Hi everybody, welcome to PyPodcats
Hidden Figures of Python podcast series.
The PyPodcats is created to
highlight voices from the underrepresented group
group members of the Python community.
We follow the Python Software
Foundation's Code of Conduct.
So if you want to know a little bit more about
the Code of Conduct, you can check on pypodcats.live/conduct
That's pypodcats.live/conduct
Let me do a little bit of a self introduction.
My name is Georgi and I'm based in Amsterdam.
I'm one of the PyPodcats hosts and I'm
also one of the board director from the PSF.
Over to you, Tereza.
Hi, my name is Tereza, I'm based in Hamburg.
I'm also one of the PyPodcats.
I'm involved in several initiatives of Python Software
Foundation, like the Code of Conduct Work Group
Diversity and Inclusion workgroup, and PyLadies Hamburg.
And on to you, Vicky, our guest for this episode.
Hi everyone, Vicky here.
I'm based in Dublin, Ireland.
I look after PyLadies Dublin here, and I
have many, many hats on which we'll name,
but I am helping out in the PSF
Grants Working group as well, amongst other things.
So thank you for having me here today
And thank you, Vicky, for joining.
Well, Vicky, you have been an active member
in the Python community for quite some time.
So how do you get started using the Python language?
That was back in around 2002 when my now husband
then we used to work together in the company.
He came across Python and we decided
to use it to help streamline, streamline
our internal tools, processes made our life really easy,
as devs are kind of lazy and stuff.
So this really helped us out a lot. And it was out.
It was just really nice and simple to use.
And it was actually days before we encountered Python,
I did a Perl course at work and had the cert.
I was just sitting there lying on
the table, forgotten once I discovered Python.
So that's how I started using Python quite early on.
And it was just really helped
us out, really improved things.
I was helped with a lot of projects, especially with
the management and things like that, which is great to
see that even current day, I see my old colleagues
still using Python and things like that.
I assume they improved on the tools, but
it was good to be super early and
just making life easy for everyone, using a
super amazing technology and super easy to use.
That's really cool.
I have a question, though, regarding
your involvement in the Python community.
What attracted you to the community itself, like
organizing events and getting into PyLadies, for example?
You're not just coding in Python,
but you're doing so much more.
I suppose back in those days before Meetup and
Eventbrite came around, you have to know in Ireland
we may have one meetup a year. And that's true.
The irish Linux user group mailing list, if
you are honest and primarily word of mouth.
As much as I love my work colleagues at
the time, I do want to learn from other
people, like my peers, from other companies as well,
and other technology, which I just want my brain
to be melted a little bit and don't understand.
So when Python came about, probably two years after
we discovered Python and we saw other people who
were doing toys and stuff, and in Dublin, I
saw the meetup, jumped on it.
That was about 2004.
It was started by an engineer called
Darragh Sherwin, and then it got rebooted
in 2005 by the amazing Sean O'Donnell.
And we were gathered around a dark pub. Irish pub.
Yes, we're in Ireland. Stereotype.
We all meet in the pub.
Yes, that's what we do.
Sit around this tiny laptop in
the dark pub just not working.
And someone said, let's get a room
with a projector and give talks.
And no one volunteered.
So I said, oh, how hard could it be?
So I took the ball and ran with it and
ran the Python Ireland meetups every month, nearly every month
for nearly over eleven years before I handed it over.
So that's how I got involved
with the Python Ireland community.
It was pretty much very early on, and
when everything was extremely exciting, completely new technology,
that was the hottest thing right then, and
everyone just wanted to share what they did
with Python and its related technologies. With PyLadies,
that's another, another story as well that got
launched during PyCon Ireland in 2013 as well.
So, yeah, a lot of things kind of started
by me, I think a serial starter of things.
So when was that?
Is that in like a year?
It was.
So PyLadies Dublin was launched in 2013.
So that was my last year chairing PyCon Ireland 2013.
It was a pivotal moment because I managed to
invite a very first female keynote technical speaker, and
that was Lynn Root, and she was co founder
of the San Francisco chapter of PyLadies.
And I go, it's a sign.
Why not launch PyLadies Dublin?
I was launching not for profit initiatives all
over the place around 2012 and 13.
I said, what's one more to add to the list?
So we launched it in 2013 during sprints weekend, and
we had about six-ish people, a nice yummy cake
and a plan that we don't want to be the
same as other technical user groups at the time, which
we know is mainly two long talks with beer and
pizza in the middle, and then the pub afterwards.
And I did say we go to pub meetups a lot here,
especially in Ireland, but the folks here did not want to go
to pubs, did not want pizza and beer all the time.
They wanted something more interactive, but
they do want something monthly.
And, I mean, I'm still doing it right now, and it's currently
trying to keep it small to try and make sure that it's
not too scary for someone who's new coming into the group and
who wants to speak up or want to give a talk, or
just want to go around and meet other people and just don't
feel like they want to run away.
And because I'm not a coder or I'm not this, I'm
not a Python person, just want to make sure you just
come along, you're curious, or you just want to share and
be excited about something you found in Python.
Just share with us.
It's a safe space.
So that's 2013, quite a while ago.
I'd like to add a question, a follow up question.
Maybe it's a bit off script.
Okay, so how has your involvement in
the Python community helped in your career,
or has it helped in your career?
Helping, yes.
And I'm so blessed to have come across the Python
community, especially, as I said, I was really very privileged
in the right place at the right time, being able
to see Python in the early days, being able to
see a lot of the core developers, especially when I've
gone to EuroPython and I actually came across them.
I didn't even know they were the core developers.
And then I kind of nearly fainted when
my husband told me, you were sitting on
the table with all the core developers.
But they were so welcoming and so inviting and
so amazing to talk to and so supportive.
Those early days in 2009, while we're trying to
prepare our first conference in 2010 for PyCon Ireland,
it was the support of John Pinner and everyone
that helped us through, you know, setting up, like,
thinking of the ethos and why you're setting up
the conference, who you're setting it up for.
I think meeting those people and being supportive gave
me the kind of positivity that I want to
pay forward and help others as well.
And that's why I carry that as I left Python
Ireland behind and PyCon Ireland behind, because other people have
to take over, and I was burning out, but I
still want to carry on PyLadies Dublin, and I just
love how just even Global PyLadies, how we still have
that ethos of trying to help each other, trying to
be inclusive and have safe spaces and stuff.
And that goes same with EuroPython as well.
And that is a huge scale.
But I end up joining a lot of those just to
figure out how things work and run in the background to
try and improve how I do things here in Ireland and
also share that experience with other tech community organizers.
So from a community side of things,
I have learned a lot as a
volunteer, running events, hosting events, organizing events.
Career wise, I kind of stepped back a lot from
being a developer, as I got more pulled into the
community side, even though it's all mostly volunteer.
But I ended up working with say like
Dog Patch Labs, a co-sharing space, who also
runs a startup program here currently.
But they have a space for events and they were launching
it at the time and they asked me to come in
and connect them to the technical user groups around Dublin to
tell them to come along and use this.
So I was pretty much like a liaison with the irish tech
scene and I was trying to keep a finger on the pulse.
There is a very active kind of tech community here.
So Python, I think, formed the basis from that
where I started to meet a lot of different
people because the meetup scene was so small and
everyone start branching off and created their own niche
groups not technically Python related, go to
games, to different language user groups.
From that I bounced from different very kind
of interesting roles, like a game and curator
researcher for Dublin science gallery.
Back in 2012, around that same period that was,
I got paid to play games, research about games,
go to games, festivals and things like that.
And they came.
I interviewed a lot of game exhibitors, or
potential exhibitors who became exhibitors, and the gallery
produced an amazing wonder world of an exhibition
from my black and white spreadsheet.
It was fantastic.
That was completely so far away from coding, but
related to games, related to tech connected me to
a lot of indies, and that's where I got
involved with a lot of indies.
So I kind of very spread out in a lot of geeky things.
So community meant a lot to me.
So even though I start moving away from
python stuff, I always think back to how
I got started, and that is Python.
The community itself, the warm heartedness and the open
arms of the community that brought me in in
those early days and showed me the ropes.
And I want to push, give that to everyone else
because it is hard to start off for a lot
of people, it is hard if you fall down, especially
COVID, and you need to restart again.
You need that boost.
And I want to help everyone as much as I could. Right.
I think you're not the first invited guest
that said how important the community has actually
led us into the group and how it
actually motivates us into, like, creating more events,
creating more opportunities for everyone to join.
Your story about how you started PyLadies in Dublin actually
reminds me of how I started, because I was already
in PyCon Thailand, and organizing the event, and one of
the speakers was Lena from PyLadies Japan, Tokyo.
And she gave a talk about PyLadies, and I was
like, hey, wait a minute, there isn't one in Bangkok.
And that was how I actually started
PyLadies Bangkok, along with another co founder.
So I think a lot of us just kind of like a
kind of chain effect that we actually link from one to another.
And I also like the way you
mentioned about how you started PyCon Ireland.
It was a core group of us in the beginning.
There's only like six to maybe
twelve back before Pycon Ireland
was like, you have to know that our
largest ever meetup was, like, 20 people.
You know, this is really small,
but it was enthusiastic, 20 people.
But then when we had our first
PyCon Ireland, it was nearly 100.
And we go, where were the rest of you?
And we're asking for people to come and talk.
That was boiling down to us wanting
to get more experience, because it was.
I pointed to PyCon UK and John Pinner.
It was because they were
It was them who were actually calling out
for the next host for EuroPython in 2010. For 2010.
And the core bunch of us would just so happen
to be in EuroPython in Birmingham the year before, when
they were doing a call for city to host.
And that's how it started, really.
The ball got started there, and then, of
course, a pub got in there as well.
And when we're back in Ireland, and I was the
only sober one, but that was another side story.
But we started PyCon Ireland.
And yes, a bunch of us.
And of course, when you need someone to open
the conference and being a bunch of techies, no
one wants to stand in front of everyone.
So I got, hey, Vicky,
you're doing a bunch of work.
You know what's going on.
You go and tell everyone what's happening.
So people say it's down to practice. When, how. Why?
How do you speak in front of people?
But it's more like it's still quite nerve,
nerve wracking, but you have to do it. It's like a job.
You just get pushed out in front
or else the conference will never start.
So we just went ahead, did it.
And so it wasn't just me, it was a team effort.
It was such a big job.
Okay, fair enough.
Myself and my husband did spend the first
planning the first PyCon, mostly in Hong Kong and
Starbucks, trying to figure out sponsorship and figuring out
swag and programs and the website.
We did most of stuff, but it's still a
team effort because we need that support from the
community in order to make it happen.
And we had to start
from scratch, everything from scratch.
And it's really hard.
So I completely, you know, understand if someone
was starting anything from scratch with nothing to
back, nothing, no sponsor, no nothing. We know.
I know how hard it is.
I just keep thinking back when I
first started, how hard it was.
And now, even with all the information, all
the stuff that's happening, it's still hard.
You don't know where to go and where to start.
So having, you know.
So, yeah, I tried to give the information
I have could be out of date, but
I tried to learn from others as well.
So it's always a learning process.
You know how many people
attended PyCon Ireland, last time?
Do you know, like around.
Well, I can tell you, whatever the max, the hotel can
safely fit us in because we keep pushing the numbers.
We went from 100.
They saved us the first year because we lost
our evening event space on the first year.
Things go wrong as usual.
It always goes wrong when you organize stuff.
So this hotel, Horizon Blue, they hosted us.
It was like, initially it was like
100, 150 to 250 to 350.
We keep pushing and pushing.
So whatever the max.
I don't know, 400? I have no idea.
Whatever the max, their halls fit.
It's like three banquet halls that they.
It's like a huge banquet hall that can split into
three for a session is very normal in hotels.
And then for the plenary, they opened up the
three halls again to make it a plenary session.
So whatever the safety, the safe amount of
people they can fit in for their health
and safety, that is the amount. It's a few hundred.
So it's quite good and quite consistent, like, as well.
So it's nice to see and it's nice
to be an attendee and not an organizer.
So currently, what are you actually working on?
Like, is there any new activities or
some Python related events or PyLadies?
Yeah, I still run PyLadies each month.
There is a growing team of helpers.
I'm trying to support them and trying to get them
to get things going, like the Python study group and
things like that, and any ideas like PyLadies.
Dublin we're very open on what people want to do.
I can be very experimental. Other things.
I'm involved with another
initiative called Coding Grace.
We advocate diversity in tech, mainly myself
through coding Grace, we curate newsletters and
events in around the island of Ireland.
But we do have a virtual series of events
for the next few months coming up called Cupán Tae
Cupán Tae is an irish word for cup of tea,
because, as I mentioned, we don't like, PyLadies,
We don't like beer and pizza, so we like a cup tea.
I do have a couple.
My mug of tea in front of me right now, an Irish Tea.
And that's this particular.
This particular conference is aimed at principal engineers, head
of engineering staff engineers, because we do, there's a
lot of events, but there's not one.
There wasn't one aimed at very senior level, so
we wanted to create one called Cupán Tae Conf.
So hopefully we get enough
interest for the virtual ones.
We do have three speakers all lined up.
Laura Nolan talking about path dependence.
History matters on March 26, John Looney second
system event, not a new problem, on April
4, Patricia Aas, who's an international speaker talking
about classic vulnerabilities in May 7th
And details can be found in cupantaeconf.com
That's one big one.
How do you spell cupantea?
Can I have a cup on tea, please?
Cupán
So C U P.
So there's an á.
I know in French, you call it an "aigu".
So I don't know what other languages, what you call it
It's like.
It's like on top of the a there is like a
Accent aigu. Yeah.
So in Irish, that's a "Fada", because elongates the a.
So it's Cupán.
So C U P A Fada N. Cupán. Space. T A E.
And that's tae. Cupán Tae.
So it's a cup of tea. Right. Right.
So what is irish tea?
Is it black tea or?
Yeah, it's normal tea. We have.
I don't want to go into the whole argument. There's two.
There's Lyons, or Barry's. Lyons is pretty
much in Dublin, but everywhere else is Barry's,
and I'm Barry's tea person.
But I don't know if you want to keep that in
the podcast, but it might cause a fury in Ireland.
"I don't want to listen to Vicky anymore!"
"She drinks Barry's tea!"
Tea should be that way.
Yes, it should be like Barry's or Lyons.
You know, the Lyons when people know it's
Lyons because it's like a pyramid shaped tea
bag and it's all these kind of things.
If you go down further south
of Ireland, it's definitely Barry's tea.
I grew up with Barry's tea.
I think it's fine, but it's fun to pull the leg
of people who are very serious about their irish tea.
You drink your tea with milk or.
Yeah, I drink my tea with milk.
No sugar sometimes, but normally no sugar.
Yeah, this is a funny conversation.
Normally a conversation.
I will actually talk if I was running
a podcast or Cupán Tae, to be honest.
But yeah, I do have a cup of milk tea in
front of me and it's a mug with cats on it.
Don't know if you see it.
For the podcast.
Just so happen I picked it up.
You have quite a professional setup.
Do you do other things with or why
do you have such a professional setup?
Oh, that was from thanks to COVID, things got
upgraded more and more because my imac only had,
I think the camera was like 720p
and I wasn't very happy with it.
I wanted more high def because I was
doing a lot of podcasts, streaming, live streaming
and stuff and I wasn't very happy.
And I want a higher camera ratio
I want at least 1080.
So my camera, it got upgraded.
My lights got upgraded.
My microphone upgraded at least twice.
I think I have like audio switchers.
I have, you know, other switches in front of
me and then the lights in the back keeps
getting upgraded a little bit here and there.
So yeah, there's a lot of.
I still got lots of things kind of I want to
do because it's not just purely I want to do a
lot more content creation, but been talking about that for two
years to everyone who's known me so far.
But before that I've been doing a lot of stuff for.
When I was a maker advocate for Dublin Maker.
That was in my past, it was part of.
It was actually a cool freelance gig with Dublin Maker.
If you're into the making culture, they
run a Maker festival and COVID really
dented the whole maker advocacy because you're
meeting makers, physically meeting makers.
You physically go into colleges, talking to
lecturers that you're potentially helping teachers learn
about STEAM and workshops and stuff.
And you can't do that when there's a whole lockdown.
And at one stage, we can't even go outside,
two clicks outside our home from our own.
So what we end up doing was, what
I ended up doing was doing more content
creation, doing my own stuff, learning to sew,
showing that off, and then starting to interview
other, remotely other makers in and around Ireland.
Then we had to do a virtual Dublin Maker festival.
That was fun, where we had, like,
a newscaster type thing with two side
science communicators running around like a roving
reporters, doing live interviews and stuff.
And I was also broadcasting as well as
in the behind the scenes operations as well.
So it was completely hectic.
And then after that, I went in with another friend.
We did an Irish Makers podcast.
We interviewed a lot of different people, from
blacksmiths to special effects people, to bladesmiths to
cosplayers to people, how they felt makers, how
they felt being isolated during COVID Well, all
those kind of different topics. So it was.
And we even went to Dublin ComicCon
and interviewed a lot of cosplayers there.
So we did a lot of content work,
and also Dublin maker itself on site.
So besides sitting here, we were also doing stuff
off site or on site at the various locations.
So that's why all the setup is just gone
It's just got built up over the period, thanks to COVID, as
I said, and ended up doing a lot of digital stuff. So.
And that kind of feeds into some of the.
I think mostly, yeah, that was the Maker stuff,
which I still tried to promote, I think, during
COVID helped a lot during PyLadies Dublin as well.
We kept on going with our monthly meetups,
so we saw that there was a lot
of people watching playbacks, not necessarily attending live,
because I think people were having Zoom fatigue
at that stage, which is very understandable.
I made peace with the numbers.
I was very upset setting it all up and
had a few new meltdowns because tech went wrong.
One stage, people didn't leave after
20 minutes of tech melting down.
They were still hanging around for me to keep it going.
And I had a very special guest as well.
I think it was from ImagiLabs.
I had the CTO one that was like my January
very big event, and it went horribly, horribly wrong.
But everyone was super nice.
And that's what I love about
communities like ours, especially PyLadies Dublin.
Technical difficulties, either virtual or even just this month when
we had our meetup, we had a few technical difficulties,
and people are all okay with it because they're just
super nice, you know, but that's tech.
And I'm hoping to, myself and my husband
hoping to improve our recording at different, at
the PyLadies events at the very least.
And hopefully we will help other user groups
who are running their technical meetups to help
them record their talks, because I can see
people asking them, are your talks recorded?
Are your talks recorded?
And they're not.
So we're not going to do it for free, but we're
not also not going to charge them a huge amount.
But we definitely understand that, you know, people do need some
of the content and we just give them the videos, you
know, take the videos, clean it up a bit and just
give it to them and let them, let them like, so
it's just to, again, an extension of, you know, community work
that we're doing here and helping people.
And especially now that I heard feedback that
people do appreciate online events because it's more
accessible, because they can't come into the city
to go to an event in the evening.
Things are just in, the real life is
in the way you can't make it.
It's not like they don't want to come.
They physically can't make the time to get to it, but
they would be able to watch it if it's online or
make playback, but they do appreciate if it's streamed online.
So I kind of appreciated that kind of feedback as well.
So, so we're making a conscious effort to try and make
it accessible, but it is a lot more work, as you
know, here with a lot of editing and video.
It does take a lot more time and stuff like that.
And so people, if you, if you.
Need help, Vicky and her husband is here for you.
I think there's one more that was very interesting thing
that I'm involved in, is I try to stay away
from startups, but I'm bumped into a friend of mine,
as everyone does after COVID for a coffee.
And I told her, there's this itch that I'm scratching
from Coding Grace side, that there was a lot of female
founders are coming to us for advice, just privately asking
for help, saying that they're not techies.
What do I do?
What tech do I use?
Oh, I'm locked out of my AWS account.
The person that was contracting us can't be found because
they forgot to give us all this kind of stuff.
And, you know, how do we do we get a CTO net?
All these kind of questions.
I was just telling my friend, and
she just so happens to be relaunching.
TechFoundHer.
So Tech Found and then H E R, and she wanted to do a
bootcamp and she said she had similar ideas, similar people coming up
to her as well, but she was more in the startup space,
so she was talking to a lot of people.
So between my background and her background as well,
she used to run Tech For Good Dublin
We decided to put our heads together last year to
run this bootcamp and we're doing again this year.
It's aimed at female founders in the kind of pre-seed like
early stage or you have an idea and you want to
create a startup but you don't necessarily have a tech background,
but you know you will end up using some tech in
some form or another in your startup.
It's a way to bring the community together, share
experiences, kind of demystify tech, and just to know
you don't have to be a coder to run
us through a startup that uses tech as well.
And we have some pretty amazing kind of speakers
which will be announced in the next few weeks.
And the bootcamp itself is happening on Tuesday, April
16 in a historical beautiful building that is at
Dublin City hall in Dublin city centre.
And looking forward to that.
So that's kind of something a little bit different,
sort of related crosses over, because again, it advocates
diversity in an area startup, which is, I know
we have a lot of problems in tech. Oh my goodness.
Startup is like another barrel of fun there.
So it's good to be able to
help where I can with TechFoundHer.
So I'm pretty much kind of helping the
operation side of things where I can.
So as you can see, when I do a lot of these
kind of events, I tend to be ended up admin and operations.
So that's why it's not the most fun part of it, but
it is necessary for anyone who wants to get in community.
Yes, it's lovely to talk to people.
It's scary to talk in front of a lot of people
if you're on stage, if you're not comfortable, but you still
have to do a lot of admin work in the background,
which is not the fun part, but you have to like
finances, your AGMs, if you're a incorporated kind of organization and
all that kind of stuff, it is.
It is not fun, but you have to do it.
But I somehow I keep on, I don't
know, would you say punishing myself for this?
I keep doing.
I don't think that's kind of like punishing.
It's just like if you want something to
move on, someone has to do the job.
Right, yeah.
And I think it's really hard to.
Find someone to like last minute.
If you want to find someone to manage, to
finance, probably it's much faster to get yourself to.
It's great.
It's great experience, especially.
I noticed that, like doing small kind of
events, small organizations like the ones I do,
I can turn around stuff very quickly.
But then, as I said, I worked as the maker advocate
for Dublin Maker, and that was actually a paid position.
It was a very special once one, and it was
part of, it was funded by Science Foundation Ireland.
So the money has to go through
an institution which is a university.
So Dublin City University was where one of
the volunteer organizers or the founders worked, and
that's where the money was going through and
that's where the funding was going to.
And so I was kind of a staff of
the university, so it was a public institution.
Dealing with finance was a completely new scale
from mini organization that I look after to
a university which has two different finance departments.
You try not to annoy any of them, trying to
be friends as you sort out through your budgets and
stuff, because you have to write reports for the funder
who funds you, and you have to make sure everything
and their system is so slow and everything and codes
everywhere and all these words you never heard of before.
And I was very lucky.
The staff there is very nice.
The department secretary was so patient, and I was
there nearly every day for like the first three
weeks, trying to ask so many questions.
So it's a great experience.
I know it's not what everyone thinks of when
they say they want to start up like a
community group or running a conference and things like
that, but it's great experience, especially when it comes
to organization in general operations.
And as you say, finances helps a lot.
At least you have an inkling of what a
budget is, how expenses work, everything, you know, keep
things on track, the, you know, things like that.
They're trying to figure out how to,
how to herd cats, as with all
volunteers, trying to run conferences and stuff.
So it's good experience and it will help you
if you in your career as well, in, you
know, in your day to day stuff as well.
So it's not purely just for.
Just for people bearing in mind if
they want to come, come help.
I'm not trying to scare you away, but
it is very good skills, really good life
skills, and very good skills in general to
have, because you won't be, because it's just.
It's not something that you can just pick.
Yeah, it's not something that you just pick
up just like that and just do it. Yeah.
Because you have to work with a lot of people as well.
And of course, when it
When it comes, when you have to
handle finances, it's quite important that you
do it right in transparency as well.
Somehow I feel like starting all those community events
is a little bit like you being the founder
of a company, you know, because you have
to start everything and handle everything at the beginning.
Branding, PR, marketing, social media, like you said
before, like sponsorship and getting where the money
comes in, where the money goes out and
whether you can continue next year.
And it's a little bit like starting a company.
Yeah.
And finding venues, finding venues is
hard here in Dublin right now.
I think it's as, again, COVID keeps popping up
in my thing every time because it has dented
a lot of different things between community groups to
availability of different venues to nowadays because of, I
suppose, the world, global things happening, produce goes up
in price as well, all these kind of things.
So for me, I want to tell people, when you run a
meetup, you don't have to have food if you don't need to.
I think. Because I.
I have done PyLadies Dublin, where
I ask people to bring their own
beverages and their own kind of sandwiches.
I think someone mentioned brown
bag, right?
And also I wanted to mention that I heard
you also drink coffee, which is besides tea.
Yes.
So I think that's.
So you are not going to upset anybody in this podcast.
No, no, no, no.
I do drink a bit of coffee, but
not too much, I think, for anyone, organizing
kind of small meetup groups would be great.
And I think lucky if you can get a company to
host you because normally they have a kitchenette, so people can
make their own tea, coffee and grab some water.
And depending on the type of companies, they'll
have snacks and stuff like that anyway.
So people snack on stuff, but you don't
need your beer, you don't need your pizza,
you don't need all those sandwiches.
Smaller venues won't offer that.
Yeah.
And you'd be wasting food and things like that.
You don't know where to go.
I have in the early days where I have to
bring platters of sandwiches back home and you're there looking
at the fridge for three days with this sad sandwiches
in the fridge and taking out all the salads so
you can make your own salads from it.
So you don't waste the salad. Oh, no.
And then eventually you have to toss out some of
the sandwiches anyway, because after three something days, then, you
know, you don't want to get food poisoning.
It's just you can't.
And also, you can't just hand, you know,
sandwiches to kind of homeless shelters because some
of them would have been opened.
There's a very strict guidelines on what
they accept and don't accept, so. So.
And this costs a lot of money catering.
I'm just trying to tell people, but
we are so spoiled that people expect
beer, pizza and sandwiches or whatever.
There's food all the time.
So, yeah, I run things very frugally
for my own events, so I'm just
mainly Coding Grace, PyLadies specifically.
That's definitely zero budget.
And then other things I do is Game Jams.
Again, I run that very frugally.
If I'm helping other people, I try to point out things,
but it's their budget at the end of the day, so
I can help them where I can and point out things.
But for my own events that I run, I try
to make sure that we don't waste any money.
The money should be spent on the people, not on
other frivolous stuff, I suppose, from my point of view.
So, yeah, I have a question regarding what's next.
Do you have small plans, big plans?
Python plans?
I suppose.
When I mentioned Cupán Tae virtual talks, I did
say that that's used to gauge the interest
from people if they like the format.
The format is person gives, the guest
speaker gives the talk about an hour.
It's quite a long talk.
It's very in depth technical talk,
and they're followed by it on
conference style breakout sessions afterwards.
So it's like the DDD conference.
You can do a search for that.
It's sort of like that DDD
on conference kind of format.
But we were going to do it in
person, but it didn't work out timing wise,
so we decided to do virtual gauge interest.
And we have enough interest. We would like to host
this conference outside of Dublin.
Because Dublin is expensive, we want to raise
the profile of the tech technical user group
community in that local town or city.
And also because people have been working remotely from
home, some of those people might be, don't have
to travel to Dublin, they can actually go to
is conference because it is in their locale as well. So.
And if this works out, we would like to
move to different towns and cities around Ireland to
highlight the tech community and stuff like that.
I hope you can see a passion here and what
we're trying to do besides the Events on the Wheel.
We're aiming at more senior people as
well, because we want to be.
We try to focus this one as well and also
trying to make it sustainable because we're doing a lot
of these events and said we've been very frugal, but
doesn't mean that it's maintainable and sustainable.
We don't actually, you know, charge
memberships or anything like that. So that's one thing.
We're just trying to try this out.
It's experimental.
Myself, my husband is also on the team, founding
team, and my friend who's based in London, who
will be in New Zealand very soon.
So that's going to be fun to organize stuff together.
That's a different challenge, remote organizing or someone
on the other side of the world.
But then that's one thing, and the other thing
is just keep recording talks at PyLadies Dublin and
trying to perfect that process so myself and my
husband can offer our help to other local tech
community groups to record their talks.
And hopefully I get to run another game jam,
I suppose by the end of the year.
We did one recently in Cork I would
love to do in relation to that.
That's part of Gamecraft. We did a.
Last year we did a DIY custom game controller
where we actually custom PCB board and we preloaded
it with Python on it, MicroPython on it.
And all the people had to do was
learn how to connect the wires between the
PCB board and the RaspberryPI Pico.
And then they can just
We just gave them lots of crafty stuff
and they can just make their own board.
Their game controllers or whatever they want
to do with the controllers can be
completely different, use whatever they want.
But we gave them the components, so we did something.
We did this for beta festival late last
year and we have some components left over,
so we want to run something again, similar.
It was meant to be a jam, but it ended
up becoming a workshop because we didn't want to scare
people away because the electronics, they think that there's programming
involved, but there's none because we preloaded it.
You should just plug it in and should be able
to play any game you want and things like that.
So yeah, there's, as I said, I do a lot
of different things, but the main core things is even
get to a conference room, Cupán Tae kind of virtual talks
and make that into an in person one.
Because we want to actually have afternoon tea, because
for lunch there's a whole theme going on there.
We have a whole theme going on there.
And it's going to be held in kind of
down in the southeast and it's going to be
in a grand house with lovely gardens and stuff.
You know, that's the plan.
We're going to see how things go.
So those are the two kind of things.
Two or three different things, but I'm sure there's lots
of other stuff that I know, but they're, they're all
kind of being juggled and ongoing at the same time.
Right.
Do you have any hidden hobbies that you.
I heard so many things.
You said something about sewing.
Yeah, I have so many things I have
to get back onto my sewing machine.
I have so many patterns I want to make.
My first pair of pants I've got, I've got cross
stitching I want to get back on as well.
What else have we got? Oh, I want to do.
I want to finish off my kind of.
What, what do I have back here?
Hold on, I have something here.
My lino print.
Sorry, bit of a noise here, but I've
been doing a bit of lino printing.
Can I see, can you see this?
Oh, wow, that's cool.
So that's where a lino board,
it's just right beside me.
So that's me carving into Lino
and trying not to cut myself.
Also digital painting. What else?
Oh, yeah, cross media.
Cross media kind of art stuff that I want to do.
Oh, I'm making zines. Oh, my God. I want to make zines.
I want to make so many zines. What else do I have?
I'm looking around me, I was like, so I'm sorry.
In my room, this is also my Make room.
So there's lots of things hanging around that
is on my to do list, which I
have started and not come finished and completed.
Of course, the other thing, big thing, is just
renovating this room, making a proper maker room.
But yeah, there's a lot of things that I want to do.
It's just the time, really, and finishing it and
I just, yeah, I just need to take, stand
back and just want to do stuff.
But then when I stand back and want to
do stuff, I end up playing like games, like
cozy games or something because that's just relaxing.
And then I realize, oh, so,
yeah, I get distracted so easily.
So, yeah, if you ask me what I think, I just,
too many to name, but I just need to sit down.
I have also a lot of electronic projects that
I want to do that have finished as well.
And also so many different videos I want to make.
Like my, you know, digital videos of my journeys
over, you know, car journeys and things like that.
Oh, it's just so much that I want to do.
I just need to pick maybe the top
three and just do it or something.
Or when, you know, when the inspiration strikes.
I'm currently knitting, so I'm knitting yoga
socks with writing on them and.
But since December, I have a tufting gun, so my
plan is to make some carpets in the flat, so.
Oh, my goodness.
You're on a completely different level.
And she's really good in these, like.
That stuff is hard!
You should look at her knitting stuff.
It's crazy.
She does like a, so I saw the recent one that she did.
She did was like, sweater zigzag wave.
But I followed the pattern.
I mean, yeah, but still.
So can we see your, your project
on Instagram or where can we see.
Your, like, I don't put up
stuff that they're not really finished.
I try to put up stuff with all that
means there's not much, like, I can tell you.
I did enjoy crocheting on, and at the time, many, many years
ago, I asked my DnD GM if I can crochet
a D 20, and he says, yes, as long as it's loaded right.
And so I started crocheting.
I'm quite new in the crocheting.
Then I realized all the triangles were wrong, and I
had, like, I would have them all sewing up, and
I realized things were going wrong and didn't look right.
I had to undo all the stitching. Had to undo.
And then I started unraveling the
stuff, and then I gave up. I was so sad. I gave up.
And I said, I'm don't do, I don't want to do it again.
I don't want to crochet again
You picked, like, a very complicated project.
But I was very confident. I did too many.
I did so many squares.
I said, how hard could it be?
Triangles.
That's the same.
When I wanted to do 3D printing.
But the one with the pen.
Yeah.
You know, you can, like, you can get the pen.
And my startup project was Pickle Rick.
Oh, that's hard. Wow.
Because there was a YouTube video about it,
like, some guy, like, doing Pickle Rick.
And I was following, you two can do it.
I can do it.
I think I spent, like, 4 hours.
I made the head of Pickle Rick
was kind of flat but looked cool.
And then I gave it as a present to
someone that was super excited about Pickle Rick.
And then I never did 3D printing.
Those 3D pens are hard to use though those 3D.
So how do people get to get in touch with you
if they want to, you know, maybe ask Vicky and to
help with some recordings or get some advice from you?
LinkedIn, you find me on LinkedIn if you
want to email me, I suppose with regards
to PyLadies Dublin, but LinkedIn, right.
Thank you so much, Vicky, for
joining us today at PyPodcats.
You can find us in pypodcats.live, or
you can also search on YouTube channel from
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