Next week we (the Python team here at Microsoft) will be at the PyCon conference in Cleveland, OH on May 1-9, and are looking forward to meeting you! We are excited to support this event as Keystone sponsors of PyCon for the third time, and we will be participating in all aspects of the conference. Come join our workshops, then stop by our booth to get some great swag and check out the latest in Visual Studio Code, Azure, Azure Pipelines, and Python on Windows. Lastly, come work alongside our team at the developer sprints!

Speaking of our team, this year we prepared a short video to help you get to know us, and also to know who to look for when you drop by our booth:

Keep on reading to learn more about what we’re doing at PyCon and when/where to come find us throughout the conference!

Demos, hands-on-labs, expert help and swag at the Microsoft booth

We will be at the Microsoft booth in the expo hall during the opening reception 5:30-7:30PM Thursday May 2^nd, and during the conference on Friday and Saturday. We will be handing out some fun and unique swag and will have members from across our team available to chat and show you the latest in Visual Studio Code, Azure, Windows, and Azure DevOps.

There will be a lot of exciting stuff going on at our booth, so be sure to:

• Come by our demo stations to chat with our team and get a guided tour of our products.
• Work through hands-on labs to quickly try out the latest capabilities for yourself, and pick up an Adafruit lunchbox kit (while supplies last).
• Pick up your Adafruit kit by completing labs before Friday afternoon, and ask about details about a special CircuitPython mini-workshop by the Adafruit team happening at our booth later that day.
• Come to the Azure Starting Zone for expert help with setting up Visual Studio Code, Azure, and Azure Pipelines on your own machine.
• Fill out a survey to get a one-of-a-kind t-shirt or socks.

We will also be announcing some new features at the opening reception, so don’t miss it!

Check out our Conference Talks

We also have some of our team members giving talks during the conference, all on Sunday May 5th:

• Python on Windows is Okay, Actually by Steve Dower at 1:50PM on Sunday in Room 26A/B/C,
• Brett Cannon from Microsoft and Barry Warsaw from LinkedIn will be part of the Python Steering Council’s keynote presentation at 9:20PM
• Nina Zakharenko’s keynote presentation on the joys of using Python on embedded devices and how it impacts and grows our community at 3:30PM

These talks are not affiliated in any way with Microsoft’s sponsorship of PyCon.

Scaling out Postgres with Citus Data

Microsoft recently acquired Citus Data, who is also a sponsor of PyCon this year. If you use PostgreSQL (or are considering using Postgres), be sure to talk to our new teammates at Citus Data at booth #516. They’ll have elicorn socks, stickers, and more importantly, can give you a deep dive on running distributed PostgreSQL at scale—whether as open source, as enterprise software, or as a fully-managed Database-as-a-Service.

Sponsored Workshop: Dog Classification using PyTorch, Azure, and Visual Studio Code

Attend our first sponsored workshop Dog Classification using PyTorch, Azure, and Visual Studio Code on Thursday May 2^nd from 11AM-12:30PM in room 13. Rong Lu will show you how to train and deploy a machine learning model to dog and cat breeds.

Sponsored Workshop: An Introduction to Building Scalable Web Apps with Visual Studio Code and Azure

Attend our second workshop An Introduction to Building Scalable Web Apps with Visual Studio Code and Azure on Thursday May 2^nd from 1:30-3PM in Room 23 to learn from Nina Zakharenko how to build and deploy a Django + PostgreSQL web application.

Code beside us at the Developer Sprints

A number of Python core developers work at Microsoft and will be attending the developer sprints to work on CPython, come join in on the fun if you are around!

Can’t make it to PyCon in Cleveland?

If you cannot make it to the conference, we cannot make that up to you, but we can share some resources that include a subset of what we will be showing at PyCon:

• Get started with Python in Visual Studio Code
• Create your first Python function in Azure
• Deploy a Python Web App to Azure App Service
• Use Azure Machine Learning service with Azure Notebooks
• Build, test, and deploy Python apps and packages with Azure Pipelines