2025-04-25 –, Palladium
The Python community is built on a culture of support, inclusion, and collaboration. Sustaining this welcoming environment requires intentional community-building efforts, which often involve repetitive or time-consuming tasks. These tasks, however, can be automated without compromising their value—freeing up time for meaningful human engagement.
This talk showcases my project aimed at supporting underrepresented groups in tech, specifically through building Python communities on Mastodon and Bluesky. A key part of this initiative is the "Awesome PyLadies" repository, a curated collection of PyLadies blogs and YouTube channels that celebrates their work. To enhance visibility, I created a PyLadies bot for social media. This bot automates regular posts and reposts tagged content, significantly extending their reach and fostering an engaged community.
In this session, I’ll cover:
- The role of automation in community building
- The technical architecture behind the bot
- A hands-on demo on integrating Google’s Gemini into community tools
- Upcoming features and opportunities for collaboration
By combining Python, automation, and modern AI capabilities, we can create thriving, inclusive communities that scale impact while staying true to the human-centered ethos of open source.
My planned outline for the talk is as follows:
- Introduction: A brief overview of the project and its goals, focusing on community building and inclusivity within the Python ecosystem (3 minutes)
- The Importance of Visibility: Explain the background of the project and why visibility is important (3 minutes)
- Bot Architecture and Setup: A technical walkthrough of the bot, its architecture, and how it operates to extend the reach of community content on platforms like Mastodon or Bluesky (5 minutes)
- Hands-On Demo: Task Automation with Google’s Gemini and GitHub Actions: A step-by-step guide to integrating Google’s Gemini and GitHub Actions for creating low-barrier, automated workflows tailored for community-building tasks (12 minutes)
- Looking Ahead: Provide a forward-looking perspective (upcoming features of the project and future developments) (2 minutes)
- Q&A and Buffer (5 minutes)
I hope that the talk will inspire more Pythonistas to automate their tasks, and also more PyLadies to share material publicly and make the public perception of experts in the field more diverse.
Novice
Expected audience expertise: Python:Novice
Public link to supporting material, e.g. videos, Github, etc.:
Cosima Meyer is a data scientist with a strong focus on making machine learning models explainable and accessible. Passionate about trustworthy AI, she is committed to building systems that are not only technically robust but also transparent and ethical. As a Google's Women Techmakers Ambassador and an active member of PyLadies, Cosima is dedicated to fostering inclusive and collaborative communities, working to bridge the two groups and create spaces for knowledge-sharing and growth.
During her PhD studies at the University of Mannheim, Cosima discovered her enthusiasm for sharing knowledge through technical blog posts and developing open-source software. Her work reflects a blend of technical expertise and a passion for community building, inspiring others to explore, learn, and contribute to the fields of AI and data science.