like people and stuff sometimes yes
13:22 sometimes no and it depended on the situation yeah OK
13:26 I did it I got paid
13:28 so people that people become your friend
13:31 so they can borrow your homework
13:32 like the the morning
13:37 no no
13:38 no borrowing was for free
13:39 but I liked helping people to understand stuff um
13:42 that was always a thing so I
13:44 I didn't
13:44 like all my homework in exchange for friendship
13:47 like that would be that would be a bit sad
13:50 um but it was
13:52 it was a way to connect it's like cool
13:53 you you wanna get better at this thing
13:55 let's no doubt about it like
13:57 if you're teaching person a thing
13:58 and you really want them to understand something
14:00 then you have to understand them um
14:03 so you do build some connections there
14:05 and I found that a lot with my students as well
14:07 more recently it's like you really do
14:10 like you get into each other's heads a little bit
14:12 but back to your question about like
14:14 how I got into teaching
14:16 I've been working for a bunch of startups
14:17 and I was feeling thoroughly burnt out and used up
14:20 and I was thinking about what I really
14:24 wanted to do I was like I've been
14:25 I've been working so hard
14:26 chasing other people's dreams
14:28 and what do I want to do it's like
14:30 I want to make an impact on people's lives
14:33 and education is a really amazing way to do that
14:36 I mean if you think about it
14:37 you you just have like
14:39 a bunch of conversations with a person
14:40 and then their trajectory changes in a massive way
14:43 and sometimes it's not even that hard to
14:45 to move a people a person quite significantly
14:49 so I got to a point I was like cool
14:51 I wanna work in education
14:52 I want to start a code school for for women
14:55 I want to do this this is gonna be great
14:56 and then I was thinking about like okay
14:59 what does it take to start a code school
15:00 I'm going to need um
15:02 desks and a venue and HR and payroll and and
15:08 and all of these like
15:09 things that I'm not that interested in
15:11 and if you think about like the business of education
15:14 there's there's like
15:14 so much stuff that you need to do that isn't teaching
15:17 and so I was bashing my head on this for a while
15:20 but at the time I was like
15:21 I'm taking on like random little freelance gigs
15:23 and I'm just trying to get more exposure
15:26 so I went to a PyCon
15:30 a PyCon South Africa event and I ran a workshop there
15:33 and I I like I literally just
15:35 did it so that um
15:37 more people could see what I was about
15:38 I wanted more exposure
15:40 and I wanted to teach people a thing
15:41 and I wanted to learn a thing
15:42 so so I did that
15:45 now with PyCon South Africa
15:46 you can charge for your workshops
15:47 that's just how it usually goes
15:49 um but I decided not to charge for mine because I
15:52 I was just like bring more people
15:53 and so because my workshop was the cheapest
15:55 it was very full of students
15:57 um and hahaha
15:59 some of those students were from this non profit
16:02 coding bootcamp and they kind of swarmed me afterwards
16:06 and they were like this is great
16:07 don't you wanna come and run a workshop at our place
16:10 I was like okay cool
16:12 I'll I'll try that out for free
16:14 or you can charge them this time
16:17 no I was just like cool
16:18 I'll just do it for free
16:19 because like these people obviously don't have a lot
16:21 and they're obviously like really
16:22 really hungry to learn I'm
16:24 I'm a sucker for for teaching
16:26 so I went there and I did that
16:28 and I ran a couple of workshops and I got to know the
16:33 the people who were running the place
16:35 and I got to see what their education system was like
16:38 and it wasn't good enough
16:40 and so I ended up working there um
16:43 and eventually being their CTO
16:45 so I started off working part-time
16:46 and then ramped up and ramped
16:47 up and ramped up
16:48 and then I was just like part of the woodwork
16:50 so when I started working there was very um
16:52 it was very scrappy and I like scrappy but the
16:56 the syllabus itself that they were teaching wasn't it
16:58 it had big gaps in it it was like they'd have a
17:01 a couple of paragraphs to
17:02 to read about unit testing
17:03 it was like cool now you know unit testing
17:05 so
17:06 what I did was I built out some new programs for them
17:09 and I just kind of solidified the stuff that they had
17:12 and made it really really solid
17:13 and through doing that I learnt a lot about
17:16 about teaching and about brains and about like
17:18 how to teach the basics of Python and other languages
17:21 there was Javascript there as well and that was cool
17:24 and then CoVid happened haha
17:26 so um
17:27 we we were originally an on premises training provider
17:31 um
17:31 and we had about 250 students working in this converted
17:35 underground parking lot basically
17:38 we had this apartment building
17:39 and then there was a parking lot and like a
17:41 another parking lot with natural light
17:43 and we converted that into studios
17:45 um and so we had like all these students in there
17:48 and we helped them out with cheap accommodation
17:50 around the building as well
17:51 and then when Covid happened
17:53 we had to send everybody home
17:54 but we had to keep supporting them as well
17:56 so ended up building a whole lot of um
17:59 tooling to help with remote teaching
18:01 and it worked super super well
18:02 and again like
18:04 Learned a ton about just like
18:05 how to keep people motivated and connected remotely
18:08 yeah that's
18:09 that changed my life and trajectory
18:11 I think I can totally relate to that
18:13 I think I was also working at a boot camp school
18:16 right before Covid and then during Covid
18:18 and I also had like
18:19 a lot of lessons Learned already from my previous job
18:22 when we had a team in Berlin and a team in Hamburg
18:25 and we were trying to kind of work hybrid
18:27 which was always a mess and so I
18:31 I was like yeah
18:32 that thing where five people are in the room
18:34 and five people are at home
18:35 is not working out very well either
18:37 everybody's at home
18:39 yeah yeah
18:40 we didn't do hybrid do you think like
18:42 cause you said that like
18:43 the biggest change is that you give this workshop in uh
18:46 PyCon South Africa so do you think yeah
18:49 the community kind of changed your life in some way
18:52 oh yeah
18:53 yeah many times over
18:54 so there was that one that was very impactful
18:56 a couple of years later just like on a whim
18:59 I was like let's see if there are any
19:01 international conferences that I can maybe get to
19:03 and my first international conference was a Django con
19:06 US
19:07 I applied and I asked for a grant and I was just like
19:09 probably nothing will come of
19:10 this that I got to go and that's where I met um
19:14 a bunch of the Django Con Africa folks
19:17 and that was also impactful
19:19 and I met a lot of other people there that I
19:22 connected with quite well
19:23 and I'm like friends with
19:24 and they've supported me in a bunch of
19:26 the things that I've been doing
19:27 and I support and I support them where I can as well
19:30 meeting the Django Con Africa people was lovely
19:33 I I helped organise the first Django Con Africa
19:36 that was in Tanzania in Zanzibar
19:38 which is epic and um yeah
19:42 met some amazing people there again and it
19:45 it sort of snowballed from there
19:47 so now I speak at a lot of international conferences um
19:51 I've been asked to keynote
19:52 in all sorts of fancy places
19:54 which has been epic as well
19:55 and I've learnt a lot like
19:57 I've learnt about different
19:59 tools and technologies that have changed my opinion of
20:02 like
20:02 what is worth focusing on and what is worth teaching
20:05 and what I recommend to organizations
20:08 so that's been really good and impactful
20:10 and some of the connections
20:12 that I've made there as well have been good
20:14 so like networking like business networking
20:18 can sometimes feel
20:18 a little bit slimy in different ways but um
20:22 it's been a really good networking opportunity
20:24 so I go to these different conferences
20:27 and I try to talk to as many people as I can
20:29 and I try to add value and
20:30 I try to connect people with other people
20:33 and join different dots
20:34 and it's an experience every time
20:37 it's very stimulating and I learn a bunch every time
20:39 but some pretty good opportunities
20:41 have come out of it as well
20:42 so I would say that yeah
20:44 Python conferences have changed my life
20:47 it's been very very good
20:48 oh it's good to hear that cause um
20:50 I feel the same so yeah
20:54 that's great how did they change your life
20:58 well I mean
20:58 this is your podcast so
21:00 I would wait until I got to be
21:02 a guest in another podcast
21:05 OK I'll
21:06 I'll invite you to something haha
21:08 yeah
21:08 I think nobody knows Cheuk when they go to a conference
21:11 and everybody's like oh
21:13 who's Cheuk no yeah nobody yeah
21:17 so I like to always also ask something about
21:20 what do you do besides Python and teaching
21:23 and do you mean like uh
21:26 hobbies and fun stuff or I don't know
21:28 is it hobbies or is that another passion that you have
21:31 depends on the level of involvement
21:34 I guess yeah
21:35 so I do have different passions
21:37 um Python is a thing that takes up a lot of my time
21:40 teaching in general takes up a lot of my time
21:42 the non python stuff is soft skills
21:44 so I do train people in in different soft skills
21:46 so one of the products that I have at the moment is
21:50 it's for helping teams become better teams
21:52 um so basically what
21:53 I do is I go and um
21:56 like if there's a team that's
21:57 that's struggling to team in some way
21:59 then I will gather a bunch of information
22:01 and do a bunch of surveys
22:02 and talk to people in the team and their leadership
22:06 and figure out like
22:06 what's actually going wrong or
22:08 and what's going right as well
22:10 because often a lot of things are going right
22:12 they can be amplified um
22:14 often there's like weird
22:15 structural issues that have
22:17 strange pitfalls and side effects
22:18 that people aren't fully aware of
22:20 sometimes
22:20 there's some cultural differences within the team
22:22 there's like all sorts of weird
22:23 complicated things that happen
22:25 and then based on that I come up with
22:27 like a course
22:28 specifically for that team
22:29 that covers
22:30 different skills that they are likely to need
22:32 but it's not really like
22:34 you can't just tell a person how to be a good teammate
22:37 and then they go and be a good teammate
22:38 it doesn't work like that
22:39 because a lot of things are down to
22:42 habits and small changes
22:44 and that's not something you can just do once off
22:47 so these courses typically take a while
22:50 so I'm running a 12 week week course at the moment
22:53 and I'm not seeing everybody every week or every day
22:55 like I'm seeing them once every two weeks basically
22:58 like on average but then between that time
23:01 they are given different challenges and exercises
23:04 that help them to team better
23:06 and yeah it's
23:07 it's been really really good
23:09 so as of my other
23:11 a strong interest is organizational psychology
23:13 and just like how to be a good teammate
23:16 and do people follow through
23:18 so it's it's tricky
23:21 um a lot of people do
23:22 some people don't
23:23 whenever you run like training for a corporate
23:27 where your uh
23:28 where the training
23:29 participants have been told to be there
23:32 then like there will be resistance
23:34 especially if they've been told to be there
23:36 because it's like
23:36 you're going to be a better teammate now
23:38 ha ha like you need some soft skills
23:40 like people don't always receive that very well um
23:43 and so yeah
23:44 there's a couple of different ways to get buy in
23:46 and buying is so so important
23:48 like one of the biggest challenges
23:50 of adult education is motivation
23:52 and focus cause
23:54 there's so many different things that take our
23:55 attention and want our attention
23:57 and many of these things are very important and um
24:00 sometimes you just don't want to learn the thing
24:02 so
24:03 what I do is I try to make the training hyper relevant
24:07 so I find out from the individuals in the team
24:11 what they want what problems they see
24:13 what good they want to grow
24:14 and then I frame things in a way that shows them like
24:17 cool these things that you want
24:19 we're actually gonna cover that
24:21 and this thing that I was gonna cover
24:22 I can tweak it so it covers this other thing that that
24:24 you're interested in
24:25 and so that's part of it is just like
24:27 like actually being direct about like cool
24:29 I'm gonna give you what you want to some extent
24:32 to some reasonable extent
24:34 then the other thing is
24:36 showing people that by taking part in the training
24:38 they can actually support each other's growth
24:40 so sometimes you'll get people who show up who are like
24:42 yeah I don't need this
24:43 like I'm a great team player always
24:45 and I don't need this but those other guys need this
24:47 so for those people you can say cool
24:49 like your voice is actually really useful here
24:52 because you clearly know some stuff
24:54 you can help to direct this training
24:57 like you your input is going to be useful to the people
25:00 around you so that's helpful
25:02 so so far I haven't
25:04 so like with with the course I'm running at the moment
25:06 um there's about 30 people and they're very
25:10 very multicultural
25:11 and it's a very complicated team structure
25:13 if you're familiar with the team topologies book
25:15 so I read so I don't read a lot of programming books
25:18 but I read a lot of life business books and like
25:21 structure books
25:22 but Team Topologies is kind of a book about like
25:26 design patterns for organizing teams
25:28 in complicated organizations
25:30 and they've got a bunch of different um configurations
25:33 so like sometimes
25:35 you'll have a team that's focused on a specific project
25:37 or a specific like type of work um
25:40 and sometimes you'll have a team
25:42 that is actually distributed in different ways like um
25:45 you get this thing called an enabling team
25:47 and an enabling team
25:49 like they're kind of like a guild and they
25:52 they level up their skills
25:53 and they level up their tools
25:54 but then the individual members will go and
25:56 help other teams level up in the same way
25:59 so it's about enabling different projects so um
26:02 the team that I'm working with is something
26:03 like an enabling team
26:04 and something like a platform team
26:06 and so
26:07 it's just like a really weird structure to work in
26:10 so it's kind of like a data team right
26:12 yeah yeah
26:13 kind of like a data team kind of like
26:14 like if you imagine a big organization
26:16 that has lots of software projects
26:18 and then you have a security team just handle security
26:21 like imagine how they would need to work
26:23 like they
26:24 they can't go and fix all the problems themselves
26:26 but they can kind of build a
26:28 a paved road that other like project like
26:31 um product specific teams can
26:33 can walk along and they can go and share skills
26:36 and they can define like uh
26:37 maturity levels for different projects and just kind of
26:42 um put ownership of quality on other people
26:45 but still keep an eye on things and maintain that level
26:48 so so yeah
26:49 it's been it's been interesting
26:50 I just wanted to say that it's kind of the same
26:52 it reminds me of uh
26:54 when we were at work and we were always saying
26:57 we don't need a retrospective
26:58 this month or this two week
26:59 like this time you know
27:01 we have no problems you know
27:02 everything is fine
27:03 and then you do a retrospective and then it's like ah
27:07 one hour was not enough that's like yeah
27:10 to talk about all the things that
27:12 we have no problem with yeah
27:14 yes yeah
27:17 often I find that well
27:18 there's this exercise that I'm doing with
27:20 with this team in in particular
27:22 like we're we're talking about different concepts
27:24 and why they matter
27:25 like why psychological safety matters
27:27 why dependability matters
27:28 and how these things are related and things like that
27:30 but then an exercise that I do with people is um
27:34 Kaizen thing um
27:35 so Kaizen is a
27:38 like a Japanese business philosophy thing about um
27:41 making small changes and you can make
27:44 like tiny improvements to how you work
27:46 and those tiny improvements
27:48 even if they seem insignificant
27:49 they add up and they can do big things
27:51 so then people come up with their own
27:53 little improvements that they want to make
27:55 and they commit to it in a public way
27:57 and then they go and they do those things
27:59 and coupled with that I
28:01 I get folks to pay attention to each other
28:04 and try to notice the good things that are happening
28:06 so that they can say like
28:06 hey I saw you do this good thing
28:08 well done and that's been
28:09 really really cool so like
28:10 here's an example of a small kaizen
28:12 thing that a person can do
28:14 so one of the people in the team was like
28:17 every time I go to a stand up in the morning
28:19 I feel really anxious and then I
28:21 I go into the stand up and I just like
28:23 waffle and ramble and
28:26 and then I just feel bad it's like okay
28:28 how are we going to solve this
28:29 um we'll solve it by spending like
28:30 five to 10 minutes before the stand up
28:32 just thinking about what I'm gonna say
28:33 and it's like this really
28:35 really small thing that you can do
28:36 but then she goes to her stand up and she's prepared
28:39 she's not anxious um
28:40 she's more able to pay attention to the people
28:42 around her cause
28:43 because she's not caught up in her
28:45 internal anxiety loops and the rest of the team
28:48 get better clarity on her tasks and what she needs
28:51 and so they're more able to help her um
28:55 they're more able to focus on her stuff
28:57 and they're
28:57 more able to have space to talk about their stuff
28:59 so it's like this little
29:01 tiny thing with potentially a big impact
29:03 and there's loads of things like that
29:05 like lots and lots yeah
29:07 so I have a question for you
29:08 so if you have to choose right
29:10 you can either work with Python
29:12 the programming language or so either
29:15 or you can do both or people what
29:18 would you choose hi
29:20 so actually like so I love Python so much
29:25 but I think actually people
29:26 and the reason I say that is because in the end
29:30 like if you wanna build something big
29:32 it's a it's a team sport like if you're
29:34 if you're just working by yourself on something
29:35 like you can do some pretty epic things
29:37 but the
29:38 most impressive things are generally
29:40 done by teams of people
29:41 and getting people to team well is like
29:45 there's just so much to be unlocked
29:46 there's so much leverage to be added
29:47 people sometimes talk about 10 x developers
29:50 and stuff like that
29:51 it's very hard to make a 10 x developer
29:53 it's very hard to be a 10 x developer
29:54 it's very hard to find a 10 x developer
29:56 but you can take a team and make it
29:58 make it like a 10 x team
29:59 and it's not actually that bad to do like it's like
30:02 it's generally like it like
30:05 if you just look at it with the right lens
30:07 and get people to be motivated to make small changes
30:11 you can do some amazing things
30:13 and you don't necessarily need to stop at 10 x either
30:17 so that's part of it
30:18 and then the other part of it is like
30:20 LLMs are changing a lot of things
30:21 and they are adding a lot of leverage to programmers
30:26 and they are also they're changing the landscape in
30:28 in a lot of different ways
30:30 but people are getting to a point where
30:32 we're realizing what the uniquely human skills are
30:35 and if we can grow those human skills
30:38 then that's great so I think that there yeah
30:41 I think that there's a lot of space for just like
30:43 growing individual people in
30:45 in how they interact with one another
30:47 I think that's a good call
30:48 because I think a lot of developers
30:49 doesn't put that much emphasis on the people element
30:53 that can really help their career
30:55 but they just overlook it
30:56 they just thought like if
30:57 if I'm become quote unquote
30:58 the best developer I don't know how you quantified it
31:01 but like that I would be you know
31:03 I would do really well in my career
31:06 but I guess there are a lot of
31:08 people element in it that developers overlook
31:11 yeah I think that works up to a point
31:13 and then after that point
31:14 you are like you need to work with other people
31:18 um a metaphor I really like is soccer
31:21 um or football
31:22 depending on where you're from
31:24 your
31:24 individual skills as a soccer player really matter
31:27 quite a lot but most of the game of soccer
31:30 like if you watch people practice
31:31 like practice soccer
31:33 a lot of emphasis is placed on passing the ball really
31:36 really well and that means setting the person up for
31:39 the next person up for success
31:41 and that means
31:42 also being aware of what other people are doing
31:45 like you need that that context
31:47 and so that means paying
31:48 attention to things outside of your little bubble
31:50 but it also means just taking
31:52 care as you craft different things
31:55 so let's think about a pull request as a
31:58 as a ball passing moment like
31:59 how can you craft a pull request
32:01 to set the next person up for success
32:03 like make it clear and specific
32:05 and don't do a million different things at once
32:08 don't make it like a mega pull request
32:10 that's just gonna confuse people
32:12 if you make it super huge
32:13 then your whoever's reviewing it might um
32:16 they're a human they might lose focus
32:18 if you make it small so they can fit it in their brain
32:21 then they will do a better job
32:22 so like
32:24 there's all sorts of different ways to just like
32:25 make that one interaction better
32:28 another way you can pass a ball is like
32:30 asking a person for help
32:31 you can ask a person for help well or badly
32:34 and you can build up like you
32:36 you can build these skills
32:38 a lot of really good
32:40 like technically skilled developers
32:42 they'll hear about these teamwork good practices
32:45 and they'll nod and smile
32:46 and then just like make massive weird PRs anyway
32:50 because they
32:51 they don't necessarily value passing the ball well
32:56 and that's harms the people in their team
32:58 or it affects productivity
33:02 yeah I think it's not only I
33:03 I think sometimes um
33:05 what I noticed was not necessary that they don't
33:07 that people don't value passing the ball well
33:09 but it's actually it's hard
33:11 it's a lot it's a different work
33:13 it's different work to do that well
33:16 compared to just coding you know
33:18 a lot and like really making it bite size and what not
33:23 so that's kind of like it
33:24 I think it's more of a subconsciously
33:27 it's like learning a new skill and you want
33:30 you need to you need to
33:30 wanna learn to be in a space where you want to learn
33:33 so I guess it's like kind of like when you pass a ball
33:36 like I
33:37 I Learned it when I was like playing in the playground
33:39 right like when I was I was a very again
33:42 like I'm not really good at sports
33:43 I have no like sporty nerve in me
33:46 so I'm suck at like you know
33:48 even passing the ball right
33:50 mostly just like hit my head or I just miss it
33:52 and I have to chase after it right
33:54 so I was told how to like
33:56 really do the ball pass is to like
33:58 when you pass the ball
33:59 you have to make sure looking at the other person
34:02 make sure they are ready you are ready
34:03 and then you
34:04 you have to aim at giving the ball to them
34:06 rather than just whatever
34:08 float it so I think that's the difference right
34:10 like if you're just kind of float
34:12 it's like oh
34:13 you didn't catch it that's your fault
34:14 it's like no
34:15 but you didn't tell me that you're going to float at me
34:17 and then like of course I didn't get it
34:19 it hit hit my face and like whatever
34:21 right like
34:22 so you know that
34:23 you know actually
34:25 just passing a ball is different from just
34:27 randomly throwing a ball at people
34:29 so it's and also people always think oh
34:31 it's your fault that you didn't catch it
34:33 it's like but it no
34:34 it's your fault that you didn't pass it well
34:35 so yeah
34:36 yeah
34:37 like the ball metaphor for can be passed
34:40 can be pitched pretty far
34:41 because sometimes in a professional environment
34:43 people will take the ball
34:45 and then they'll put it down and walk away
34:47 like that could drop the ball right
34:51 ha ha
34:52 it's like somebody will do with this
34:53 ha ha ha also
34:54 there's people who collect balls
34:56 oh yes yes
34:57 oh collect more than they can handle right
35:00 like this is a handful it's just like
35:02 this is a beautiful football
35:03 and this is a beautiful ping pong ball
35:06 and it's like just you know
35:07 collecting them
35:09 yeah
35:10 or like doing tricks with the ball
35:12 and the goal's right there
35:13 it was like look at all the fancy stuff I can do
35:15 I can bounce it on my head
35:17 so we see this a lot yeah
35:19 and missed the point right
35:20 like oh
35:21 you have to put it in the goal
35:23 I guess
35:24 yeah I think
35:25 I think this is sometimes like
35:26 I think you can
35:27 be quite long time in a team without having
35:29 especially like
35:30 companies that are cutting on budget and everything
35:32 and I think uh
35:34 let's say 10 years ago
35:36 we were in a space where every team had a scrum master
35:39 an agile coach a
35:42 you know five people to help the teamwork
35:44 you know and now it's like
35:45 oh you gotta do it yourself again
35:47 so I think if you don't explicitly say things like
35:50 you know you are
35:51 responsible for your pull request to be approved
35:53 by the end of the sprint if we're doing sprints
35:55 you know then people are like
35:57 yeah yeah yeah
35:59 I think there is still a use in
36:01 scrum masters and things like that
36:03 but I think that people just put too much on them
36:05 the original thinking behind scrum masters
36:08 was that they would be scrum coaches
36:10 more than masters
36:11 it's not like they're there to tell everybody
36:12 what to do but they're there to be a coach
36:15 ideally get into a position
36:17 where people don't need them so much
36:19 but it didn't really go that way
36:20 it ended up
36:22 yeah things get yeah
36:24 I think why people hate like
36:25 agile scrum is that
36:26 because company thought that that's like a
36:30 you know solve all the problem
36:31 like ticket to solve all the problem
36:32 but it's not so that's why like
36:34 it's got me misused and people ended up hating them
36:38 yeah yeah
36:39 got misused a lot um
36:41 and we see that like at all implemented badly in
36:45 in lots of different places where they're like cool
36:46 we're gonna have sprints
36:48 let's have a plan for the next 10 sprints
36:50 what specifically are we going to do
36:52 in the next 10 sprints
36:54 and it's sprinting
36:55 that means we're moving really quickly
36:59 but yeah but why and where are we going
37:03 don't know OK
37:04 just run OK
37:06 as long as you have the ball haha
37:08 yeah man haha
37:10 just to come back to um
37:12 the thing you're doing at prelude right
37:15 you mentioned at the beginning that you're also doing
37:17 um mentorship for teachers
37:19 so not just yeah
37:21 so you're going to the meta level a bit
37:23 with the teaching yeah yeah
37:25 so that's actually with um
37:26 the Guild of educators so it's a community I started um
37:31 last year and I've been like
37:34 so there is a craft to teaching well
37:36 and a lot of people who want to teach code
37:39 they have the coding skill
37:40 but not necessarily the experience in teaching
37:43 and they'll often mimic what they've already seen so um
37:46 traditional education systems
37:48 where you have a sage on the stage and
37:50 and all of that so that's one aspect of it um
37:52 our understanding of what good teaching looks like
37:56 has changed the way people learn and study
37:59 and like
38:00 that is something that has been well studied there
38:03 there is science to back up
38:05 modern methods that many people just don't know about
38:08 standard schooling where you get
38:09 everybody to move at the same pace
38:11 under serves most people and like it's
38:14 it's not like it's all bad
38:15 I mean look how many people can read
38:17 that's great but it
38:18 it can definitely be better
38:20 so
38:20 part of it is about just giving good teaching skills
38:23 and like mental frameworks to people who want to teach
38:26 and giving teachers support structures as well
38:29 like a lot of people get out of teaching
38:32 because they get frustrated in different ways
38:34 like I think the half life for teachers in the UK is
38:37 7 years I stand to be corrected
38:39 but I mean that's not long enough
38:40 if we could make that half life longer
38:42 that would be really nice
38:44 so supporting teachers is a big thing
38:47 but then there's also um
38:48 there are teachers who are teaching technical stuff
38:51 who aren't necessarily practitioners
38:53 of that technical stuff
38:54 so earlier we spoke about PyCon Namibia
38:57 and PyCon Namibia is really
38:58 really great
38:59 because we get to go and hang out with students
39:02 and show them cool things with code
39:04 and we had this day where we were at a
39:07 like a local school
39:08 and we were doing some python with the kids
39:11 and a bunch of computer studies
39:13 teachers were there as well
39:14 and these teachers were like they were lovely
39:18 they showed up they were hungry to learn
39:19 they really wanted to help in lots of different ways
39:22 but when you interacted with them
39:24 you could see like
39:25 like they don't know that much Python
39:27 they don't know
39:28 that much about the thing that they're there to teach
39:30 because they just don't have the experience
39:32 and so my thinking was that if we hear those folks up
39:37 with technical practitioners
39:38 with developers and to say like cool
39:40 now you have an expert that you can speak to
39:43 then that'll probably affect quite a lot of lives
39:45 cause one 1 teacher affects many
39:47 many people and so
39:48 the idea with the mentorship program
39:51 is that it's a completely voluntary thing
39:53 um it's not like I'm mentoring people
39:55 and they're paying me or anything like that
39:56 it's um
39:58 mentors can show up or potential mentors can show up
40:01 and volunteer mentees can
40:03 can show up and say like hey
40:04 I need help and then they get matched together
40:06 so a mentee can be there
40:07 because they want to learn technical skills
40:09 or because they want to learn teaching skills
40:11 and a mentor can also help with either of those things
40:14 and a mentor can be a mentee at the same time
40:16 that's okay now structurally
40:17 like a lot of people get a little bit frightened
40:20 of becoming a mentor because it's like
40:22 oh if I'm somebody's mentor
40:24 it's like this lifetime commitment
40:26 and they're going to expect
40:27 hours from me every single day
40:29 yeah so um
40:31 there's a lot that's in place to make it like
40:34 safe for the mentors in terms of their
40:36 their own capacity so we'll
40:39 do like a matchmaking thing
40:40 and a mentor and mentee will be matched together
40:43 for 12 weeks that's three months
40:44 and at the end of that 12 week period
40:46 it's like it's done they can join again if they want to
40:49 during those 12 weeks they're expected to meet
40:52 once every two weeks for like an hour
40:53 and so it's not a big time commitment
40:56 that's the minimum commitment
40:57 if both the people want to meet
40:59 want to spend more time together
41:00 that's great but it's like that is all that is required
41:03 and then the other thing is that
41:04 the burden of organizing things goes on to the mentee
41:07 not the mentor so the mentee will say like cool
41:10 we we need to meet up let's schedule something
41:12 so so they'll they'll be the scheduler
41:14 and they also need to
41:16 prep the mentor before their session
41:18 just by saying like
41:18 this is roughly what I think we should talk about
41:20 and so the mentor doesn't go in blind
41:22 they can mentally prepare
41:23 so I've run a similar structure before
41:27 um a similar mentorship structure before
41:29 when I was working at that non profit coding bootcamp
41:32 where I had professional developers mentoring our
41:35 our baby developers and that was really lovely
41:38 so we match people up
41:39 and the 12 weeks finished and all of that
41:42 and basically every single mentor
41:44 said that they'd like to be included in the next round
41:46 so it was a good experience
41:48 so I'm just taking the learnings from there
41:50 and applying it to a slightly different domain
41:51 so get people to teach well
41:53 teach Python well specifically and um
41:55 there are some like interesting side effects as well
41:58 so the Guild of educators has a discord server
42:01 and there'll be a channel on there for the mentors
42:03 and so the mentors can can swap notes with each other
42:06 they can say like oh
42:07 this weird thing happened
42:08 how do we solve it or my uh
42:11 my mentee is asking about this thing
42:12 I don't know about it does anybody know about it
42:14 so they've got people to lean on and talk to
42:18 and I think
42:18 some really good things can come out of those
42:19 conversations and for me it would be really
42:21 really interesting to see what problems people have
42:24 and how they're solving them
42:26 that's a resource on its own okay
42:27 so now come the million dollar question
42:30 how can someone join the Guild of educators
42:32 so head to Guild of educators.org
42:35 you can join just as a regular member
42:37 there's a join us button um
42:39 so you can join the
42:41 the discord server there and you can uh
42:44 fill out a form there and give me your email address
42:46 and then you'll get emailed
42:48 about different news and things
42:49 when it happens
42:50 and then if you want to join the mentorship program
42:53 there's a different form to fill out
42:55 on a different tab yeah
42:56 so just go to Guild of educators.org I
42:58 hope we put it somewhere
43:00 like in the description or on the screen
43:02 I don't know we'll
43:03 we'll see but yeah
43:04 we'll get folks the information
43:06 coming back to the beginning
43:08 where we talked about PyCon um
43:10 Africa Africa
43:11 you showed us what your colleague did as a copy
43:15 as inspired by PyCon US
43:17 and I thought that is like really cool
43:19 and maybe you wanna show that awesome
43:22 so at Python US and other conferences
43:25 you get a name tag
43:25 and then there are stickers and ribbons
43:27 that you can attach to the name tag
43:28 in order to say who you are
43:30 to say like I'm a community member and I like hugs
43:33 and I'm involved with PyLadies and
43:35 and things like that so
43:37 one of the organizers of PyCon
43:39 Africa is really into 3d printing
43:41 it's amazing and he made these name tags
43:44 so this is completely modular
43:46 you can take it apart it's got these like
43:48 little purple things to hold everything together
43:50 and it just pop out oh
43:51 that's really cool yeah
43:53 and if you zoom in on this
43:54 like this is the PyCon Africa logo
43:56 this was done with a 3D printer
43:58 and when you print these things
43:59 it's a really interesting process
44:01 because you need to take um
44:02 the transparency of the different colors into account
44:05 and you can get the 3D printer to kind of
44:07 mix the colors yeah
44:08 it's super cool
44:09 so we have these like epic name badges and yeah
44:13 like
44:13 it comes with a little lanyard that you can click in
44:15 and you can say that you you like hugs
44:18 I like hugs so this is yeah
44:20 this is the process can we have one
44:21 like this excuse about anything before coffee
44:28 ha ha
44:30 so this is cool
44:31 it's gonna be a little keepsake for everyone as well
44:33 this is the park on South Africa over there um
44:36 that's our national I want that now okay
44:38 ha ha ha yeah
44:39 because at last PyCon in Germany
44:43 Cheuk actually just made a really quickly
44:45 a website to like really quickly
44:47 like what else do you do during a conference where she
44:50 she was like rating swag people could rate the swag no
44:54 you did that Cheuk yeah
44:55 that that's
44:56 that's more than a swag that's the name patch
44:58 it's so cool yeah
44:59 that is yeah exactly
45:00 so that's like so I
45:02 I need I need another session for that
45:04 so
45:05 so now Cheuk needs to come to PyCon Africa
45:07 see that's what you had to
45:09 what you had to start with
45:11 and then you get everybody to attend
45:13 I think this is going to become a PyCon
45:15 South Africa staple I think
45:16 it's gonna be our standard thing, because it actually like
45:18 like it takes a while to print the stuff
45:20 but we looked at the price of like
45:23 ordering name badges and things like this
45:26 and it's actually comparable
45:27 it's like um
45:28 it's pretty close and this is only
45:31 this is like the first prototype
45:33 the printing has become more efficient
45:35 so yeah it's
45:35 it's actually a really good way to go
45:38 and it's unique and like
45:39 I think that's the charm of like
45:41 you have stuff that you made yourself
45:42 so two years ago at Python Pizza in Hamburg
45:45 we did the Python Python logo shaped cookie cutters
45:50 also with the oh yeah
45:51 I I really want that one as well
45:53 ha ha ha that's awesome
45:56 can you do it again and then I will come
46:01 I think that's really the end
46:03 so um
46:04 we have very very
46:05 you know limited amount of time
46:07 we can talk for it for ages
46:08 but I guess like seeing Sheena travels a lot
46:10 we can you know
46:11 next time you see her you can just
46:13 you know come chat in South Africa
46:17 South Africa as well yeah
46:19 and um yeah
46:20 so thank you very much for listening
46:22 to everybody who's listening
46:26 bye bye thank you
46:28 yeah

We interviewed Sheena O’Connell.

Sheena began her career as a software engineer and technical leader across multiple startups, but her passion for education led her to spend the last five years reimagining how people learn to code professionally. Working within the nonprofit sector, she built alternative education systems from the ground up and developed deep expertise in effective teaching, educator development, and the structural limitations of traditional education models. Sheena is the founder of Prelude.tech, where she delivers rigorous technical training alongside consultation and coaching for technical educators and organizations with education functions. She also leads the Guild of Educators, a community she founded to empower technology educators through shared resources, support, and evidence-based teaching practices.

In this episode, Sheena O’Connell tells us about her journey, the importance of community and good practices for teachers and educators in Python, organizational psychology and how she herself became involved in this journey. We talk about how to enable a 10x team and how to enable the community through the Guild of Educators.

Topic discussed

  • Introductions
  • Getting to know Sheena
  • Her involvement in the community
  • Sheena’s journey and her passion for education
  • Re-implementing an effective education system for learning how to code professionally in Python
  • Importance of community
  • Organizational psychology
  • PyCon Africa cool badges

Get to know Sheena O'Connell

Sheena O'Connell

Sheena O'Connell

Sheena's early career saw her working as a software engineer and technical leader across multiple startups. But it was her passion for education that led her to devote the last 5+ years to re-imagining how we teach people to code professionally. Over the last half decade she has had the opportunity to work in the non-profit space and build alternative education systems from the ground up. Along the way she has learned a lot about how to teach well, how to build organisational systems that teach well, and why traditional education systems fall short. As a founder of Prelude.tech, she provides rigorous technical training, as well as consultating, and coaching for technical educators, and organisations with education functions (for example grad programs and similar). Additionally, she leads the Guild of Educators, a community she founded to empower tech educators through shared resources, support, and evidence-based teaching practices.

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