Episode 12: with Juanita Gomez

Episode 12: with Juanita Gomez
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30:58 yeah
00:19 hello everybody
00:20 welcome back to another episode of PyPodcats
00:24 The Hidden Figures of Python
00:26 hi everyone
00:27 we are PyPodcats
00:29 and we are doing this Hidden Figures of Python
00:32 because we want to bring more beautiful
00:35 and wonderful people to your
00:38 notice that you know
00:39 that our community doesn't just start from nothing
00:43 we have beautiful and wonderful people building them
00:46 so here we are
00:47 and today we have our wonderful Juanita with us welcome
00:54 welcome Juanita Thank you I'm so excited to be here
00:56 do you want to introduce yourself
00:58 tell us what you do
00:58 so yeah
00:59 yeah so I am currently a PhD student at UC Santa Cruz
01:04 a lot of the research that I do is actually
01:06 related to open source
01:08 specifically security
01:09 that's kind of what I've been up to lately
01:11 but I've been also
01:13 kind of like as a side thing in like my volunteer time
01:16 I've also
01:17 spent a lot of my time with the Scientific Python
01:20 Community
01:21 one of the community managers
01:22 for the Scientific Python Project
01:23 which
01:24 project that is trying to coordinate
01:26 the scientific Python ecosystem
01:28 so we do summits we are writing some specs
01:31 developing tools and yeah
01:33 I'm helping with like a lot of the community
01:35 stuff going on
01:36 sounds amazing
01:38 I guess you're one of these people who send
01:40 Python to Mars right ha ha
01:42 ha ha
01:43 hopefully ha ha
01:45 so I'm actually not in the scientific community
01:48 um I always
01:49 I'm mostly in the web based development using Python
01:53 so it's always amazing because I know there is a huge
01:57 huge community in the scientific
01:59 you know Python
02:00 can you tell us more about it
02:02 like how did you get started into this community
02:05 so it actually goes all the way back to maybe
02:08 5, 6 years ago
02:09 I started as a as a developer for Spyder
02:12 the IDE for Python
02:13 which I think it's actually an IDE that is um
02:16 meant for scientists not necessarily server developers
02:19 but
02:19 it's meant to make your development with Python easier
02:23 I joined the Spyder team a very long time ago
02:26 haha and a lot of the work that I did was actually
02:29 focused on documentation and community outreach
02:32 I started doing events
02:33 I guess um
02:35 I I had this like Spyder cast
02:36 which I guess is kind of similar to what we're doing
02:39 today um
02:40 where I kind of invited developers on stage
02:42 where they only talked about
02:43 um some of the work that they did for Spyder
02:45 and I also started to do tutorials and
02:47 for Spyder
02:47 I guess
02:48 I guess it's a way to reach out
02:51 more people in the community
02:51 But also with this idea of
02:53 kind of
02:53 turning documentation into something more millennial
02:56 like reaching younger generations
02:59 um and
03:00 and the two people who started this Scientific
03:03 Python project which were uh
03:04 were Stéfan J. van der Walt and Jarrod Millman
03:06 they saw some of my work that I was doing with Spyder
03:09 I think they probably saw my YouTube videos and
03:11 amazing
03:12 yeah they reach out to me and they were like
03:15 do you want do you
03:16 do you want to be part of this
03:17 they were just starting they
03:18 they got a grant
03:19 and they were just starting the project
03:21 and they kind of just invited me to join
03:23 and a lot of the work that I did at the beginning
03:25 was actually
03:25 writing
03:26 guides and doing actually like
03:28 videos for beginners to the ecosystem
03:31 that's how I joined
03:32 That sounds amazing
03:33 like I think you showed just like
03:35 there are so many ways to contribute to the community
03:38 like I think writing documentation and
03:41 giving visibility of the project sharing
03:43 you know how other people use that IDE
03:45 it's very important so
03:47 I think it's always something that is so important
03:50 but then a lot of people just overlook it right
03:53 like sometimes you know
03:54 you say like oh
03:55 I have created this functionality
03:56 people be like wow
03:57 and then if you say oh
03:58 I write this documentation
04:00 people like
04:00 ok so I think yeah
04:03 it's like
04:03 but it's very important
04:04 because if nobody is writing any documentation or
04:07 or doing all these work
04:09 that is less glamorous than no one knew
04:12 it's coming to the community
04:13 and it become like a project
04:14 that everybody have grey hair and you know
04:17 nobody
04:18 like the young people doesn't care about it anymore
04:21 you know that
04:21 then the project will probably
04:23 be less popular than what it is so
04:24 yeah and I
04:25 I actually didn't know
04:27 that I was gonna end up doing docs
04:29 when I joined
04:29 I was doing like I was just fixing bugs like any
04:32 any like beginner developer in a project
04:34 and I ended up like involved with documentation
04:38 and I guess my first goal was to make it more friendly
04:39 I guess my like first goal was to make it more friendly
04:41 so a lot of it was like
04:43 literally just putting screenshots and Gifs in the
04:45 the documentation which it was a lot of work
04:47 I thought it was very important to kinda like
04:50 include more people and to make it easier
04:51 to learn how to use a tool
04:53 especially
04:53 cause it wasn't meant for software developers
04:55 it was meant for scientists who don't necessarily know
04:58 um like all the fundamentals of software development
05:01 and I think making
05:02 it easier to use by having
05:04 very good docs was kind of like one of my first goals
05:07 when I hear your story just now
05:09 I like how you mention that
05:11 trying to reach different audience
05:13 different subset of group of
05:15 you know
05:16 people who consume YouTube
05:17 like I think I don't really have YouTube channels
05:20 I tried it's not easy to to run it
05:23 so I think it's amazing that you're doing that
05:26 I'm also not good at that
05:28 I tried
05:28 I won't be a very good Youtuber
05:30 I think I'm just a goofball
05:32 I don't know how to do marketing
05:33 how to like you know
05:34 I kind of analyze what people like
05:36 what people don't like I just do what I like
05:38 and I don't think it's a very good strategy
05:41 funny enough
05:42 the reason that I was able to do a lot of the like
05:44 to do
05:45 editing and like I guess
05:47 the creative part of the
05:49 tutorials and all of these things was because
05:51 I had a YouTube channel that was for music
05:53 so I was like
05:54 I started like when I was in my undergrad
05:57 I started like a music YouTube channel
05:58 so I was like recording songs and doing videos
06:00 like music videos
06:02 and I started a YouTube channel
06:03 so I had to learn how to do video editing
06:05 and that's kind of why I was able to do this
06:07 like it was like just random skills that I picked up
06:09 doing something else
06:10 that I was able to put into practice
06:12 while doing documentation
06:13 yeah so you were already like
06:14 doing music thing before TikTok become a thing
06:17 right now everybody is like dancing
06:20 I don't do TikTok though
06:22 sometimes see people in the in the square
06:24 they were just like you know
06:25 young people they play some music
06:26 they look very cool and like dancing
06:28 and I was like
06:29 I'm so old right
06:30 I'm not used to TikTok I'll be like
06:31 oh that remind me of when I was in uni
06:33 like the dance club people
06:34 and then my friend who is younger was like
06:36 they probably not dance club
06:38 they're just doing TikTok
06:39 I was like what is that
06:41 yeah
06:41 and that's what the younger generations are doing now
06:44 yeah And I actually I didn't do that for Spyder
06:46 but I did some TikToks for the Scientific
06:48 Python project
06:49 and I was kind of trying to figure out what was
06:52 like short enough to put in a TikTok
06:55 that was like educational
06:57 I guess because I mean
06:58 like nowadays
06:59 the way that people consume all of these media is like
07:02 it's very short if you do something that
07:03 it's longer than 1 or two minutes long in TikTok
07:06 they're not gonna watch it
07:07 so you need to like break it into very small pieces
07:08 like it
07:10 so I did some like very basic um
07:12 videos on things like how to do your first PR
07:16 how to review a PR things like that on TikTok
07:18 that was fun but it was very hard
07:21 I think that's very interesting
07:23 we need to find those links
07:24 and share with our audiences
07:26 we need to watch those those TikToks you made
07:28 yeah
07:29 yeah
07:29 I was very skeptical like even a couple of years ago
07:33 uh when I was working at Anaconda
07:34 my colleague at the time
07:36 Sophia she's also very talented
07:37 she did all this like oh
07:38 data science short form video
07:41 I don't know TikTok or YouTube
07:42 whatever
07:43 like teaching people data science
07:45 I was like
07:45 does it work'cause like but well
07:47 it proves that I was wrong
07:48 it works and now I'm like struggling of like
07:51 how can we do that
07:52 hahaha
07:52 yeah I think you just need to go with
07:54 you know what's in these days
07:56 you have to I I realize I'm also old
07:59 like I don't have TikTok account
08:01 but I know that's what the younger people do
08:04 and if we want the Python committee to stay relevant
08:07 maybe we need to start doing this
08:09 we need young people
08:10 yeah
08:11 you know if you ask us to decide on oh
08:14 what to do
08:14 we just come up with something that maybe work like
08:16 10 years ago but not working now
08:18 so
08:18 but anyway let's go back to what Juanita has been doing
08:21 so
08:22 um you also do a lot of security work
08:24 which I think again like
08:25 is something that is very important and it's like
08:28 getting more and more attention these days
08:29 for open source so what made you go into the field
08:32 like is it because you love open source
08:34 you want to do something for it
08:36 or is it just like oh
08:37 security super cool
08:38 I want to do that which come first
08:40 so when I started my PhD
08:42 I was actually I joined the Security Lab
08:45 I wasn't working on open source at first
08:47 and the reason I joined the Security Lab was because
08:49 my background is actually in
08:50 math and I did some cryptography stuff
08:53 so my advisor
08:54 thought that I would be a good fit to do some like
08:56 security
08:57 stuff so at the beginning
08:58 I was actually doing like cryptography things
09:00 not related to open source at all
09:02 so I had this like
09:03 divided life where like during the day
09:05 I was working in security and during the night
09:07 I was working in open source
09:09 um and I thought that wasn't cool
09:11 I thought that
09:11 I would be better if I could merge
09:13 like my passion and my
09:15 research
09:15 so
09:16 I started talking to people at the Open Source Program
09:18 office in my university and I guess they were like
09:21 interested in working with me
09:22 I had a lot of experience in like
09:24 community work
09:25 and like a lot of contacts within the ecosystem
09:27 so I I think that was that was good
09:29 and I think the reason I
09:31 decided to kind of bring security into the open source
09:35 work that I was doing was because I saw like
09:37 a gap
09:38 like by talking to maintainers and to developers
09:41 I realized that
09:42 security is something that people are concerned about
09:44 but they're not necessarily experts on
09:46 they don't necessarily have the time for
09:48 so it's something that it's important
09:50 but it's not addressed
09:51 like as much as I think it should be
09:53 so I think I wanted to bridge that gap
09:55 kind of to just kind of help maintainers with security
09:58 I am definitely not an expert yet
10:00 on
10:01 a lot of what the things that I've been doing is like
10:02 learning about
10:03 what is it that you need in your open source project
10:06 I would say be like more secure
10:09 and that's where I'm headed
10:10 is I want to be able to help maintainers
10:13 I want to I want to work on the human part of security
10:15 not necessarily like bug bounties or
10:19 I don't know like more yeah
10:21 I would say like hacky things but more um
10:23 learning about best practices and security
10:25 and helping maintainers implement those
10:27 best practices in their projects
10:28 I think that's kind of like my goal
10:30 cause I think that would be
10:31 a useful contribution to the ecosystem
10:33 I always like had this image of like
10:35 oh security is super cool
10:36 like you know
10:36 just like what you said the
10:38 you know the bug bounty and stuff is look like
10:40 like Wild West like instead of cowboy
10:42 you have all these like Sci-Fi hero and things
10:44 but then like I think yeah
10:45 it's more serious than you know
10:47 the fantasy world that you have to really
10:50 put your foot down and do a lot of like
10:52 very fundamental work that a
10:54 lot of people don't see
10:56 I just found it very difficult
10:58 that's why I kind of
10:59 uh left that kind of trend on like doing security
11:03 I I'm totally not a very secure person
11:05 I jaywalk all the time you know
11:07 this is like
11:09 not security reasons
11:11 yeah
11:12 I know you still you mention you're like
11:14 you're learning right now
11:15 but is there something actionable
11:18 we can do as an open source maintainer
11:21 to be even more secure right now
11:23 so I think um
11:24 for example github uh
11:26 is one of those places
11:28 that has been helping a lot with security practices
11:31 and I feel like they've made it easier
11:32 for maintainers to implement
11:34 some of their
11:34 like security stuff in their repositories
11:37 I would start with that
11:37 I would start with like anything that Github
11:39 like recommends they have very concise guides on like
11:43 beginner practices I would say
11:45 things like implementing secret scanning
11:47 or static analysis in your repositories
11:50 or like dependency updates
11:52 like automatic dependency updates with dependabot
11:55 some of these things are things that Github has
11:57 I think made very easy for maintainers to implement
12:01 so I would start with that
12:02 but
12:03 another thing that I've been doing a lot with
12:05 the repositories
12:06 so I'm I'm actually working with
12:08 the projects that are associated with the university of
12:10 California system
12:11 that's kind of the population that I'm working
12:13 just because I'm um
12:14 working from the OSPO of the university
12:16 and with other OSPOs
12:18 and a lot of what I'm doing with
12:19 these projects is analyzing
12:21 everything from like health practices
12:23 as in like do they have contributing guides
12:25 do they have issue templates
12:26 all of these things
12:27 all the way to more like advanced security stuff
12:30 and
12:30 one of the tools that I use a lot is the score cards
12:33 from the Open SSF
12:34 which is just a tool that will allow you to
12:36 measure a bunch of different security flags
12:38 in your repositories
12:39 I don't necessarily think that the score
12:42 is important to tell you
12:43 the actual picture of security in your repository
12:46 but it will give you some action items
12:47 so you will see some of the things that you are lacking
12:50 and it will give you some
12:51 good action things to start with
12:53 to increase the security
12:54 or your repository
12:55 I would say
12:56 maybe those two things would be
12:57 uh huh Things that I'm
12:58 Looking into right now
12:59 ya
13:00 so I'm familiar with the Github
13:02 you know
13:02 security checklist and I think it's very important
13:05 the secret scanning I know in the past
13:07 a long time ago I was a newbie
13:09 I committed the secret and I'm glad that it caught it
13:13 so
13:14 but the open SSF
13:16 score card how do we get that
13:18 I know I've heard this before
13:20 but I don't know how it works
13:21 like how do you get scored
13:24 so there's multiple ways of doing it
13:26 I mean if you go to the Scorecard dot Dev website
13:28 they just have
13:29 like a very easy explanation of how to get it
13:31 you can install it as a Github action
13:33 in your repository
13:34 so it would kind of run automatically
13:36 I don't do it like
13:37 that because I don't do it for my own repositories
13:39 I do it for other repositories
13:41 so they also have a CLI
13:42 so you just clone the repo
13:44 install the package
13:45 and you can just run it in your terminal
13:47 like scorecard
13:47 and then you put the link of the repository
13:49 and then it just runs
13:50 yeah like
13:51 like a CLI and they have like different output formats
13:55 so for example
13:56 what I do is I collect everything in JSON
13:59 and then I kind of
14:00 cause I'm running it for multiple repos
14:01 so I just have a python script
14:03 that will run it for all of them
14:04 and then I collect everything in JSON
14:06 and I just do a fancy CSV table
14:08 so I can see the results
14:09 but yeah you can do it as a github action also
14:12 oh I didn't know about this
14:13 I didn't know there was CLI
14:15 we need this run on our repos
14:16 should we actually run it on all kinds of repos
14:19 or is there certain projects
14:21 do you think that maybe more prone to this
14:26 should we run it against our PyPodcats website
14:30 I mean I don't know I'm
14:32 I'm actually also struggling with that
14:34 because I think that there is a lot of the checks
14:36 that scorecards have that
14:38 maybe are not important for
14:39 some types of repositories
14:41 like if it's like a very beginner repository
14:43 then some of the checks might not make as much sense
14:46 so I think it is okay to run it in every repository
14:49 as long as you can
14:51 kind of be objective about knowing what
14:53 the metrics that you are looking at mean
14:55 and how the characteristics of your repository
14:59 like make or not sense with the metrics that you're
15:02 looking at I think
15:03 it's a very cool tool
15:04 just because it will give you some
15:06 things that you can improve
15:08 regardless of what stage is your repository on
15:11 but I
15:12 I think it's something to be careful about that it's
15:14 it might not be like not all of the checks
15:16 might apply
15:17 for the type of project that you're working on
15:19 okay
15:19 now I want to address the elephant in the room like AI
15:22 is it good or bad for security in open source
15:25 oh my God
15:28 I think it could be good
15:29 um for certain things
15:30 I think AI for everything
15:32 it should be used very carefully
15:33 and I think understanding what AI is
15:35 understanding the way I see is part of life
15:36 is part of that it's like understanding that
15:38 it's not like a magician that's telling you answers
15:41 it's just statistics right
15:42 and I think that is part of
15:44 maybe the problem when people like
15:46 use it too much is like
15:47 they don't really know what's behind it
15:49 I've actually done a project with like
15:51 identifying vulnerabilities in code using AI
15:56 and I actually had fairly good results with like
15:58 the newest models
15:59 so I think there is
16:01 a possibility that maybe in the future
16:03 AI could be something very good for identifying
16:05 like
16:06 certain code patterns or
16:07 some of these things that could be dangerous
16:09 for your repositories
16:10 um whether life on that like 100%
16:13 I'm not sure like I wouldn't be like
16:15 oh I give this to an AI
16:17 and then if the AI says this is safe
16:18 then it's safe
16:19 I don't think that would be the way that I would do it
16:21 but I do think it it
16:22 could be a very good tool to uncover some things uh
16:25 like in an automatic way
16:27 now everybody's thinking like
16:28 how AI is gonna change our life
16:30 our profession and everything
16:31 so I have to ask this question
16:33 hmm
16:34 so Juanita I
16:35 I meant you earlier on you talk about
16:38 you know you've been
16:39 been involved in the community side of open source
16:42 you help run
16:43 you know hackathon and things
16:45 do you have some stories to share
16:48 like maybe there are unique events that happened
16:52 or are there certain challenges
16:55 that you'd like to share with our listeners
16:57 um let me think about it
16:59 so I think um I've done
17:02 like helping organize summits
17:04 for the Scientific Python Project
17:05 so we we do like a yearly summit with maintainers
17:08 this is has been only going for like three years
17:11 and I was
17:12 I was there for the first summit and it was a very
17:14 like a new experience for me to just kind of
17:17 figure out what you need to organize an event with like
17:20 the community
17:20 I think that maybe one of the challenging things from
17:24 from this is like how do you make people happy
17:26 cause you're like inviting them to uh
17:29 be in like a week or just like working on open source
17:33 which is already what most of them do
17:35 but it's like
17:35 they have to travel and they have to like
17:37 spend like a lot of their time
17:38 and like a lot of
17:39 cause it's more like a hands on thing
17:41 and I think things like
17:42 you need to find where they're gonna have dinner
17:44 And you need to find the food and like all of these things
17:45 and like all of these things are things that you maybe
17:48 you don't imagine that you have to plan
17:50 when you're organizing an event
17:51 but then it's like
17:51 people have to eat and you have to find them a hotel
17:54 like on all of these things was definitely challenging
17:57 and then I've also
17:58 being part of the organizing committee for SciPy
18:00 the the conference
18:01 and I'm in the like the communication side of it
18:05 so I help a lot with the social media outreach
18:08 that's kind of
18:09 what my main focus has been for the past three years
18:11 I've also seen you singing on stage for SciPy
18:15 oh yeah
18:17 yes
18:17 I don't know if we have that recording
18:19 yeah there's there's recordings for sure
18:21 we have a group that we call SciPy 5
18:24 and we make it part of the Lightning talks
18:26 so at the end of the conference
18:28 the last lightning talk is like a song
18:29 so we
18:30 we use
18:31 different things that have happened
18:33 during the conference
18:34 and we like create a song with it
18:36 wow And then we just sing a song at the end of the conference
18:38 it's hilarious
18:39 it's been one of the most fun experiences to do in SciPy
18:42 and I think SciPy is one of those conferences where
18:44 beautiful places in the world
18:46 I've been in other conferences
18:47 but I would not do that like
18:49 I would not put myself on a stage and sing a song for
18:52 like the conference
18:53 but SciPy is a very cool conference for that
18:55 I haven't been to SciPy so that sounds
18:58 that sounds fun
18:58 I think we need to bring more of this to other make
19:02 let's make other conferences fun as well
19:05 I haven't been to PyCon
19:07 okay you have to come
19:09 come to PyCon yeah
19:10 you need to stay on stage for us
19:13 You have to sing on stage
19:14 cause we have so many like
19:15 musical talents in the coredev team as well
19:17 I remember they produce a record for the PyLadies auction one year
19:21 so maybe you can you know
19:22 kind of have a jam session
19:26 that would be fun I would love to go to PyCon
19:28 um yeah
19:29 I think
19:29 you know SciPy and PyCon
19:31 you know all these community things great
19:33 but I know it's not always
19:34 you know sunshine and rainbows
19:35 you know
19:36 cause Mariatta can resonate right
19:37 like in open source you know
19:39 there's still like only around 10% of women and like
19:42 you know also security
19:43 I don't see a lot of women in security
19:45 as cyber security either so how do you navigate that
19:49 like
19:49 like what challenges do you face when like being
19:52 you know
19:52 a member of the underrepresented group in the industry
19:56 yeah
19:58 I guess my biggest challenge is the imposter syndrome
20:01 of like
20:02 feeling that I'm not good enough to be part of like
20:05 this community
20:06 I guess not necessarily
20:07 because I'm in an underrepresented community
20:09 but also just because my background is very different
20:11 like I didn't come from software
20:13 I actually come from math
20:14 so I feel like sometimes I lack a lot of these basics
20:17 and I also think that this challenge is like
20:19 I haven't had that a lot
20:21 but there's definitely been some
20:23 situations where I feel like I've
20:24 I've been treated differently
20:26 because I am part of an underrepresented community
20:29 I'm both a woman and Latina
20:31 so I'm doubly underrepresented
20:33 and I think
20:34 I think it's it's been tough in some situation
20:37 but at the but at the same time
20:38 it's make me want to work harder
20:41 I mean to prove myself
20:42 but also to represent the communities
20:45 right
20:45 to like to make sure that people know that women are
20:47 to make sure that people know that women
20:49 can also be great at their jobs
20:50 can also be great coders can also be great at
20:53 at managing people like all of these things
20:55 so I think it's
20:56 it's inspire me to work harder
20:57 maybe some of that comes from my own
20:59 like insecurity and imposter syndrome
21:01 but I think the consequences are good
21:03 I think the consequences of like
21:04 working harder
21:05 and trying to achieve more and grow more are
21:08 are always good
21:09 and I also think that
21:11 I mean one of the ways that
21:12 I guess I navigate that is by
21:14 getting closer to people who will inspire me
21:18 and will
21:19 I guess elevate my work
21:20 and I think the open source community
21:21 I think the open source community
21:22 the Python community the scientific Python community
21:25 it's full of those people
21:26 it's full of people who will
21:27 tell you all the time how good of a job you're doing
21:30 and will elevate you
21:31 and will teach you and will mentor you
21:33 and I think that's been like
21:34 the most important thing for me
21:35 is to surround myself
21:37 with the people that will allow me to grow
21:39 and not
21:40 kind of push me down
21:41 that's really important and I love hearing this
21:43 ya And I feel like a lot of us can really
21:46 relate and resonate with what you
21:49 you know what you experience
21:50 I do believe that it's
21:51 it's very important to find the right
21:53 of the right community and I do
21:56 I agree like
21:57 the Python community is kind of special in that
22:00 you can always find someone like
22:02 I feel the whole community is always there
22:05 wanting and willing to help you and support you so
22:08 and I think you mentioned a very good point
22:10 like imposter syndrome
22:11 because I don't know when I meet you maybe
22:13 maybe like you know
22:13 a little bit before SciPy or
22:15 or SciPy I can't remember
22:16 but like
22:16 we met in Colombia
22:17 Maybe oh maybe PyCon Colombia yes
22:20 yeah but when I look at you
22:21 it's just like oh my God
22:22 you're so amazing so confident and so many talent
22:25 and I feel like
22:26 even if you say that you have imposter syndrome
22:28 I I'm pretty sure that a lot of people in the community
22:31 will feel the same you know
22:32 like
22:32 so sometimes you know
22:33 is sometimes you know
22:34 um yeah
22:35 finding a
22:36 supportive group that you can just be open about it
22:39 and like you know
22:39 that is very
22:41 that's that's very valuable
22:42 yeah and I feel like for me as well
22:45 one of the reasons I feel like
22:47 I'm not good enough is because I don't see a lot of
22:51 people who look like me you know
22:52 people I who I can relate to
22:54 and sometimes you feel like you just question yourself
22:57 like
22:57 am I really really good am I here because I'm good
23:00 or am I here just because
23:02 they need to feel in somebody
23:04 you know
23:05 um I
23:05 I think that's still a challenge that I
23:07 personally face I don't know about you all
23:09 yeah no for sure
23:11 I always feel like a lot of times
23:12 like
23:12 we trying to compare things that are not comparable
23:16 like
23:16 I've seen a lot of women in tech
23:18 they do a lot of very important role
23:20 they take on very important role
23:21 doing very important work
23:22 but maybe they are not always those like shiny and like
23:26 you know work that admire by a lot of people
23:28 so
23:28 it's unfair to compare like
23:31 those people's achievement to the more typical
23:33 people's achievement and I think that's
23:36 you know
23:36 sometimes make you feel a bit underwhelmed of your
23:39 what you have done so yeah
23:41 yeah that's true
23:42 and I think when I first joined the Spyder Team I
23:44 I was actually the only woman
23:46 and that was a lot of responsibility for me
23:49 like
23:49 I felt like I was representing women in the team and I
23:53 I had to kind of put the face of like what
23:56 what women can do um
23:58 that was a lot of responsibility
23:59 but it was
24:00 I think it was also a very good experience for me to
24:04 like
24:04 you know like just learn that I can do all these things
24:07 at the beginning
24:07 I wasn't a software developer
24:09 when I got invited to be part of the Spyder team
24:11 and I was like I don't know if I can do this
24:12 but just
24:13 joining the team
24:14 and being part of a community that wants to help you
24:17 and mentor you
24:17 I think that was
24:18 that was a great experience
24:19 and it's good that you bring those like
24:21 experience and to kind of help other people as well
24:25 uh huh
24:25 thaat's great yeah
24:26 I'd like to hear more about your
24:29 you your other YouTube about singing haha
24:31 can you tell us more about it
24:33 can you have a links to share haha
24:36 should we subscribe to it
24:38 yes yes
24:39 yeah so I
24:40 I actually started singing when I was very
24:43 very little
24:44 like in like maybe choirs and
24:47 and bands and stuff like that
24:48 and actually when I was like 12 years old
24:50 I went to The X Factor in Colombia and um
24:55 wow I passed a few rounds then they kicked me out
24:58 and I remember one of the judges told me like
25:00 you have a very pretty voice
25:01 but you need
25:02 you need to study cause you don't have enough
25:04 like volume and enough like projection of your voice
25:07 and that was for me
25:08 like that's what made me want to become better
25:11 so as like as after I got kicked out of The X Factor
25:15 I went and I started studying music and taking like
25:18 vocal technique lessons
25:20 and I guess I I yeah
25:21 I started becoming better and I think after yeah
25:24 so when I was in my undergrad I started this project
25:27 I created a YouTube channel and I started uh
25:30 recording and doing videos
25:31 it was always covers
25:32 I've never been like writing my own music
25:35 but it's it's been always like covers
25:37 um but it was like a lot of work
25:39 so after maybe two years I was like
25:41 I don't think I can do this as much so I
25:44 I have a YouTube channel with a lot of videos
25:46 but I haven't done much in the past few years
25:49 and I also have played with like different bands
25:52 so before I
25:53 I moved from Colombia to the US like four or five
25:56 years ago and before I moved I was uh
25:58 singing with a band and we had some like
26:00 concerts and things like that
26:02 and that was very very fun
26:03 and now I'm in the US and it's a little bit harder
26:05 and I
26:06 I not necessarily have found the right people haha
26:09 to do music
26:10 but it's something that I definitely still have in me
26:13 like I think music is one of those things that I
26:15 I never leave behind and
26:17 the first thing I bought when I got here was a guitar
26:20 and then I bought a piano
26:21 a keyboard it's right there
26:22 oh
26:24 yeah
26:26 and it's like one of those things that I feel
26:28 feels my heart with joy so it's
26:31 I guess it keeps my mental health
26:33 and
26:34 it's something that I like to share a lot with people
26:36 too
26:36 so just like singing for people
26:38 playing for people is something that I really
26:40 I really enjoy doing too
26:41 I have to break a news for you
26:43 cause this year in Europython
26:44 they have formed a band
26:46 so
26:47 oh wow
26:47 yes it started with
26:49 you know I don't know if you know him
26:51 our friend Moses like he perform a little bit of like
26:54 you know a music at
26:56 at the lighting talk just like you do
26:58 you know it's just a little bit fun music
26:59 and then it grow and grow into like
27:01 there are more and more people joining him
27:03 and they will bring their musical
27:05 instrument to EuroPython and this year
27:07 if you look at the recording
27:08 like they perform all together on stage
27:11 that's amazing so
27:12 um just so you know
27:14 you can come to EuroPython and jam with everyone
27:18 they would love to have you
27:19 I would love to do that
27:20 I think it's uh
27:21 for me I'm just
27:22 I really admire that like I
27:24 I admire your you know
27:26 like rejection not rejection
27:28 like you got kicked out
27:29 you mentioned you got kicked out from something
27:31 but you took it as motivation to make you even better
27:36 I think that's really inspiring
27:38 like congrats for doing that
27:39 some people thinks like once they fail at something
27:42 they give up they don't wanna do it anymore
27:45 but you continued on to do it so it's really cool
27:48 when I was a kid I wanted to be Shakira
27:51 to be what
27:52 Shakira
27:53 oh yes I love her music
27:55 yes yes yes
27:56 I was like is everybody in Colombia so talented
27:59 I think so
28:01 yeah
28:02 I wanted to be her when I was a kid
28:04 I thought I was gonna like
28:05 follow that path and study music
28:08 and just become a musician
28:09 like be a singer
28:10 I'm glad I didn't
28:11 because I think that I would have missed
28:13 on all the other side of
28:15 the work that I do and the things that I do
28:17 that are also very close to my heart
28:19 but I yeah
28:20 it's funny cause I
28:21 I really thought that that's what I was gonna do
28:23 yeah I do enjoy going to
28:25 dancing with the organisers of PyCon Colombia
28:28 that's
28:29 that's amazing I was like
28:30 I won't struggle cause a lot of times we say like
28:32 oh like if you go to PyCon or like
28:35 we are just a bunch of nerds
28:36 we don't party we don't dance
28:37 no look at that I mean like
28:39 mm hmm mm hmm everybody dance we're cool nerds
28:41 hahaha yes hahaha
28:44 we also dance a little bit
28:45 like at the social event of PyCon Greece
28:47 I think at the end
28:48 usually it's like people need to really like
28:51 you know
28:51 warm up
28:52 spend lots of time to warm up until they will be like
28:54 okay now we can dance
28:55 but like I like in
28:57 in Colombia
28:57 it's just like everybody just like right away
28:59 you know let's dance
29:00 you know like
29:02 we're very warm
29:05 that's just yeah
29:07 another thing that I I really miss
29:08 I have
29:08 I really miss PyCon Colombia that that was really
29:11 really fun experience that was
29:13 I miss the community there
29:15 they are just amazing yeah
29:17 oh yeah
29:17 or do you have any other topics we want
29:19 you want to talk about before we wrap it up
29:21 um no
29:23 I would say thank you so much for inviting me
29:25 and I really feel very grateful to be part of um
29:29 the Python community the
29:31 the Python community the scientific Python community
29:34 the open source community in general
29:35 and
29:36 I really love the work that you two are doing
29:38 in elevating the people from the community
29:40 and showing the work that they're doing um
29:42 to the world
29:43 cause I think that is a very important part of
29:45 of being part of of this
29:47 you know of
29:47 of feeling that the work that you're doing counts
29:50 and that people um
29:51 appreciate it
29:51 so I'm really grateful that you invited me and
29:54 and yeah I hope you keep up the
29:56 the good work cause I'm I'm really yeah
29:58 I really like what you're trying to do
30:00 thank you Juanita
30:01 thank you for joining us we're really grateful to hear
30:04 and I think your story is really inspiring
30:06 so yeah thank you so much
30:07 yeah so thank you so much for inspiring all of us
30:10 if you who are watching
30:12 if you want us to inspire more people
30:14 please uh
30:15 consider donating to PyPodcats
30:17 uh because
30:18 you know to produce this kind of
30:20 episode uh
30:21 it's not like running a conference
30:22 it's not as expensive
30:23 but it still require money to have all this equipment
30:26 we are not monetizing our videos or podcast
30:29 so we need your uh donation to support us to
30:29 we need your uh donation to support us
30:32 you know
30:33 keep doing this and inspire more people and um
30:36 just
30:36 give people who have been
30:37 people who have
30:38 doing so much hard work for the community a shout out
30:41 so people know about them
30:43 thank you so much for watching
30:44 and this is Juanita amazing
30:47 thank you
30:50 hope to see you
30:51 again next time in our next episode of PyPodcats
30:54 Hidden Figures of Python
30:55 thank you everybody bye
18:44 people really have a lot of fun with that

We interviewed Juanita Gomez.

Juanita is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at UC Santa Cruz, where her research focuses on improving the security of scientific open source software in collaboration with the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) at UCSC. She is a former developer of the Spyder IDE, and currently one of the community managers for the Scientific Python project. She is also part of the organizing committee for the SciPy conference.

In this episode, Juanita shares how a music YouTube channel led her to open source: the video editing skills she picked up making covers helped her create friendlier documentation, tutorials, and videos for Spyder, which caught the attention of the Scientific Python project founders. She talks about bridging her security research with her passion for open source, and gives practical advice for maintainers who want to make their projects more secure, from GitHub’s built-in security features to the OpenSSF Scorecard. She also opens up about imposter syndrome, being doubly underrepresented as a woman and Latina in tech, and how surrounding herself with people who elevate her work keeps her growing. And yes, there is singing: from auditioning for The X Factor in Colombia as a kid to performing lightning talk songs with the SciPy 5 at the SciPy conference.

Be sure to listen to the episode to learn all about Juanita’s inspiring story!

Topic discussed

  • Introductions
  • Getting to know Juanita
  • How Juanita joined Spyder and made its documentation more friendly
  • Reaching new audiences through YouTube tutorials and TikTok
  • Joining the Scientific Python project as a community manager
  • Her Ph.D. research on open source security at UC Santa Cruz
  • Actionable security tips for maintainers: GitHub security features and the OpenSSF Scorecard
  • AI and open source security
  • Organizing the Scientific Python summits and the SciPy conference
  • Imposter syndrome and being a woman and Latina in tech
  • Juanita’s music journey, from The X Factor in Colombia to singing at SciPy

Get to know Juanita Gomez

Juanita Gomez

Juanita Gomez

Juanita Gomez is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at UC Santa Cruz, where her research focuses on improving the security of scientific open source software in collaboration with the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) at UCSC. She is a passionate programmer, mathematician, and open-source advocate, former developer of Spyder IDE at Quansight, and current community leader for the Scientific Python project, a community effort to better coordinate and support scientific Python libraries. She is also part of the organizing committee for the SciPy conference.

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