I’m coming to the end of my time at PyCon 2015.
This is my second time at PyCon, and at this stage I can safely say that PyCon is my favourite conference, bar none. Other conferences are larger or funnier or weirder, but none of them revitalises me like PyCon does.
360 days a year I work on open source projects. I love building things for people and trying to make their lives easier, and mostly I find the work to be a good use of my time.
However, it is fundamentally work I do on top of my 40 hour a week day job. I do it for no pay, with whatever time I have available. Most of the time the work that I and the other open source maintainers in the world do goes relatively unnoticed and without thanks. Sometimes it gets noticed, for the wrong reasons, and we have to weather ad hominem attacks on our characters. Very rarely, someone notices and thanks us.
This confluence of features means that working on open source is physically and emotionally draining. Over the course of a year it takes a lot out of me, and a lot of open source developers are lost, often for good.
PyCon is the one event a year that gives me that energy back. One time a year I get to be surrounded by my peers and my users. Here I get to be reminded that the tools I work so hard to build provide value to people, and that other people can build really wonderful things on top of my work.
PyCon is a wonderful, beautiful, humbling experience. The community of people I’ve chosen to associate with is filled with kind, talented, generous people. Each year I look forward to spending a few days with you all, and so far it has never disappointed. Thank you all for making PyCon 2015 as magnificent as ever, and I hope to see you again in Portland next year.