PyDelhi + Ilugd + LinuxChixIndia Meetup, as it happened on 5th February 2017
Posted on Sun 05 February 2017 in Meetup
While I was making my way to SCIS inside JNU all the memories from PyCon 2016 came back to me. SCIS is just opposite to the Convention Center where PyCon took place. That was my first ever conference and I met a lot of awesome people.
Speaking of meeting awesome people, there I was inside SCIS in a room filled with ‘Python Enthusiasts’. That room reminded me of my school but this room was equipped with gadgets to make a difference form a classroom. As usual I saw Akshay (qua non) controlling the audience and the fact that our second speaker is not at the venue yet. So, it began with him welcoming everyone.
TensorFlow by Mukul Malik and Rishabh Shukla
This talk takes a deep dive in the topic i.e. buzz-word of past couple of year ‘Machine Learning’, so to give you a context read Introduction To Machine Learning by Mukul. Rishab began by explaining the basics of how a neural network learn and reduces error by each iteration to subdue a goal. The role of TensorFlow here is to provide powerful modules to do complex computing efficiently like finding a needle in a haystack (figuratively).
As an example, let’s take a data set of English sentences and we have to distinguish each sentence for whether it’s a ‘Fact’ or not. To achieve this, we first perform some preprocessing on our data set to turn them into ML-friendly ‘Word Vectors’, there goes another blog by Mukul. Now we provide an understanding to our algorithm about ‘What is a fact ?’ with help of a database filled with values. Our algorithm begins with raw word vectors in the first iteration and results in a floating value in between ‘0’ (Not a Fact) or ‘1’ (Fact). With every iteration it reduces some ‘error’ in the actual value with the help of ‘bias’. Think of ‘error’ is what we determine at the end of each iteration and ‘bias’ we provide to the next iteration to correct that. Seems easy right ? It’s not. The code base is overwhelmingly complex at first, and like everything you’ll get comfortable with it by practice.
Bigger picture. A whole lot of conversation happens on the web which is open to everyone (like twitter) and most of which is erroneous remarks. Rishab began with this project to discriminate between what among them is a correct fact and what is just a humbug. And hence showing us a little of the mystical power ML holds.
Google Summer Of Code (and open source), An Interactive Session
After a quick snack break and networking Akshay gathered us together again to make the next session interactive. He began with asking everyone whether they know about GSOC, open source and have been a part of it by making contribution. Some people raised their hands and they had to speak about their experience. I began with recalling the names of organisations that have been a part of GSOC and many other names were added by experience people in the audience. Many of them have been contributing to Upstream repositories and not to forget Akshay who has been part of Kivy and also mentoring for GSOC under it since past 6 years. Akshay then explained how we can monitor for projects and apply to GSOC. Amit also shared his experience with GSOC and how he mentored for SymPy where he also improved one of their computational algorithms by making it more efficient. Sanyam opened up about his open source contribution to Mozilla and other communities and what mindset we should have while approaching such organisations.
Domain expanded and moved to platforms other than GSOC like Outreachy and RGSOC. Whole idea of contributing to an open source project is to expand our knowledge and obviously a better CV.
Using terminal on GOD MODE by Akash
Next talk gave us a heads up about some of the time efficient tools. Beginning with the history of TTY which are nothing just the virtual consoles you can access by CTRL + F1 to F6 to the difference shell and terminal. Then he introduced us to TMUX or terminal multiplexer or some would say love at first sight. No matter how good we code sometimes it’s the tools we use that’s really important to increase efficiency and also bring swag to your screen. He briefly showed us how we can handle different TMUX sessions and split a window inside it with set of keys. And while we’re at it, a voice came from behind which I instantly recognised was of Anuvrat’s. Before moving to what he said, a monologue
I saw Anuvrat at the beginning of the day when he was sitting quietly giving no account of his presence to other. He’s one of those guys who’ll teach you something really interesting whenever you meet. So I thought of not disturbing him with a ‘Hi’, as I knew something amazing was happening inside his head which he’ll surely put in words at a better time.
So, he said there’s a tool known as MOSH which is a high latency tool to overcome speed and other issues with SSH. I started working with AWS EC2 a couple of weeks back and if you too have headache of a internet connection you can understand the pain of accessing your server instance with SSH. But in just 20 mins TMUX + MOSHgave me a GOD MODE to access my servers.
Hiring, Pitching and More
In this session people from audience are invited to pitch their products, company as employer and themselves as employee. This session also became interesting as I met an interesting man Achint and we had a brief talk about each other’s tech stacks.
Parting Words and PyDelhi Conference
This is the time where we thank everyone for being a part of the event and share links to connect with each other. Shivani representing Linux Chix India and Shyam, Indian Linux User Group Delhi spoke about respective communities and what content they are committed to provide in this pool of meetups. PyDelhi Conference became a part of conversation and people are invited to be a part of it by ‘Buying Tickets’ and ‘Submitting a Proposal’ for talk/workshop. I’ve also proposed a talk for ‘Telegram bot using Python’ which you can up-vote on the CFP website if you want me to show you how I used it by making ‘ViralSemesterBot’ for my college which is basically a notes/news management system build over a bot. After that I was asked to speak the final words for PyDelhi for which I was shocked as it was my first time. But before that, a monologue:
I never hesitate to speak given a chance. Exhibit A, I won a inter-school drama competition which I wrote in complete RAP and also performed a part in it. Exhibit B, I jumped off the stage with a guitar (literally) while performing a song. But this was different, I admired the work of the people in front of me. So I found out that I become nervous speaking in front of intelligent people. Maybe that’s why I can have a conversation with myself just fine, if you know what I mean. ;)
But I spoke whatever I could and pointed several times at PyDelhi website. It’s good to a have a experience like ‘the first time’, for 1) it’ll help in future and 2) ‘first’ happens only once. :D
PS : Every underlined word/sentence is sitting on a hyperlink. Please like and leave down comments, I would be happy to have a conversation.