PyCon AU 2024

Data scientist/air quality consultant with Environmental Technologies & Analytics. Bird nerd, former biologist, trained stats enthusiast. Bad but enthusiastic python programmer - I still think Rmarkdown blows Jupyter out of the water.

Adam works as a security-focused software developer at the Rust Foundation working on ecosystem security, especially around improving supply chain security for crates.io and Rust releases.

Professionally, his history includes stints as a developer at New Relic, deviantART, and Sourcegraph, while his open source work includes being a project member of Rust and PHP.

In his spare time, he plays cricket, kayaks, speaks Spanish extremely badly, throws tennis balls for his golden retriever, and tries to convince people that his Australian accent is actually flawless Canadian.

A.J. is a passionate dataholic who can't go more than a few days without getting his data fix. With a background in process engineering, A.J. currently works as a Senior Analytical Engineer for Synergy in Western Australia, driving real analytical solutions for the Western Australian electricity grid. His hobby Python interests currently include IoT and web scraping applications.

Alison is a lecturer at the University of Sydney in Business Analytics specialising in teaching programming, mathematics and machine learning.

Andrew had a background in software engineering before deciding to return to study bioinformatics in 2010. After completing the MSc, he was a research assistant and PhD student studying plant cell walls before crossing over to work on human biology in cancer and kidney projects. After submitting his thesis, he began a postdoctoral researcher at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. There he has continued his research interests in the transcriptome of cancers. Andrew is a strong advocate for the discipline of bioinformatics, and enjoys teaching computing and bioinformatics skills.

I’m an optical astronomer who moved from research into software for telescope and instrumentation automation, and I've been working on the Murchison Widefield Array (a large radio telescope in the Murchison region of Western Australia) and related instrumentation since 2007. I work for Curtin University, in Perth, Australia.

I have been a Python developer for over 10 years, based between Wellington, New Zealand and Redmond, Washington. For over six of those years, I have been working for Microsoft on the Azure SDK for Python.

Hi, I am Anneysha, I am studying Advanced Computing at the Australian National University. I love languages, and learning as many language scripts as I can!

I am interested in solving problems using a human-centric approach with strong backing from existing data and applying computational techniques to it, such as Natural Language Processing, and Machine Learning. In my free time, I like watching anime, cooking (things I’ve never made before!), and travelling.

Anthony has been using Python since the dark ages of Python 0.9.2. Guido tricked him into being the release manager for Python for a number of years, during that time he convinced vendors to trust us. PEP 6 and so forth.

He's gone from working at Google to working for a union. Always gotta try and save the world. Or try, anyway.

Hello, I’m Artem, a Director of Software Engineering at Cover Genius, a global insurtech company. With around 15 years of experience as a Software Engineer, I currently specialise in Python API development using Django. I’m passionate about working with both people and systems, and I strive to close gaps between the two in a sustainable and responsible manner. Outside of work, I practice martial arts, currently focusing on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ). I'm also organising SyDjango, a Django meetup group in Sydney.

Artur Baruchi has a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and received an M.Sc. (2010) and a PhD degree (2015) in computer engineering from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
From 2005 to 2015, he worked as a Unix SysAdmin for several companies such as HP, IBM, and EDS. From 2015 to 2017
he worked as a Postdoctoral researcher at Sao Paulo State University on an Open Source project about Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Cloud Computing. Also, during this period, he was a professor at Anhembi Morumbi University.
After that, worked at LexisNexis as consulting Software Engineer and HPCC ambassador in several universities performing workshops and as advisor to undergraduate and graduate students.
He moved to Australia in 2021 to work as an SRE at Goldman Sachs and is currently working as a Software Engineer at HEO (an Australian startup in the Space Industry) and as a technical reviewer of books for Manning Publisher.

Ash is a cyber security engineer with a background in medical device testing. Chronically incapable of saying no to interesting projects or weird technical problems, they are also allergic to writing scripts more than ~300 lines long. Involved in a number of pride networks, they're passionate about expanding queer representation in cyber security and engineering.

They still haven't figured out what DevSecOps is, and at this point are too afraid to ask.

Caleb is a Senior Software Engineer working for Google's Open Source Security Team. At Google he contributes to deps.dev and maintains a repository of malicious package reports for open source packages. Caleb has been using Python for over 15 years, starting with build Django sites at publishing company.

Charles is a Python Specialist within the Model Evaluation & Diagnostic Team at ACCESS-NRI. His role requires working on the usability & functionality of tooling researchers use to interact with & understand the output of earth system models.

Charles completed his PhD in Oceanography: Covariability of anthropogenic heat and carbon over the anthropogenic era, at the University of Southampton in 2022, as well as a MSci in Phsyics, Imperial College London, 2018. He developed an interest in writing Python & Julia libraries to analyse ocean observations.

After graduating, Charles moved to Perth seeking a sunnier climate, where he worked for two years in Air Quality, developing Python libraries & web apps to expedite analysis of environmental monitoring data for industry.

Charles enjoys a wide range of injury inducing hobbies including powerlifting, cycling excessive distances, rollerblading, ice & roller hockey, as well as some more sedate ones like walking the dog and fiddling with computers.

Chelsea is a Network DevOps Engineer working at REANNZ. She is also a committee member of Python New Zealand (NZPUG) and is heavily involved with this year's Kiwi PyCon. She's passionate about automation, just making things easy for yourself, and thinks Python is just great in a lot of ways for so many different things.

Christopher Neugebauer is an Australian developer, speaker, and serial community conference organiser, who presently lives in the United States.

He serves as a Director of the Python Software Foundation, and is co-organiser of the acclaimed North Bay Python conference, a boutique one-track conference run in unusual venues — include an old vaudeville theatre, and more recently a barn on a farm — in Petaluma, California.

Christopher is also a contributor on the open source Pants build system, helping make Python’s testing, correctness, and style tools accessible and fast for developers, no matter how big their codebase.

Clinton is an Open Source software engineer, who has made a career around supporting researchers.

Damien was born in Melbourne, Australia, and has been programming and playing with
electronic circuits since primary school. He completed a Bachelor of Engineering and
Bachelor of Science at the University of Melbourne, and then went on to complete a PhD in
theoretical physics.

During his studies he participated in the international Robocup competition, programming
autonomous robots to play soccer. He wrote embedded software for scripted behavioural
control and motion, as well as building parts of the hardware. He has since continued in this
area, building robots, a CNC machine, and writing embedded software for many
microcontrollers.

He worked professionally as a theoretical physicist for 6 years, on various topics including
cosmology and the Higgs boson. He then went on to develop MicroPython and ran two very
successful Kickstarter campaigns around this microcontroller language. He now works full-
time maintaining the MicroPython code-base and ecosystem.

Dan is the CEO and founder of CipherStash which provides a highly secure, frictionless data protection platform that works everywhere sensitive data is stored. Dan is a life-long techie, nerd and is proudly neuro-spicy having been diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 40. Dan’s obsession for the past 8 years has been cryptography and the powerful ways it can be used for data protection and privacy.

I graduated with an engineering degree and joined the largest telco in Australia as a software developer. After a few years, I switched to product where I eventually ended up leading the creation of products for developers. This led me back into engineering where I took on an organisation tackling cloud products.

An opportunity came up to join Canonical where I have been for the last 2 years working on products to simplify operations of open source products.

I'm currently a PhD student working on timelapse microscopy data analysis, and I've been learning and working with Python for almost a decade now! I love the open-source community and everything it has to offer the world, and I've been lucky enough to make my own contributions to the community as a core developer for napari - an n-dimensional image viewer written entirely in Python. I'm passionate about making coding more accessible for scientists who want to make their own lives easier, and I love teaching everything from the fundamentals to the nitty gritty.

Jack is a Director at Endgame Economics, a boutique consulting firm that specialises in providing quantitative advice in the energy sector. He has over a decade of experience working as a consultant, data scientist, and software developer.

He holds a PhD in computational biology, and has extensive expertise applying mathematical optimisation and machine learning techniques to solve problems in the energy sector.

Ed is the founder of Python Charmers (https://pythoncharmers.com), which has trained
around 6000 people in data science using Python from organizations like Atlassian, Barclays, Cisco, CSIRO, Dolby, Harvard University, IMC, Interpol, Singtel Optus, Oracle, Shell, Telstra, Toyota, Verizon, and Westpac. Ed is a former release manager of SciPy and the author of the widely used future package. He organized the Python user group in Melbourne for 8 years.

Ed holds a PhD in machine learning (language models) from Imperial College London. He also holds BA and MA (Hons) degrees in mathematics and computer science from Trinity College, University of Cambridge. He has 25 years of experience in programming, teaching, and public speaking.

Edwina Mead BEng (Hons), MPH, MGH
PhD student, UTS
Research Assistant, UNSW

Edwina is a PhD student in Public Health at the University of Technology Sydney, where she is combining her software engineering background with cutting-edge health research. She is harnessing Python's powerful data processing capabilities to automate a complex systematic review, synthesising vast amounts of medical literature to create a more holistic understanding of the far-reaching impacts of current maternity practices on women, children, health systems, and even the environment.

In her role as a research assistant at UNSW, Edwina applies Python to rapidly analyse administrative data on ambulance attendances for drowning in NSW. This work has expanded our understanding of the drowning burden in the state, showcasing Python's versatility in public health research.

Edwina's innovative approaches demonstrate how Python can accelerate and enhance research in public health, from streamlining data analysis to increasing the scope and depth of evidence synthesis.

When she's not immersed in code or health data, Edwina can be found wrangling her two young children and playfully introducing them to computational thinking concepts - perhaps nurturing the next generation of Python enthusiasts!

I’m Eliz, a student from Australian National University (ANU) studying a double degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics and Science (majoring in Computer Science and minoring in Mathematics). I have been fascinated by how computing works since young, and decided to learn programming then!
In my free time I enjoy creating 3D models, photography and videography, playing music and bouldering. I’m looking forward to putting my computing skills in my hobbies as well, such as integrating computer vision with photography and videography. In the meantime, I would love to learn more about different aspects in machine learning and theoretical computing.

I am a Software Engineer at the Australian Synchrotron, working on the scientific computing team. My work focuses on automation of experiments, as well as data processing for the diffraction beamlines.

Emily Tour (she/they) is an archaeologist and PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. Their research focuses on the study of Bronze Age Aegean administrative documents; in particular, the application of digital methods such as 3D modelling, shape analysis and phylogenetics to better understand these artefacts. In addition to their PhD research, Emily is involved in an ongoing collaboration with the Melbourne Data Analytics Platform (MDAP), exploring the application of deep learning techniques to the decipherment of ancient scripts, including the presently undeciphered Linear A. Prior to retraining as an archaeologist, Emily worked in the IT industry as a software tester and business analyst, and is passionate about combining both her digital and archaeological skills for improved research outcomes, as well as supporting and promoting the uptake of digital techniques in the humanities. Emily is a current committee member for the Australasian chapter of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA).

Evan is a Senior Software Engineer whose passions lie in improving the developer experience by enhancing code health, optimising workflows, and working towards nohumanerrors.com

When he's not thinking about security, informatics, or giving talks about his many projects, you'll find him nomming on Subway cookies, or chasing bunny rabbits.

I am a curious individual who happens to be a programmer. My interest in computers actually started with microcontrollers and the digital design of processors, but once I figured dealing with hardware was expensive I decided to focus on software, only to find myself drawn back to it. I have done a lot of things throughout the years: wireless communication protocols, raytracing, games and game engines, art, cryptography, classical simulation of quantum processes and a lot more. At present I design and run experiments for validating Wi-Fi chips under real world conditions.

Genevieve Buckley is a scientific programmer and data analyst, based in Melbourne Australia.
A long time python user, she works on software development including equipment automation, big data handling, parallel programming, and computer vision. She is a maintainer for the open-source scientific python libraries napari and dask-image. Genevieve currently works at Monash University providing analysis support to scientific researchers at the Ramaciotti cryo-electron microscopy centre.

Haggen So is an experienced IT Professional seeking a career in Cybersecurity. He taught as a lecturer at Hong Kong Baptist University from 2020 to 2022. Participating in the CLAP-TECH pathway, the University partnered with several secondary schools to create an up-to-date curriculum. Through this partnership, he taught secondary school students Python programming language in their formal curriculum. Haggen So released his first Python program in 2004 under GPL. He also volunteered for PyCon Hong Kong from 2015 to 2022 until he returned to Melbourne.

I'm Harmeet, Data engineering manager at XERO and have been lucky enough to work with some incredibly smart people in building data and ML platforms & products . Over the years, I've had the opportunity to lead teams in building data and ML platforms, products, and work on organisational transformations including evolving data function operating models to scale. I’ve dabbled in various industries, including energy, accounting, airlines, retail and many more , helping teams mature their data and ML capabilities.
Beyond my professional life, I'm a co-host of the data engineering Melbourne meetup and also had the opportunity to tech review an O'Reilly book 'Effective Machine Learning Teams'.

Huon is a software engineer aiming to make others more effective. He's now writing and deploying Python extensively at ExoFlare, and has previously worked on dev tools and programming languages at Mozilla and Apple and machine learning research at CSIRO.

As CTO of two small education related startups (ConnectEd Code and Kumo Study) and with plenty of varied consulting under my belt, I have a focus on how tech can help other fields progress. I love to learn what the problems are and how I can actually make an impact, ideally with as simple a program as possible.

I’ve been using Python for years, working in both the professional and education sectors, and have focussed on bringing the power of Python to everyone.

Jack is a consultant CTO For Hire, specialising in all things web and APIs. He consults to small and growing software companies on patterns and practices for scaling teams and technology. He’s spent the past decade growing technical communities as a speaker, organiser, facilitator and coach.

John Hawkins is an Australian data scientist and the author of the book Getting Data Science Done. He is the Chief Scientist for Ad Tech company Playground XYZ, and an affiliate researcher with the Transitional AI Group at UNSW. He has 20 years of experience in solving problems in industry and academia, delivering data science solutions for organisations in software development, banking, insurance, media, ad-tech, and bio-medical research. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Queensland and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours I) in Philosophy of Science from the University of Newcastle. He has written more than 30 peer-reviewed academic articles and presented at academic and industry conferences around the world.

J. Rosenbaum is a Melbourne AI artist and researcher working with 3D modeling, artificial intelligence and extended reality technologies. Their work explores posthuman and postgender concepts using classical art combined with new media techniques and programming.

J has a PhD from RMIT University in Melbourne at the School of Art exploring AI Perceptions of Gender and the nature of AI generated art and the human hands behind the processes that engender bias, especially towards gender minorities. Their artwork highlights this bias through programmatic interactive artworks and traditional gallery displays. They speak at conferences worldwide about the use of artificial intelligence in art and have exhibited all over the world. J’s artwork has been supported by the City of Melbourne Covid-19 Arts Grants and has won the Midsumma Australia Post Art Prize.

J works with classically inspired aesthetics with the latest technologies to create a speculative future grounded in the aesthetics of the past to show that gender minorities have always been here and will continue into the future.

I'm a research scientist helping other scientists get insights from their image data using Python. I've been using Python since 2008, and the main scientific Python ecosystem (NumPy, SciPy, & co) since 2010. In 2012, on a whim, I went to my first SciPy (US) conference, and it changed my life! I realised that "open source" didn't mean just posting the code online. It meant actively collaborating on code with other scientists, across vast distances and at different times. Before you could say "import numpy as np", I had joined the scikit-image team, written a paper about it, written a whole book on SciPy (!), spoken at various SciPys and PyConAUs, started new collaborative, open source libraries, and just generally been all-in on Scientific Python. I love this community and what it has done for me, and always try to pay it forward for new folks in our community! 😊

Julian has a strong background in operating technology companies in the electronics, energy, telecommunications and software industries with an emphasis on engineering, project, financial and corporate management
Julian was born in the UK where he completed his Bsc (hon) degree in Electrical Engineering and migrated to Australia some 30 plus years ago. He has run and operated his own companies in control systems, software and telecommunications. He is a Fellow of Engineers Australia and of the Institute of Technology (UK)
Julian is a passionate engineer and mentor and has hired over 200 engineering graduates during his career, many of which have gone on to high profile careers in Australia and around the world. He has an active interest in promoting engineering in education and as a profession.
Julian currently chairs the AustSTEM Foundation which is a charity that promotes STEM education to students across Australia.

Kai Striega is a Melbourne-based software developer, data engineer, passionate advocate for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and pythonista. With a strong foundation in mathematics and years of experience in designing scalable systems, Kai brings technical precision and creative problem-solving to the forefront of their work. Kai enjoys pushing Python to the language's limits and volunteers as a maintainer of SciPy in addition to the larger scientific Python ecosystem.

Katie is currently working as a Staff Engineer at MongoDB, developing tools that help developers migrate data from other databases to MongoDB.

Before joining MongoDB, she spent a few years as a freelance developer and General Assembly bootcamp instructor. Her contract work covered a wide range of applications from a startup platform for selling limited-release sneakers, to an automated bidding system for renewables on the Australian energy market.

Her background in a variety of SQL and NoSQL databases comes from Campaign Monitor where she was engineering productivity lead and SRE across a SQLServer and Cassandra system, and from Google as a Software Engineer and later a Site Reliability Engineer.

With eight years creating AI-powered SaaS products with global reach, Dr Kendra Vant is an industry leader in harnessing AI and machine learning to solve complex problems with real world impact. She was the Executive GM of Data and AI Product at Xero during the scale up phase, leading the work to help small businesses and their advisors benefit from the power of data and insights. Starting with doctoral research in experimental quantum physics at MIT and a stint building quantum computers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Kendra has made a career of solving hard problems and pushing the boundaries of what's possible. She currently runs her own consultancy working with executives, boards and founders on practical & ethical applications of AI and is the author of Data Runs Deep, a weekly newsletter exploring the impacts of data and AI in the world today.

I've been working in data science for around 3 years at a consulting firm called Brady Heywood. Python is my tool of choice for AI and analytics.

I'm specifically interested in how we can use embeddings and LLMs on top of traditional data analytics to derive insights from enterprises we work with.

Dr Linda McIver pioneered authentic Data Science and Computational Science education with real impact for secondary students and founded the Australian Data Science Education Institute in 2018. Author of Raising Heretics: Teaching Kids to Change the World, Linda is an inspiring keynote speaker who has appeared on the ABC’s panel program Q&A, and regularly delivers engaging Professional Development for Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Educators across all disciplines.

A passionate educator, researcher and advocate for STEM, equity and inclusion, with a PhD in Computer Science Education and extensive teaching experience, Linda’s mission is to ensure that all Australian students have the opportunity to learn STEM and Data Science skills in the context of projects that empower them to solve problems and make a positive difference to the world.

Lizzie Silver is a Senior Data Scientist at WSP. She has broad interests in applied data science, and has worked on projects in electricity distribution, water distribution, abandoned mine shaft detection, fish ecology, and arthritis monitoring via wearable devices, among others. She did her PhD in causal discovery at Carnegie Mellon University. Her pastimes include singing in choirs, and running the monthly Melbourne Machine Learning and AI Meetup, and the Melbourne chapter of Puzzled Pint.

Luke (he/him) is a human that enjoys making community experiences better for everyone. He is an Amateur Radio operator, and is currently the State Leader: Communication Technologies for Scouts Victoria. He enjoys long walks on the beach, tinkering with his homelab, and then calling @mattcen to assist when things break earlier than they are expected to. Luke is passionate about achieving simplicity from complexity, and creating efficient and effective resources. Sometimes this even occurs in the right order...

Luke is a senior software engineer at WSP. He's worked in the industry for 7 years and has spent more time than he would like to admit debugging Django and Python code. Luke also a long time ago was an Australian representative gymnast, competing at the Commonwealth Games and World Championships.

Dad and Software Engineer. Based in Perth WA, Lived in San Francisco. Worked in Platforms for a company that sends lots of Text Messages, and now works on getting the world through the Energy Transition as quickly as possible!

Matt (they/them) is a queer, autistic, non-binary human with ADHD, from the lands of Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation (so-called Melbourne, Australia). They have a long background in Linux systems admin and software development, as well as strong interests in communication, empathy, consent, openness and transparency, privacy and security, diversity and inclusion. Matt identifies as a generalist, polymath, or multi-potentialite, and their breadth of interests often give them a unique perspective on how to relate to, and mediate between, people of different specialities.

Matt is a software engineer with more than twenty years professional experience. Yes, sigh, he's getting old.

Having worked on a wide variety of projects - from tiny embedded applications to large web-based systems - means that he has tinkered with most aspects of the software stack. He's enjoyed it all! Apart from technical pursuits he also loves rock climbing and, generally, being in the outdoors.

Matt hosts the Melbourne MicroPython Meetup - and hopes to see you there!

Dr Mel Makin is a senior scientific software engineer from the Australian Synchrotron. She completed her PhD in quantum physics at the University of Melbourne in 2011. Since that time, she has worked on many software projects.

Dr Nicky Ringland is a Product Manager working in open source security at Google. She describes herself as a recovering Computational Linguist - having earned a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Sydney, (her thesis involved thinking hard about the names of things, then training a computer to do the thinking for her). She previously co-founded Grok Learning - a startup with a mission to teach students to solve problems with code. Named one of Australia's inaugural “Superstars of STEM” and an Australian Financial Review 'Women of Influence', Nicky is passionate about teaching the next generation the skills they need to become the creators of tomorrow, while building a healthy, diverse community for them to thrive in.

Noah Kantrowitz is a web developer turned infrastructure automation enthusiast, and all around engineering rabble-rouser. By day he runs infrastructure at Geomagical/IKEA and by night he makes candy and stickers. He is an active member of the DevOps community, and enjoys merge commits, cat pictures, and beards.

Paige leads the User Training team at ACCESS-NRI and is working to build a comprehensive and impactful training framework for ACCESS-NRI tools to ensure that they are useful to the Australian climate modelling community. She enjoys engaging with users and supporting community-driven action around open-source, scientific tooling.

Paige is passionate about the idea of open science – that every step of our science should be made accessible and transparent to all. She has extensive experience in leading international capacity sharing activities, led the computing portion of a West African oceanography summer school (www.coessing.org) for many years, and has also been an organizer and mentor for Ocean Hack-week.

Paige has also been heavily involved in open science-related communities. She is a steering committee member of Pangeo – a community for big data geoscience – and OSSci – a community at the intersection of science and open-source software.

Paige was awarded a PhD in Physical Oceanography from the University of Michigan, and a postdoc in Climate Data Science at Columbia University. She previously worked as a Support Scientist at NASA.

When not behind a computer, Paige enjoys standing on her hands, doing partner acrobatics and aerial arts, performing in musical theater, and taking nature walks to look for birds.

Paul is a six-foot tall ape descendant and nobody is currently trying to drive a bypass through his home. He works for an open source company, and in his spare time he maintains web sites, rides an electric motorbike, teaches Irish Set Dancing, plays the piano, reads science fiction and fantasy, 3D prints, and collects esoteric hobbies.

Peter is the Conference Director of PyCon AU. He has been a software professional for 20 years and in that time has written software that allowed people with vision impairments to vote secretly, ensured a steady supply of croissants, and used lasers to send people places with chainsaws, among many other projects. His professional experience is mostly with Java and he prefers Python for personal projects.

Computing teacher

Renaldi Gondosubroto is an accomplished Software Engineer, instructor and a developer advocate in the tech community. With over a decade of experience in developing Artificial Intelligence solutions, he has made significant contributions to numerous companies and communities. Outside of the industry, he is active in the academia community, having his research focused on generative AI and machine learning. Having spoken at over 40 events and conferences, along with having led a chunk of workshops, he has been an international speaker for the past six years, sharing his experiences and projects. He also is the organizer of the Melbourne Python User Group and currently is an AWS Subject Matter Expert (SME) for its Professional and Specialty Certifications and holds all 13 AWS certifications, along with 20 Microsoft Azure Certifications. He aims to build open-source solutions which can both help people achieve more value in what they do and promote best practices for fellow developers.

Renee Noble spends her time bringing together tech, teaching, and community in as many ways as possible.

As a Cloud Developer Advocate on the Python Advocacy team at Microsoft, she spends her time teaching the community through global events, creating Python learning resources, and local workshops for students and professionals. Renee is also the CEO and Co-Founder or Tech Inclusion, best known for Girls’ Programming Network workshops that run around Australia. On top of this, Rene started her own Business, ConnectEd Code, bringing tech education opportunities to schools

Well known for her work in tech education and the advancement of women, Renee was most recently awarded as Champion of Change 2023 by Women in Digital.

Dr Russell Keith-Magee is the founder of the BeeWare project, a project developing GUI tools and libraries to support the development of Python software on desktop and mobile platforms. He joined the Django core team in 2006, joined the Python core team in 2024, and was the President of the Django Software Foundation for 5 years. He is a frequent speaker at Python and Django conferences around the globe, sharing his experience as a FLOSS developer, community maintainer, and (unsuccessful) startup founder. In his day job, he is a Principal Engineer at Anaconda, working on BeeWare in the OSS team.

I am a Digi Tech and Science teacher from St Bede's College here in Melbourne. I am passionate about games in schools and I have taught Game Design for several years. I am the STEM Video Games Challenge secondary teacher ambassador for 2024. Come talk to me if you are interested in Digi Tech or STEM in schools!

Professional software developer, Amateur rocket scientist and astronomer. Loves Python, Django, cats, working on their personal software and hardware projects, everything space, playing games of all kinds, and tinkering with 3D Printers.

Sanjin is a former computing teacher and an avid fan of Python since 2014. He has a background in developing programming courses and small educational applications for use in schools. As one of the creators of the Victorian Coding Challenge, Sanjin has been building and maintaining a coding competition platform that has hosted quiz-style events, Capture The Flag challenges, and in 2024, agent-based challenges where students program agents to compete in challenges based on game theory.

Simon Aubury serves as an Associate Director of Data Platforms at Simple Machines. Simon describes his job to his children as being a “data geek”. Although it doesn’t impress his kids, he is proud to have worked around the globe building highly available distributed data systems for finance, transport, health care, insurance and telecommunications clients.

Stefanie Molin is a software engineer at Bloomberg in New York City, where she tackles tough problems in information security, particularly those revolving around data wrangling/visualization, building tools for gathering data, and knowledge sharing. She is also a core developer of numpydoc, creator of the numpydoc-validation pre-commit hook, and the author of “Hands-On Data Analysis with Pandas: A Python data science handbook for data collection, wrangling, analysis, and visualization,” which is currently in its second edition and has been translated into Korean and Chinese. She holds a bachelor’s of science degree in operations research from Columbia University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, as well as a master’s degree in computer science, with a specialization in machine learning, from Georgia Tech. In her free time, she enjoys traveling the world, inventing new recipes, and learning new languages spoken among both people and computers.

Stephen is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney in the fields of Statistics, Data Science and Machine Learning

Suzannah has been dabbling in Python since hearing of a notorious C programming subject at university and wanting to get a headstart.

They work as a software engineer at Kraken Technologies.

Tennessee Leeuwenburg is a data scientist and software developer with over 20 years of experience. He has an interest in open source software, machine learning, and forecast verification. His current research work includes the development of scientific machine learning models for weather and environmental prediction. For an overview of his recent publications, please visit https://orcid.org/0009-0008-2024-1967 .

In 2001 Tom handed in a programming assignment for a university class that came out to about two thousand lines of Java. His professor later shared their model answer to the problem, it was thirty lines of Python. Tom switched sides on the spot.

Tom is a senior software engineer for Kraken Technologies, and is the president of Python New Zealand, the charity promoting and supporting the Python language community in New Zealand.

Vishal is a Senior Data Consultant with DevOps skills who has worked across a range of industries. He has experience in establishing Cloud Infrastructure Foundations, Event Driven Data Lake, Data Visualisation, Master Data Management, Data Quality, Data Governance frameworks and Data Mesh. He is passionate about real time event driven distributed systems. Vishal has used these experiences to enable use cases which help businesses realise real value from data.

Throughout my tenure as a software engineer, technical lead, and engineering manager, I have navigated through public and private sectors, and fast-paced startups. Along this journey, I have delved into a broad spectrum of technologies from mobile and web, to data pipelines, cloud infrastructure, and automations. As a developer advocate at MongoDB, I would like to help fellow engineers make better design decisions with not just theoretical knowledge, but also a pragmatic mindset. On any typical day, you might catch me lost in thoughts with a cup of coffee in my hands.

Yaakov is a Principal Software Engineer at WiseTech Global, occasional speaker, open-source contributor, reverse-engineer, hacker, problem solver, amateur radio operator, and Pokémon collector.