2026-07-16 –, Memorial Hall
Did you know that waffles were invented in the 14th century? Is Acetaminophen gluten free? If you said "yes" to both questions, you must have seen Damon McDougall's legendary SciPy 2014 lightning talk.
Let's distill the lore of lightning talks and touch on SciPy culture over the years and "make sure we get all the history" (or a yeast squares sparse low rank approximation of it)
Gather 'round, slithering scientists, and ye shall hear
a beer-ful of stories, of yesteryear
The Spirit of SciPy is the Track
MC Pi (that's me), has got your back
Been coming to the conference since 2009
Sharing memories and photos, which we'll all combine
some will be profound, others asinine
Honey, do you mead more proof?
Lighting talks are a perennial favorite for SciPy attendees. Let's celebrate the connection we make here, and give others a glimpse into our amazingly resourceful and creative community.
I started coming to SciPy as a sponsored graduate student (2009-2011), gave talks in '13 and '14, started hosting lightning talks with Anthony Scopatz '17-'19, also volunteered as Communications Chair '18-'19, Program Co-Chair '20, '23, '24.
Some of the SciPy lightning talks I co-hosted with Anthony Scopatz are linked in the middle of this
page: https://pirsquared.org/talks/ (2017-2019). I also gave my first and only SciPy Lighting talk in 2022
Some of the photos I have I've also previously shared and talked about at the inaugural "Another Open Source Podcast" hosted by when I was a guest along with Madicken Munk
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4LArGQQtRqGrixS9vnpNZk
- SciPy 2009 - last one at CalTech in Pasadena, CA
- SciPy 2010 - first one in Austin, Texas
- SciPy 2011
Paul Ivanov's been proudly coming to SciPy since 2009. He got his start in the community in Matplotlib, and went on to also gain the commit bit to IPython and Jupyter projects. Away from keyboard, he likes biking and beekeeping.