Our discussion touches on the critical need for diversity and inclusion within tech communities and companies. Jay elaborates on practical strategies to make tech events and workplaces more welcoming for historically excluded groups. From the importance of having a strong code of conduct to providing logistical support like childcare and travel reimbursements, Jay emphasizes how small actions can make a significant impact in creating a culture where everyone feels they belong.

We also dive into the often overlooked challenges that Black tech professionals face, such as negotiating salaries and finding mentors who look like them. Jay offers invaluable insights on why visibility and representation matter, sharing personal anecdotes and practical advice for both aspiring developers and established leaders. Whether you're an educator, a tech professional, or someone interested in creating more inclusive communities, this episode is packed with thought-provoking discussions and actionable takeaways.

Special Guest: Jay Miller.

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Links:

• Black Python Devs | About Us — Black Python Devs was created by its founder Jay Miller after seeing a trend of the same handful of Black developers speaking at major conferences, taking leadership positions, and dealing with the same challenges towards burnout.
• Aiven - Your Trusted Data & AI Platform — Aiven is a versatile platform empowering you with AI-driven workload optimization and control over your data. Deploy widely adopted technologies across multiple clouds with just a few clicks to stream, store, and serve your data.
• FastAPI — FastAPI is a modern, fast (high-performance), web framework for building APIs with Python based on standard Python type hints.
• Talk: Nina Zakharenko - Goodbye Print, Hello Debugger! - YouTube — Still debugging your code with print? Learn how to level up your ability to troubleshoot complex code situations by using the power of a fully-featured debugger in this talk aimed at all levels of programming ability. Debuggers allow you to examine your program state, watch as the values of important variables change, and even modify the content of variables on the fly. Once I gave up using print to debug, my productivity as a programmer increased, and yours can too!
• Django Girls - start your journey with programming — Django Girls is a non-profit organization and a community that empowers and helps women to organize free, one-day programming workshops by providing tools, resources and support. We are a volunteer run organization with hundreds of people contributing to bring more amazing women into the world of technology. We are making technology more approachable by creating resources designed with empathy.
• PyCon US 2024 - PyCon US 2024 — After two years of PyCon US in Salt Lake City, we are so excited to welcome our community to our new host city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania! Mark your calendars and be sure to read the About PyCon US page for all the details. We can’t wait to see you all at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center!

Special Guest: Jeff Olson.

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Links:

• Model inclusive language - Eberly Center - Carnegie Mellon University — As instructors, you can have a great impact on the classroom climate through the very language you use. Yet it can be hard to recognize in one’s own speech that some of the most basic idioms and examples are often not inclusive, for they are actually very specific to one group in society (e.g. men/women, Christians, whites, heterosexuals, etc.). This tendency can inadvertently marginalize minority groups. For instance, research has shown that using gender-exclusive language (e.g., using he to indicate he or she) in professional settings affects women’s sense of belonging and lowers motivation (Stout and Dasgupta, 2011; Sczesny, Formanowicz, & Moser, 2016).
• The Trouble with Real-ish Problems — We've all seen math problems like this. Problems where the context or numbers are ridiculous. And what might we say to a kid in this situation? "Don't worry about that, just do the math."
• What Are You Talking About?! The Need for Common Language around Personalized Learning | EDUCAUSE — As a former language teacher, I love examples of translations that didn't turn out quite as they were intended. There's the famous example when the U.S. auto-maker Chevrolet marketed the Nova in Latin America: no va in Spanish means "doesn't go". Airports seem to be a great place to find language problems, such as the sign helping people find the restrooms. My point is that language matters.
• Students Don’t Need Simple Examples | by Jeff Olson | upperlinecode — In my post about coding for predictions, I wrote a sentence that got edited out of the final draft, but that’s played on repeat in my head ever since. Students don’t need simple examples. They need clear ones. I’m realizing that this catchy little antithesis is essentially my whole teaching philosophy rolled up into one line.
• Education Summit 2020 - YouTube — The Summit is a gathering of teachers and educators focused on bringing coding literacy, through Python, to as broad a group of audiences as possible. -Jeffrey L. Olson Jr, Foo and “Bar” Must Die - Teach Less and Do More with Context, Predictions, and Playtime
• Humble Book Bundle: Learn to Code the Fun Way by No Starch Press (pay what you want and help charity) — Sean's Win of the Week is the If Hemingway Wrote Javascript from the current Humble Bundle. We've teamed up with No Starch Press for our newest bundle! Get ebooks like Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!, Practical SQL, and Eloquent JavaScript 3rd Edition. Plus, your purchase will support UNCF and No Starch Press Foundation!
• Amazon.com: If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript eBook: Croll, Angus: Kindle Store — What if William Shakespeare were asked to generate the Fibonacci series or Jane Austen had to write a factorial program? In If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript, author Angus Croll imagines short JavaScript programs as written by famous wordsmiths. The result is a peculiar and charming combination of prose, poetry, and programming.

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• matplotlib · PyPI — Matplotlib strives to produce publication quality 2D graphics for interactive graphing, scientific publishing, user interface development and web application servers targeting multiple user interfaces and hardcopy output formats.
• scipy · PyPI — SciPy (pronounced “Sigh Pie”) is open-source software for mathematics, science, and engineering. The SciPy library depends on NumPy, which provides convenient and fast N-dimensional array manipulation. The SciPy library is built to work with NumPy arrays, and provides many user-friendly and efficient numerical routines such as routines for numerical integration and optimization. Together, they run on all popular operating systems, are quick to install, and are free of charge. NumPy and SciPy are easy to use, but powerful enough to be depended upon by some of the world’s leading scientists and engineers. If you need to manipulate numbers on a computer and display or publish the results, give SciPy a try!
• sympy · PyPI — SymPy is a Python library for symbolic mathematics. It aims to become a full-featured computer algebra system (CAS) while keeping the code as simple as possible in order to be comprehensible and easily extensible. SymPy is written entirely in Python. It depends on mpmath, and other external libraries may be optionally for things like plotting support.
• arrow · PyPI — Arrow is a Python library that offers a sensible and human-friendly approach to creating, manipulating, formatting and converting dates, times and timestamps. It implements and updates the datetime type, plugging gaps in functionality and providing an intelligent module API that supports many common creation scenarios. Simply put, it helps you work with dates and times with fewer imports and a lot less code.
• Likert scale - Wikipedia — A Likert scale (/ˈlɪk.ərt/ LIK-ərt[1] but more commonly pronounced /ˈlaɪ.kərt/ LY-kərt[2]) is a psychometric scale commonly involved in research that employs questionnaires.
• translate · PyPI — Translate is a simple but powerful translation tool written in python with with support for multiple translation providers. By now we are integrated with Microsoft Translation API and Translated MyMemory API
• Play Rocket League® | Rocket League® - Official Site
• JMMS vs. Pine Crest Game #1 - YouTube