Talk proposals submitted in Dec 2024

So far, I've submitted talk proposals for three FOSS conferences. See the list of conferences and my proposals below. I'm expecting to submit a couple of more proposals for PyConf Hyderabad - a talk proposal on the GIL-ectomy (that I presented internally for a client), a talk proposal about the fossunited.org platform that we have been building at FOSS United, and a workshop proposal on the Frappe Framework that powers fossunited.org!

Why am I sharing this here? Because not all of my talk proposals get accepted at conferences but that doesn't mean that the ideas or talks are useless. In fact, I've been wondering for a couple of years now that if a talk proposal gets rejected, I should just livestream the talk on my own personal YouTube channel instead of letting the idea die. This post is me taking one step in that direction.

PyConf Hyd

Title : Let's enhance our technical writing by reading PEPs

Elevator Pitch : Technical writing is a defining feature of a seasoned software developer. At a time when working amongst geographically distributed teams is the norm, software developers must learn and practice the art of Technical Writing to be effective at their jobs. And look no further than PEPs for help!

Overview

Using five different PEPs, we will understand how seasoned software developers can effectively communicate their proposed technical changes with a global audience. The PEPs influence the future of the Python language and they cover technical changes that range from internal implementation details of the Python programming language to user-facing changes that directly influence how developers write code using Python. While most of us aren’t working on projects as big as the Python language, all of us can learn from the PEPs to improve our ability to explain changes to our colleagues, communicate the proposed changes to other teams that depend on us, and record the context/needs of the time that motivated the change to ensure that future teams have the necessary context.

Relevant PEPs

Highlights

  • List comprehensions, introduced with PEP 202, are ubiquitous today but have you ever wondered why this syntactical sugar was introduced in the first place?
  • Python now has a rich Typing ecosystem but did you consider why Guido van Rossum (creator of Python) was interested in bringing Type Hints to a dynamically typed programming language (Python)? How was this significant technical change broken up and introduced into the Python programming language? How did the authors of the PEP convince the community to accept the PEP and implement the recommended changes?
  • As an interpreted language, one of the first things that happens when you run Python code is the parsing stage by the interpreter. But have you wondered how the CPython interpreter parses the Python grammar? Did you notice when the parser changed in CPython 3.10? Why was the parser changed?
  • Structural pattern matching (match statement) is a new and shiny syntax in the Python programming but did you wonder why the Python language needs a match statement? Are you not sure about the value that it provides?
  • The CPython community has been talking about the GIL-ectomy since CPython 1.x and the time has finally come. But are you not sure what all changes are being made to the language to remove the GIL? You might have heard that removing the GIL slows down Python code (using the CPython interpreter) but have you heard that CPython has been getting faster with every release, which motivated this new effort to remove the GIL in the first place?

Talk outline

I will briefly discuss PEP 202 (List Comprehensions) and PEP 484 (Type Hints) and spend a majority of my time diving into the remaining three PEPs. This is because the newer PEPs were introduced during/after 2020 and given the userbase of the Python programming language/CPython interpreter, they provide incredible amounts of detail to ensure that the community is satisfied with the rationale, the implementation, etc.

DEVCONF India

Title: FOSS & Tech Policy in India : Why you should care

Abstract: FOSS is a cornerstone in the success story of the Indian industry. The DPG-related initiatives prove that the Government of India too recognizes the value that FOSS provides to India and the World. But publicly talking about FOSS adoption continues to be a problem in India, let alone supporting and creating FOSS. In this talk, we will briefly look at the prevailing Tech Policy in India and how it impacts the adoption, support, and creation of FOSS.

Notes: Specifically, the talk will focus on the 2015 MEITY "Policy on adoption of OSS for the Government of India" and the recent draft National Deep-Tech Startup Policy (NDTSP) bill.

The gap between the reality today and what the 2015 policy aims to achieve might be surprising to some but obvious to others. The lack of external pressure from the FOSS community on Government departments led to continued dependence on closed-source software. Given the scale of the various Departments and Ministries within the Government, overcoming inertia is a non-trivial problem, and capacity building efforts from the Industry and the Community would have gone a long way to reduce their dependence on closed-source software. And finally, continued vigilance from the Community is necessary to ensure that the policy is adhered to, which is fundamentally lacking.

The NDTSP bill has the potential to influence the future of FOSS adoption and creation in India. The draft bill doesn't recognize the fact that FOSS powers practically all current Deep-Tech startups, including everything in the AI/ML space. The draft bill pushes for changes to the Intellectual Property Regime in India with "Managing conflicts related to open-source technologies" as one of the challenges with the existing regime. It isn't clear from the draft bill what the conflicts are. Making changes to the IPR regime to enable software patenting in India while the rest of the world is actively working on preventing it could potentially hurt FOSS creation and adoption in the future.

These two examples will hopefully illustrate to the audience how Tech Policy impacts the FOSS ecosystem in India. I will end the talk by giving a few pointers on how interested attendees can contribute to efforts within the Indian FOSS community to engage with policymakers.

Ref https://www.meity.gov.in/writereaddata/files/policy_on_adoption_of_oss.pdf and https://www.psa.gov.in/deep-tech-policy. See initial comments on the NDTSP at https://forum.fossunited.org/t/comments-on-national-deep-tech-startup-policy-ndtsp/2231, which will be mentioned during the talk.

FOSSMeet'25

Title:  The Draft 2023 Kerala IT Policy - what the FOSS community needs to know 

Summary: The State Government of Kerala released the Draft Kerala IT Policy in November of 2023 for public comments. We don’t yet have a new revision of the Draft Bill, so let’s go through the Nov 2023 draft to understand what the Kerala Govt. intends to do over the coming years and the role that FOSS plays in the draft policy.
 
Talk outcomes:
  1. Reduce/remove mental barriers that technical audience members have regarding Public Policy by walking them through the actual draft policy document
  2. Provide a rudimentary introduction of Public Policy to the audience that enables them to understand why and how policies are drafted
  3. Debate the proposed policy changes with the audience members to understand whether or not they have an impact on the Kerala FOSS community (including the members of the Industry).
Key points:
  1. How does the Kerala State Govt. perceive FOSS
  2. What are the key policy objectives of the draft bill and what role does FOSS play in them
  3. How is the draft bill allocating budget and how much of it directly impacts FOSS adoption and creation in Kerala
  4. What is missing from the draft bill that the FOSS (and IT) community in Kerala sorely need
References:

Unlike the other two proposals, the FOSSMeet'25 proposals are publicly accessible - https://hasgeek.com/fosscell/fossmeet25/sub/the-draft-2023-kerala-it-policy-what-the-foss-comm-PvffLByxKSh8rzmhVaTjWX. I suspect that only approved proposals from devconf and pyconf hyd will become public.

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