Sean Tibor: Hello and welcome to Teaching Python. This is episode 134. My name is Sean Tyber. I'm a coder who teaches. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And my name is Kelly Shuster Peredes. And I'm a teacher who codes. Sean Tibor: And this week we're speaking with Jay Miller, the founder of Black Python Devs, among many other things. But we'll just go with that headline this week. So welcome, Jay, to the show. We're excited to have you here. Jay Miller: Hey, it's great to be here. I'm not really a teacher, but I do code and I talk about it a lot. Does that count? Sean Tibor: Absolutely. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Well, we're sorry we're late because I told everyone that I was really excited to talk, and Jay and I were talking for too much and Sean couldn't get us to stop talking, so I blame myself. But you're a coder who has considered for a hot moment that they would want to teach just for a second, right? Jay Miller: Yeah. Oh, I do email people if they're like, hey, how can we get you involved in our school programs? And I'll just go. If you want me to come in and talk for an hour, I'm good at that. It's just if you want me to keep coming back, then it gets weird. I've got a family, so they'd have to be in Atlanta for me to do that. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, exactly. Sean Tibor: Yep. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Always on stage. Sean Tibor: Well, before we get into the topic of the week, let's do the wins of the week. Jay, you want to share something good that's happened inside, outside, whether it's in front of your keyboard or in front of an audience. Jay Miller: In front of the keyboard is great because I'm going to go very, very literal. I did a live stream on Friday, which I guess is like a week minus some, where I put together a brand new desk. And I'm really excited about this desk because I've had the same desk for four years. It was like my pandemic purchase, and I just needed a desk because we were working from home. So it was like the cheapest desk I could find. It was lopsided, so in the end, my monitors would fling backwards. So, yeah, I bought a nice desk uplift, had a Memorial day sale, and so I got the standing desk with the real bamboo, wood and a bunch of other gadgets they just threw in for free. And I was like, yes, this is great. And I guess the win is that my employer paid for most of its site. Shout out to my employer, you're great. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That's always awesome. It's very important to have a desk. I am not at my normal recording spot and I'm. That's why I'm constantly moving. So I get it. Having that. John, you want to do a win? I have so many. Sean Tibor: Why don't you go first then? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Oh my God. Well, it's two and a half days to summer, so right there and then. It's so exciting. I've got my whole two and a half pages of summer list. Things mixed from what I'm doing for work and what we're doing for teaching python. Blah, blah, blah. Number two, if you check out my twitter feed, I posted three awesome turtle python codes from my 6th graders. Metallica one nice coral reef one. And the other one was just this simple little beach scene hello from Florida while I was grading these, thinking Zen of python. So I had some fun with that. And then, oh, and I'm up against a brick wall purposely because it's at the end of the school year, so literally there banging my head, going, two more days, two more days. Two more days. That's it. That's good week. Sean Tibor: Nice. Very good. My win is I can't decide between watching the interns continue to flourish. So we have new interns in as of two weeks ago. So they're in week three of twelve and they are going through all the things that interns go through, which is basically freaking out. What do I do? What's going on? Jay Miller: Remembering Sean's coffee order is what. Sean Tibor: It's a hell of a delivery because they're in New Jersey and I'm in Florida. But, you know, honestly, the real win is after two weeks, I asked them for, hey, what do you think? What was different than what you expected? Because people have this idea in their mind of what it's going to be like and then you actually get somewhere. What's it like now that you're here? And the two things that they consistently said was, everyone's a lot nicer and more relaxed than I expected them to be, which I was like, okay. I didn't realize we were that intimidating at the beginning, but okay. And then the second thing was that they didn't realize how substantial or how real their projects were actually going to be. So they get assigned a project that we actually want them to deliver on. And they keep saying, I've been fetching coffee for my boss before, I've done busy work before. This is a real project and I can actually see what it would do if it gets finished. So they're already kind of leaning into it and really engaging on it and it's just really fun to be able to see them do that and I get a front row seat for it. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That's awesome. And you have your little spark of teaching time come in for the next. So we always see the motivation with Sean for the next nine weeks. Got a smile on his face because he gets to work in a mentorship and have some fun with it. Sean Tibor: Yeah. Apparently I've developed a reputation for giving Sean talks, which are motivational speaking opportunities, not you. Yeah, I know you're shocked, Kelly. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That's funny. Jay Miller: I want to attend a Sean talk. That sounds fun. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: They're all the time. Just hold it. You'll get to them. They're good. Jay Miller: Sean, have you ever gotten to do the ignite talks that they do it things like DevOps days? Sean Tibor: No, I haven't been able to do those. Jay Miller: So these are fun. There are 20 slides, exactly 20 slides, and they're exactly five minutes and the slides auto advance. So it's an amazing moment in which you can really tell if someone is like, in their bag. Then I have, I've done a few and I've done one where like, literally the computer went to sleep. And so as I'm talking, it's like blank screen. I'm just going to keep going. And then when I come, when I, when it came back up, I was like, right where I was supposed to be and everything, everyone was like, wow, that's so amazing. And I was like, it's that moment that makes me think, I would love to be able to work with people on a standard curriculum where I do have that time to prepare, which you would think, as someone who goes and speaks at conferences, that I would be more prepared when I get up. And the answer is kinda. Sean Tibor: I think what I found was that it ends up being a skill where you are reading the audience, you're improvising parts of it. You have the prepared parts. That, to me, has been the most interesting feedback. Coming back to the corporate world after being a teacher is that, wow, your public speaking is really solid. You can just talk about anything and sound really confident about it. Well, that comes from being a teacher. Jay Miller: I say it's like boxing or like sparring. Sometimes the audience or sometimes your opponent has a different plan than what you had, and then sometimes your stomach just hurts and you're just like, how do I work around that? Sean Tibor: And, and what's crazy about that is sometimes those are the absolute best lessons, the best talks, like, whatever, is when you're just totally making it up based on what you already know and what you prepared for. But what is coming out of your mouth is not rehearsed. Sometimes that's the best. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: My thoughts on this whole thing is I know before I give a talk, and Sean knows, like, I'll send him. I'll send him about 80 slides, and we have to pare it down to about ten. And I've written tons and tons of papers with all these notes that I want to do, and I never read them. And then I get up there and I ramble, and he has to clarify my thought because I have so much to say, I just never have enough time to say it. And then I get these crazy sparks of ideas in the middle of my sentences. So I blame that on me. But you, on the other hand, you go and give a keynote speech at Pycon, and I'm writing down, like, all of these quotes. Like, that's a quote. I'm gonna tweet that. Oh, that's that. I mean, the juice wasn't worth the squeeze still, like, I was thinking, how can I squeeze that into something I'm gonna say. Jay Miller said the juice wasn't worth. Jay Miller: The squeeze with that one in particular. Like, that event, I. That's the hardest I've ever prepared for a talk. Only to take all of that preparation and throw it out at the last minute and just go, you got it. It's great. But I do think that is. I mean, again with the boxing metaphor, like, you, you practice not to say, I'm going to do this, and do this, then say this, and I'm going to do the pirouette right on slide four. Sometimes some talks like that are really great. Shout out to Samana's talk. Who. It had to be extremely well choreographed. There were. There was music, there were props. There's a lot of things that you can't just wing on the fly. I think that you can certain, like, people will be good at either. There isn't necessarily a wrong way to get up on stage and give your talk, as long as it's coming from you. And I think that's one of the things that, even with black python devs, we try to buck against, where you'll have people who will send, like, resumes and go, hey, can someone review my resume? And I'll have to go. This is just my opinion, as someone who has only gotten a job using the exact same template based off of my resume, as a person who lives in the US and has plenty of connections with people who operate in tech, now that we've gotten all that out, of the way, here are my criticisms. And then someone else will go, hey, I live down the street from you and I got a job, and this is what my resume looks like. And I'm going to go listen to them because their information is probably going to be way more pertinent than anything that I can give you. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, for sure. We'll just bring back to the conversation. Let's start with the black python devs, because as you're talking the keynote and I'm writing down this stuff, I'm thinking I'm going to read some the quotes I wrote down. This is summarizing your entire keynote in about seven quotes. I'm going to save the best one, my favorite one, for last. Your reach may extend beyond your grasp. Change the perception around you. Love. Love that little bit of, you want to give a little bit of information about this quote that I'm going to throw out at you. Jay Miller: So your reach may extend beyond your grasp is a thing that our co founder, Kojo Adrisa, who is arguably the co founder, because he says he's not. And I say he is, but also I'm in charge, so he is. He would tell me this almost as, like, a caution. We were really small. We were small intentionally. When we first created the discord that kind of kicked all this off, it was right in the middle of Carol Willing's talk at Pycon 2023. She was saying, hey, start small and scale. Like, you don't have to have it all figured out today. Just do what you know, and, like, the rest will just figure it out. It'll happen so fast forward six months later and we're at 80 people, which, for me, I'm amazed there's 80 people. Hey, I did not expect this. This is great. But we're at Django con us, and there's a lot of folks that are from different parts of Africa that are coming in and saying, hey, what if we did this? What if we did this? Or, hey, how are we going to help with this? How are we going to help over here? How are we going to do these things? And I'm just like, yeah, that sounds great. Let's just. Let's. I don't know. Let's do this. It wasn't ever a moment where there was a let's sit down, talk about it. It was like, I want to get books to parts of Africa. Okay, what's stopping us? Taxes and import fees. Okay, that sounds like a very big reality, but that's only for physical books. What about digital books? We would need someone to give us books. Okay. There are three authors over there. What if I just ask them for books? And they're like, oh, wait, we can do that. And it's like, sure. So I just get up and ask, yeah, sure. What do you need? Five books? Ten books? 20 books? I haven't figured that part out yet, but I'll get back to you. So there was a lot of this moment of. Before we stop and start coming up with all of these disqualifications as to why we couldn't do a thing, let's just start with, okay, we can do this. As I would get reminded that your grasp is beyond your reach. Okay. You're going to have to ask for help, one inside of the community itself, but also from other organizations that do have the resources, that do have the ability to do these things. Black Python devs was never meant to be this isolation space. It was supposed to be a way of taking leaders that were already doing leadership things and say, hey, we get it, you're tired. What if we help you out by one helping find more leaders, also by just being a space where you could come and maybe get a break, or if you needed some advice on who to talk to about getting books or who to talk to about get finding speakers. Hey, we have people in here that are capable of speaking and capable of presenting and doing these things, just wanting to make it easier for everybody. Then the other one. What was the other one? The other part of that change of. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Perception around you, and then start small and scale. You already said a couple of the ones I've written down, so we're doing good. Jay Miller: The changing the perception around you is one of those things that, like, anytime you're talking about a community and diversity like you, you run against the, I'm doing everything that I can, or I've tried to do this, and it doesn't work. It's one of those times where we stop and we should go, hey, why is it not working? Let's have that honest conversation of, why is it not working? Sometimes it's not working. Maybe there is something that we're doing wrong and we need to fix or we need to correct. And I would think this is like the teaching. If you're trying to tell someone new math, I don't know, hey, you need to do this thing. You need to do this thing. It's not working. Okay, maybe we try old math for once and just see if it works. See if it clicks. That happens for me. That happened for me today. We were joking before this that I did a two hour stream before we did the recording. The reason I did the two hour stream was I was building a web app in streamlet, and I wasn't fighting with solving the problem, I was fighting with using streamlit. And I was like, I bet I could get equally as far in fast API. And just to prove it to myself, I'm going to go live and just did it 30 minutes later. I effectively have the exact same application in Fastapi. It wasn't that I wasn't trying, it was just I was banging my head against the wall. That wasn't that important, like choosing the web framework. We had someone come into the chat and was like, I really want to use Django. What's stopping you? Go use Django. Oh, but I've been told this, this and this, and I'm like, look, Django has its benefits. Fast API has its benefits. Ultimately, pick one and just use it. I was a flask person for the longest, and I still reach for flask every now and then. But sometimes there are very good reasons as to why a thing isn't working, and then other times it's just you're looking at it wrong. Or in the case with black python devs, there are a lot of organizations that have tried to reach out, like, they're doing what they're doing and they're wondering why black people aren't taking adherence to it and joining in. Sometimes it is a straight up logistical problem of, hey, you did this in a place where it's really hard for black folks in that area to get to this event, or you do this event during dinner time. Guess what? Most single mothers can't give up dinner time for that. So you got to figure out something else. You got to make sure there's an online option. You got to make sure that you're in an area or that you're doing things that provide childcare. You got to make sure you have enough food to feed the people and maybe their kids if they show up, then you have to be vocal about that as well and say, we are doing these things. Most people don't realize that Pycon us usually offers childcare, and it's not just like Jay in a room with a bunch of toddlers, because that's a nightmare waiting to happen. Nobody wants that. It's actual. They have to go through training. They have to make sure their insurance allows for, like, these types of things. And usually there are policies put in place for that to happen. But if you're not telling the people who would most likely utilize that feature. You did all that work for nothing. But also, like, it could have been bigger. And sure, opening the conversation with, we'd love for you to come to our conference. We have childcare. Maybe that's not the best way to do it, but maybe you have one or two slides that talk about. Here are all the things that we provide that make it easier for everyone to attend, which include maybe we offer travel reimbursement if you're local so that you can take the bus, if that's the thing that you want to do. That helps with our environmental efforts. We provide childcare for people who would want to go but have to make those decisions on whether or not they could bring their kids. Kids can attend for free. That's a thing. Scale. The Southern California Lennox Expo does an academic day where, like, they have high school and middle school students get up on stage and present things that they've been building. And, like, one of my favorite talks from a high school student that talked about how they built, like, their own little plex server for the school. I was in my whole mind the entire time. I was like, I wonder if their teachers know that they did this. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: It's so funny because, like, today, and I don't know if it was subconscious, but I did a lesson today because I have to teach a week of AI, and I found this really great lesson about perspective and perception. And while you were talking, because these are all the things I told you, I wrote down all of the quotes, but I was thinking about this. One of the lessons was understanding bias and how it's perspective rated. And they had the infamous duck rabbit picture where you see a duck, I see a rabbit, and the kids are like, it's a duck, it's a rabbit, it's a duck. Wait. It's about perspective and it's your perception. And this is what happens with bias. Then we did the other one where it's like the three sticks and you see three, and then you look another way and it says there's four. It was like the rectangles. I know you. Sean Tibor: It's like the optical illusion. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Optical illusion one, right? Yeah. And the whole conversation is, can you see what others see? Can you see what they point out? And if someone sees something differently, does it mean they're wrong? So that's that whole talk about, we have to think about everybody. When we're planning events or when we're at work or we're in the classroom. We have to understand what it is that they point out how does it make you feel when someone tells you're wrong? No. You can't come because, sorry, you have a kid. It's not my problem. That's you, not me. So it was an interesting conversation with them. And then big one. The huge one on the next slide was this slide with the presidents of the United States. And the kids were like, I didn't say anything. I just. And I said. And then there's this slide. And they're like, oh. And that's all the kids said. It's all a bunch of old white dudes. And I was like, no, not all. All, but one. And the kids were like, oh. I said. And that's. That's AI. It was a really good conversation with the kids, because when you start seeing perspectives and you understand different perceptions of events, it changes. So this last thing, I have a whole bunch more, but two more. It was on a mission. They came, they spoke, and they left. It hit me, because sometimes we get the kids right, we get the kids in, and they're on a mission to code, and you get them in coding, and then the end of nine weeks, they leave. And it's. I know this is very simplified version of what you're talking about in your keynote, but how do you keep people around and in the places where you want? And that's how I took it away. You have a mission. They came, they spoke, they left. You want to get more black developers at Pycon? And there wasn't really a question on that, but I was just stating I. Jay Miller: Agree on the perception side of things. The funny thing about those optical illusions is that after you see it, it's really hard not to see it. I've seen, like, the TikTok with the weird dragon thing, and it's like the dragon's looking at you, and then you slowly move, and it's actually, the dragon is like the inside of the cardboard, and it's facing in the opposite direction. And once you know that, it's impossible to go back to seeing it as it looking at you. That, to me, is a really just tangible feeling of. No one here is saying that you are intentionally excluding people from these things. It's just that there is a thing that you have probably never thought about. But once you see it, once it's been brought up, once it's been brought to your attention, it's really hard to ignore. One of my greatest accomplishments to the tech community is I've written one versus code extension as of now. And it's quite simple. It's just called add code of conduct. All it does is it lets you choose between three very popular codes of conduct, and it'll let you hot swap your email address so you can add your information into it. And it's the same code of conduct that was started with Django girls and like plone. And there's one built specifically for communities. And I made a rule for myself that was, if there isn't a code of conduct, I won't contribute to a project. Actually, I will offer to contribute, but I will only offer to contribute a code of conduct. Then from there, if they choose to add it, then I'll try to contribute beyond that. It's one of those things. Imagine having a sign on your door that says, when you walk in, we'll do our best to make sure that you feel safe. Every time you see that sign now, you're like, I feel good about walking into this place. Then you start to wonder why every building doesn't have this exact same sign. That just makes me feel comfortable about walking into this place. That's really what some of these small things do. Some communities will be like, how do we make ourselves more approachable for historically excluded folks? And usually first thing I will check is see if they have a code of conduct. More importantly, see if they talk about the fact that they have a code of conduct and that they vocalize it. That's the first any meetup that I'm in charge of. Hi. Welcome to the meetup. The next slide. This is our code of conduct, or at least a summarized version of it. If you want to read the full version, it's this. But just know that while you're here are the rules of engagement. Here's how we expect you to treat everybody. Here's what is not acceptable, and then here's also how we're going to enforce that. And if you have any questions, you can ask me. If for some reason, and I'm the person offending you, here are two other people that you can ask. If all of us are just ganging up on you for some very strange reason, here's an email to someone who's not at this event that you can reach out to. So above all, you should feel you are absolutely safe. And more than anything, we want you to feel you belong here. And there's no one here, including us, that can tell you differently unless you decide to go against these rules. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Sorry, Sean, I'm manipulating the whole conversation. But. So this code of conduct. But this is foundational. It sounds silly, but this is, like, foundational. Teaching. I apply it to teaching because this is what I know best. When you come into the classroom, we want to make sure that every child is heard. And who said that? We had a guest on. She said every child, every day. Right? Every child, every day. That's the same thing we are saying in our communities. Every person, every day. We're making sure that whenever you show up, your voice is heard. You would think, like, this is a common courtesy as you get older and some tea. I'm not saying every classroom is like this, but we hope that it is. When you don't get that, it gets very frustrating. And maybe this is why this came up, was the spite driven success, which I've actually quoted, I think, about four times because I said, he said that. That statement for me. I even said it to Sean when you said it, like, that was written for me because I am coding, because I am going to show everybody that this girl who doesn't know anything about code, she's going to code and she's going to do it really well. I had a lot of compliments this pycon that I've become very confident in speaking, but it was that spite driven success. And I don't think, like, I'm taking it out on one person. I'm assuming that's not what you meant either. It was just like you said. No, I'm doing it. What was your take on your spite driven success? Jay Miller: I stole that from Drew. I can't remember. Sorry. Drew don't remember people's last names, but he's the. He was the chair for Django Con in San Diego and gave a lightning talk at the Django con last year in Durham about spite driven development. Yeah, definitely. I have always been put in a position of people telling me what I could and couldn't do. For those that don't know, I'm Marine Corps veteran. I'm a college dropout. And I went from being a straight a student up until middle school to, like, graduating with a 2.9 GPA. The struggle became very real, and I didn't know what was going to happen. But the one thing that I have learned just getting into tech was the biggest example of I am, by most automated resume systems, I am not qualified because I never put. I never put the education part in my resume, but I'm still here. That, to me, just proves that one that's b's. Like, you shouldn't. If it's not a requirement, don't make it a requirement. That just means that in spite of all of the reasons why I shouldn't be here. I am here. That's just something that people will have to deal with. But I have a question for Sean, because we're talking about this, like, every voice being heard every day. Like, how does that work with interns? Because we have. We don't have interns. We were talking about maybe, like, me personally funding, like, one person to come and help me. But we have over 500 people, and it's like, with most communities, you'll have like, hundreds of people and then, like ten who are active, like, overly engaged. You want to get the voices of the others in the community. It's the same. It's the same problems that other communities deal with. We're dealing with that, too. So with interns, I'm guessing the expectation is, as I was told growing up, sometimes children are meant to be seen and not heard. I feel like interns probably have that same chip on their shoulder of no one's going to value my opinion because I'm an intern. I'm here to learn. I'm not here to provide feedback. Sean Tibor: Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple things that are contributing to the program operating the way that it does, contributing to the way that it feels for interns, at least from what they're telling me. I start every internship class by telling them that summer interns are a big deal for us. This is something that we really care about. This is the future of our company. This is our future leaders. We are excited to have them come in and there's. And we start by saying we know that we are institutionalized. We are, have been on the inside for a long time. And there are things that I think about and do that are shaped by my career. Like all the years that I've spent on the corporate side. In many ways that makes me very effective, but in other ways, it blinds me to things that I may not be able to see because my eyes aren't new, they aren't fresh anymore. So we start with that by saying that interns are a big deal to us for a variety of reasons. It is not just part of our, you know, a lot of our Dei initiatives start with early careers, not just the intern program, but our hiring practices and changing things. Like, we can't change how people are hired 15 or 20 years ago, but we can change how they're hired now. So we're working on that. Two, it does bring new talent, new skills, new experiences. If I said fast API in my company, two, people would understand what I'm talking about out of probably 4000 people in our broader business services organization. But I can go in the room with interns and at least two of the 18 will nod their heads. My hit rate is a lot better with interns for what's new, what's exciting, what's interesting, then we give them real projects. I tell them, if you weren't doing this project, I would have to do this project. I would much rather have you do the project because I know that you can do it and you'll do it well and you're going to bring all that energy and new, fresh eyes to it. So this is real. This is not something we just made up. It's something real that we need. And I'm seeing the engagement now. It doesn't happen for every intern. We've had plenty of experiences with interns where they just fell off like it just didn't work or it didn't hit or whatever it was. I don't always get to see what the real story was, but we do our best to support them and encourage them and give them the room to be able to run with it. And that's the best we've been able to come up with as in terms of a formula right now, it's just trying to give them something real, give them something engaging and let them know that it actually matters. Like what they're doing is going to matter. Jay Miller: That's awesome. I'm shocked. And I just put it in our chat. Like, I wrote a blog post that was a part one and part two is still in my head somewhere about advice that I would give on getting your first job in tech. And I love how you're like, I want to have conversations about new technology and my advice was focus on the old technology. That's what all the companies are using. Don't like. It's great that you learn the new stuff, that's awesome. But also you should probably know how bootstrap works because you're going to see a lot of it, especially when you're doing b two b stuff. And it's not even going to be the latest version of Bootstrap. It's going to be the probably running on a lamp stack like system somewhere. You're using PhP that hasn't been updated in a decade, so there's no Laravel here. Like, best of luck to you, dude. Sean Tibor: I've got as 400 servers that I have to figure out what to do with. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Okay, yes, but isn't that the problem with anyone coming into this system? You have to try to fit in with the old and stay current, still with the new, and then walk that fine line all the time between where you are personally and where the company is like, yeah, that, that's hard. And then throw it in to be young old girl. You know, I remember and Sean and I talk joke around about this, but I remember all the time like, hey, Sean, why don't you share this idea? Sean's gonna spin it. Well, because they're going to listen to Sean versus me because I'm just like, this is what I believe. This is where I am and I'm a girl. What do I know? And that's hard sometimes. And I can't imagine being an intern or being a female intern and trying to walk that line from a company that is primarily older men. Maybe what? That's why the girls of AI aren't the ones being seen a lot or talked about. I've seen those posts constantly coming up. Lots of female were in AI, but they're not being shown on Time magazine. So it's that, are we going to get heard or because we're here in the current and not walking in the past? I don't know. So what do you do? Jay Miller: That's one of the reasons I love the team that I worked with at Microsoft and also shout out to my old team, I love all of you. It was really the first team where I had nothing but brilliant technical women. Not to say that there aren't technical women elsewhere, but our team was one. When you have a very brilliant technical manager who is a woman and says, okay, we're going to hire brilliant technical people and I believe one of them has either was a guest on here and if not, should be Pamela Fox. Like, no, okay, that I got. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Not yet. Jay Miller: I'll work to fix that personally because one, Pamela is a professor at UC Berkeley still and is a principal advocate at Microsoft. In the python space, live streams doing AI stuff is building the like standard, most popular AI demo that Microsoft has. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: You're like making me get all excited here. AI, you know, Professor Bird. Jay Miller: Exactly. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: My gosh. Jay Miller: But that was, the beauty of it is that was the standard. I had so much imposter syndrome being around just amazing women in tech. Like Nina Zakarinka, who was my manager when I was hired. I learned Python based off of some of her Pycon talks. Her talk on logging was how I learned how to do logging with PDB and so many other things. And she does so many amazing projects with wearables and like Doctor Sarah Kaiser literally has a quantum programming children's book. These are so amazing. When I was an advocate and I made the move to go to Microsoft, a part of it was that, hey, there's a promotion that comes with this. And also there's the name. The name is cool. But there was also this moment of, I saw brilliant women in positions above me and who were, like, excellent leaders. My skip that I interviewed with, I call her my skip for life, because if I ever have a question about the tech career, like, I don't hesitate to just text her and ask it. So many amazing people. And it's. You're right, it is one of those things where, hey, how come we're not hearing about this person? How come we're not hearing about the primary maintainer of arguably one of the most popular AI demos out there on the planet? I don't know the answer to that. I can't necessarily say it's because she's a woman. Because one, she would be like, nuh uh. Because I'm amazing. And maybe she's like, I just don't like going out of my house. There's a lot of, there's a lot of amazing folks out there. This has been a thing that I have actively had to talk to people about still. With the idea of something like a black python devs is like the idea of meritocracy and people being hired based on whether or not they're qualified. My answer is simply, there are billions of people on this planet. There's more than one person that is qualified for this role. And, like, the fact that you're usually looking in only one direction, which is cis white graduate from Stanford, cis white graduate from MIT, cis white dude from Caltech, cis white dude from Georgia Tech. Sometimes looking at the local community college isn't because that person wasn't smart enough to get into Georgia Tech. Or in my example, I went to a state school. I went to Macon State. When I did get accepted into Mercer University and some private universities, that I was like, cool, I am qualified to do this. I just don't have the money to. And for me, the decision of what school I went to for a whole whopping six weeks was purely financial decision. Sometimes the person you that is most qualified for the job is in a place that you've never looked before, you've never talked to before, because your company doesn't hire in places like Cameroon, or you don't think that you can hire from countries like Zimbabwe who have, who used to have sanctions but don't anymore. It would be hard to put that amount of scrutiny on a company and be like, hey, you need to be looking at the us sanctions list every single day to see if things change. I don't think that's a reasonable ask, but maybe it is for us. Maybe if we know of countries that have weird sociopolitical issues and I. The people haven't done anything wrong. They're just victims of an establishment where they were born. So maybe it's our job to find out that news and then do everything in our power to spread it as far and wide as we can and to sit down and have conversations. A lot of people will want to hire me because I live in Atlanta and that's easy. I'm an advocate that lives near the busiest airport on the planet. I can go anywhere and it's a straight shot. That doesn't mean I'm the most qualified for the job just because of my location. Now I have access to hundreds of other people who might be way more qualified than I am. The only reason that they haven't applied is because they don't think that you would even consider them. Or we have to break down that first barrier of, hey, why don't you hire here? And sometimes it is a very realistic reason, but other times it's, oh, well, we just. We don't know anybody in the area, so how would we be able to vet them? How do we know that they'll have the right infrastructure for it? We can work to be those people and then you can bet them through us and we'll do our best to make sure that they have everything that they need to be able to do what they need to do. Sean Tibor: The other thing I would add to that, though, is I think a lot of companies, and I'm not excluding my own company from this, what's our recruiting process? We made a job requisition. We posted it on our workday. We put a link to it on LinkedIn. Okay, well, we've done our work. That's it. We're done. We've put it out there. It's on the Internet. Anyone can apply to it, but yet nobody does, or it's the typical people that you would expect. So there's that additional level of putting it out there, making sure that people are aware that, hey, you know what? This company that makes Oreos is actually a pretty cool place to do tech work. Also, you can come work with us and it would be great. Jay Miller: How do we get Oreos? Sean Tibor: Not as many as you think, but probably less than you need. Like less than you should that's also part of the problem. Most companies don't necessarily go put the extra effort in. They feel like they've done their part by putting on the Internet because anyone could apply to it. But it doesn't mean that everyone even sees it or knows that it's available or know that it knows, to your point, that it's a safe place to work. I was thinking about it when we were talking earlier when I had the opportunity to go to Japan for work early on in my career, and it was really cool. I got a little bit of extra time to do some sightseeing. I went to Himeiji Castle, south of Osaka. I'm a pretty big guy. I'm like six foot two, six foot three. Meiji Castle was built in 1500 or 1600 or something like that. If you've ever been in a place where the ceilings are just about a foot too short, or the doorways are about six inches too narrow, nothing feels right. So me coming in with my modern expectations, or just my expectations of what a room should feel like, is very different than someone who actually lived in that castle when it was built. So it feels like the same thing. How does someone know that the room is the wrong shape if they've been living in it their whole lives and they don't know something differently? How do you know that your workplace is not safe? If that's the one you've been in for the last 20 years of your career and you're just used to it by now, how do you change it? You have to be aware of the problem to even do anything about it. It. Jay Miller: That's the biggest thing too, is because they're often. This was one of those things that I noticed where if you're ever at a company and you see that, like, everybody has a certain skin tone, identifies a certain way, like, they seem to have a very short shelf life at the company. That's a good warning sign. Sometimes it's just departmental. It's not even like the company. Usually. Most companies will say that they have their problems, but. But when you see these opportunities, wow. In the last ten years, we've had three black people, and they all left after a year and a half. I'm not saying that we did something wrong, but there's something that's. There is probably saying, and sometimes it's just. It's a matter of progression. I had this conversation, and I have this conversation regularly with people in our community. My tenure at Microsoft was great. I worked on really cool things. Me leaving again. I just waxed poetic about all these amazing people like me. Leaving was purely a career move. It was, here's an opportunity that I don't believe I'm going to get if I stay here, so let me leave. The opportunity arose to go back and be in a different position or be in a different place. I would entertain that thought. I can't necessarily always agree with everything my employer does, but that's every company that I've worked for. I've worked for the government, part of the us military. Yes, I understand. It gets really complicated. There are definitely moments where I've looked, and sometimes I've stayed at a place longer than I should have because I was the only person that looked like me in the room. I was just hoping that one day someone else would come in and look like me when I go, hey, that thing that happens on Tuesdays, does that bother you too? Okay, okay. It's not just me because I brought it up before and everybody was like, ah, come on. No, we've always done that. It's those moments. And again, that's an unnecessary burden that I think anyone should have to bear. I put this in the keynote of the hardest thing to do is to be the first or the only person in the room. As long as I've been in tech, as long as I've been like working at tech companies as a developer advocate, I've always been the black person on my immediate team. That makes it really hard because I start second guessing myself on, oh, this thing happened. Is it me or is it I'm not experienced enough, or I just haven't been exposed to these customs and cultures in corporate life? Or is it just truly something that's wrong or something that's a problem? And usually when everybody says it's a problem, then, okay, it's not just me, it's not just me. How often is it something that I'm noticing it because of my background, or I'm noticing it because I've talked to people that come from a certain background and I go, oh, so that's, yeah, that's probably not going to work in this type of country or community because of this. You just have to go with whatever your boss says, and if it's too far against what you're thinking, then you have to start polishing up the resume and figuring it out. Sean Tibor: It's really interesting too, as a manager of other people, it's one of the things I'm trying to think about all the time. Also, is, am I providing that space where people feel comfortable even raising an issue like that because they might feel like they're the only person feeling that way, regardless of the reason why. It could be skin color, it could be gender, it could be orientation, it could be whatever it is. How do they know that I'm willing to listen? How do they know that it's okay to share? How do they know that there's someone else? That if they don't feel comfortable talking to their manager about it, that at least someone on the team will listen to them? How do I create that culture that makes it okay to listen? And there are limits to how much I can do. I'm the CIs white male from Carnegie Mellon. I can't change that. But what I can change is helping every person feel like there's at least someone to talk to, even if that's not someone on our team or someone somewhere else. As you're breaking that down and you're talking about what that feels like, I'm trying to think, okay, so if I don't have the ability to have someone feel connected with one other person based on an affinity that they have, can I at least create a culture where it's okay to ask the question, it's okay to talk and you're still safe. It doesn't risk your job to ask the question. Yeah, you should be able to ask the question. Jay Miller: Kelsey Hightower brought this up in a talk that he gave a few years ago. And he talked about, from a technical standpoint of being brought in to implement some new thing. And you see, like, in the very back, like the sysadmin that's going to be partially responsible for making this thing happen, just give, like, the smirk of it'll never happen. That's not a problem. And being able to sit down at the lunch table with that person and just hear their opinion, and being the person from the outside, being able to come in, going to the CTO and going, hey, you've got this old phone system that's going to literally just. That's a deal breaker. There's nothing that we can do unless you change out this old phone system, you need to move to an IP system or whatever. Otherwise we can't make this big technical migration because you're going to always have that one thing in the back that's preventing you from doing it. And again, it's sometimes that person doesn't feel safe. Sometimes that person has brought it up time and time again and has been ignored. To me, the best answer for that question the Jay puts on Dei workgroup hat is if you don't have a diverse leadership. Like, if you have diverse leadership, great. Make sure that skip level meetings are a thing that are okay and encouraged. Hey, if you don't feel comfortable talking to me, talk to my boss, talk to the CTO, talk to the CMO, talk to whoever you know you feel comfortable talking to. If you don't have a diverse leadership, bring people from the outside, from a diverse background in and consult with them and say, hey, we want to do this thing. I would love for you to sit down with our team and just go through and make sure that everybody's on the same page. And please give me any feedback that's not being addressed, because we just feel like we want to. We just want to make sure that we're not missing something, and we want to make sure that everybody in the room feels comfortable being able to speak up with and then be fine with not being in the room when that happens. That, to me, is the hardest part. I've seen this happens in black communities, too, where there's another discord for black developer advocates that I'm a part of, and a manager walks, is in the room, and, like, the types of questions change. And it's because I see that person as someone who could potentially be my boss one day. I don't want to ask that question. It's tough because you're like, I want the space to be available for you, too. But also, there's a moment when that manager is like, I gotta go. And then the questions come back to where they were. I think that there's a level of, no matter what you look like, no matter what your background is, there may just be a power dynamic in the room that isn't comfortable to speak towards. And the way that you remove that is you have to be able to remove yourself from the room. The way I try to do this is I try to put people in charge of as much stuff as possible. My role as executor means if no one else is available to do it, then I do it. But that doesn't mean that there's no one else available. My first thing is we need someone to do this who wants to step up and do this. Okay, you do. You're in charge now, don't. You don't have to ask me. Lauren Kreary, who works at the PSF, gave me a sticker once. It says, you don't need permission to be awesome. And I've just started saying that now you don't need my permission to be awesome. Go do the things put the notes in. If I'm really interested, I'll pop my head in, I'll check the notes or whatever. Do it the way that you would do it. Because if I come in, everybody's going to look at me as if they're waiting for me to give the, you did it right or you did it wrong. Again, new math. I don't really care how the math is done as long as the answer at the end is correct. Again, I'm sorry, math teachers don't understand new math, but, yeah, like, it's sometimes the easiest way to get those opinions voices to just not be in the room and let other people voice it and establish that level of trust of, okay, it's been brought up that this is a thing. I heard it. Know that you can come to me with these things, but let's fix it. Sean Tibor: Yeah. I also would say change the room. So if you're not feeling comfortable in the room, that's one of the things that I find interesting, too, is how people only look within the company that they're in or the team that they're in, or the department they're in for someone to talk to or someone to get help or someone to just say, hey, is this messed up? I have new engineers coming in that are black guys. There's black python devs. Go check it out. Tell me what you think. If it's great, go hang out there, get help. Don't limit yourself just to the team that you're on or the department that you're on. Again, there's a billion people in the world. Some of them probably have some amazing advice to give you and even just say, yeah, that's messed up. You should definitely speak up about that. Just someone who can support you and say, yeah, go talk about it. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I have to because I'd be amiss if I didn't say this. I jumped into this conversation so quickly. Two questions. For all the people that are new to the developer world, two things. One, you know, what's it? Don't answer this yet. What's a stat? What's a developer advocate then? Two, you have to explain Black Python devs, because we didn't even explain that at the beginning because I was just so excited. Everybody knows, Jay, let's just start talking. He knows. Sean Tibor: It's a flip podcast, Kelly. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: We just jump right in for 56 minutes, and normally we're ranging 30 to 40. I was excited about this. So, developer advocate and Black Python devs. Jay Miller: Let'S answer it in reverse. That way we can, like, take this clip and then just move it to the beginning. So Black Python Devs is a community that was started last year at Pycon, US 2023. It started out just as a discord and just evolved on its own into being more, which is fantastic and fun. The way that we provide them, our messaging around it, is we are an organization now. We're in a nonprofit organization that extends the reach of the Python community into the black ecosystem that is not just its people, that is locations, even micro locations, not just Pittsburgh, but what part of Pittsburgh that has a larger audience of black individuals that might be interested in python. Above that, what are their concerns, their needs? How do we work with them on a local level? A lot of this is still very like, theory of, we want to work with a community. We've announced that we're going to be sponsoring about six conferences this year. These are six conferences around the globe, with four of them being in Africa, one in South America, and then three. Actually, I can't math. So there's more than six now, because we've done a really good job at fundraising. There's three in North America now. So being able to. And then not just sponsoring. Here's our money. Let's have a booth. But, hey, here's our money. How many tickets would this money give us? And instead of giving us a bigger booth, or instead of giving us a five minute time to talk, can you just give us tickets that we can give to our community so that people can, like, attend for free and just have one less barrier to going to their first conference or going to a conference that's down the road from them? We've seen some good success with that. Our sponsorship, our upcoming sponsorship with Pycon Nigeria. One tip for people who want to make a difference. If you want to sponsor an event in Africa, you can just do it as an individual. Just send them an email and say, hey, I have $300, which is like, the normal cost of a ticket for Pycon us. How many tickets will that get me? And sometimes exchange rates will operate in your favor. We got 75 tickets for students for what we would pay for one major conference in the US. So, like, we have 75 students who are going to be able to go and attend this conference for free. I was never planning on making it to Lagos this year. So, hey, take this money and send a bunch of students there. We plan on doing the exact same thing in Django con us, as well as a few other conferences who we haven't fully gotten all the details ironed out. So I don't want to throw them out there yet. We're also working with individual user groups, trying to figure out what we can do to make their user groups more accessible. What we say is safe, equitable and accessible. Safety is important. You want to make sure that you can go there and feel like you're not going to be harassed. Equitability is what keeps people in the room. If I feel like I have skin in the game, then I'm going to keep showing up. If I feel like I'm in a position of leadership, I'm going to keep showing up. I'm going to show up for my team and accessible, just like the logistics of how easy is it to actually get to this place and also what other barriers are in the way of preventing me from attending. So we're working with some conferences and some meetups, hopefully working to improve that. I've been asked by a lot of teachers to come in and do similar things and that's a thing that we're extremely interested in. But again, I have little to no experience in that. So to all the academics out there who want me or someone from the community, I would prefer someone from the community because we understand the value of having someone. Instead of going, I live in Atlanta, someone going, I live on 12th street down the road and having students go oh, I grew up around there, there's like a level of again, equity in there. Oh, I can be equitable if it's my community. Yeah, feel free to reach out to and we'll talk about all that later. The developer advocate thing is interesting because my running joke for that is no one really knows what a developer advocate is. Including developer advocates. Every job I've been a developer advocate at three different companies. They all do devrel differently, they all do advocacy differently, they all have different event strategies, they all have different content strategies. Ultimately it is the needs of the company in form of community influence and technical capability. Where I'm at now, I'm at a company called Ivan. Go check them out. Ivan IO especially if you're looking for database needs, I shouldn't say database needs. We are your trusted data and AI platform. That is the official verbiage I'm trying to get out of the for your database needs. But we serve under the marketing team. So a lot of what we're doing is we are taking that marketing messaging and we are putting it in a language and git commit that developers and technicians can comprehend. So when you hear trusted AI and data platform, what does that mean? It's a lot easier for me to talk to the data nerds and say, hey, we partner with multiple cloud technologies to provide multi cloud solutions across a variety of databases from MySQL Postgres, open search to Cassandra, click House, Valkyrie, dragonfly for other caching needs, and Kafka. Not as markety for the people in the room that are really interested in some of those things. They're going to go, ooh, I heard. Now how do you, how do we set up this with this and this? And then it's my job to go back and build that demo or go on a live stream and bang my head against the wall for 2 hours and come back maybe with a video or a blog post or a conference talk. Talk. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Cool. Now, I know we're wrapping up on 1 hour. Sean, I know you have a whole bunch of more questions. I can see thinking. Sean Tibor: Honestly, Jay, I've been wanting to have this conversation with you for a long time because I listen to the Conduit podcast. You're very thoughtful on there, you know? I know, I know, I know. It doesn't, it may not seem that way, but honestly, even the blog post that you wrote about, you don't have to love tech to be good at tech and use it to make a living. I forget exactly the wording of it, but I've quoted that to interns to say, look, it's okay to say I like my job because it provides an income. It provides something that I couldn't do otherwise. I think you said, I like really cool messenger bags. I can't make a living just with really cool messenger bags. But I can make a living that allows me to, to buy really cool messaging bags that is good enough that that sort of truth and honesty. And what you have is, you know, and I appreciate that about the things that you've said and you've shared over the years as I've been, you know, listening to your podcast and reading your blog post is that there's a lot of truth in that. I grew up a family of four. My dad was a cop. My mom had a small business. I'm very lucky to have what I have now. There were times where we just didn't qualify for free student lunches. We're just made a little bit too much money for free student lunches. Jay Miller: Oh, man. Sean Tibor: Right? Jay Miller: I've been in that spot. Sean Tibor: Yeah. And even still, I'm grateful for what I had because I wasn't on the other side of it where we did qualify. Tech has been something that I happen to really enjoy I've always loved it, but it also changed my life, and it changed the way that the things that I could expect for myself out of life because it helped lift me up. And what I have been trying to do, whether it's through teaching or the summer intern program or just having a cup of coffee with someone, is let them know that it's okay to want those things and not feel like you have to just love it because the technology is cool and who cares what you get paid, right? It's your whole life, not just what I do in front of the keyboard. Jay Miller: If you took the salaries away from the people who do it for the tech, I'm sure they would be very upset. I mean, they would all just be teachers, like, exactly. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Exactly. No, no gratitude for us teachers. I don't know what youre talking about. I eat lunch at school and I take some home. No, I'm just kidding. I take some bananas home so I don't have to buy them. Every teacher is sitting there saying, yes, I hear your pain, Kelly. Jay Miller: I know we gotta wrap up. There was one thing that you mentioned in that, Sean, that I think is really important to mention. I think this affects a lot of people, not just black people in tech. Humble brag here. The first time that I made six figures, everyone in my family was over the moon excited. No one imagined that anyone from our family would ever make that much money. Like, I grew up in the country, in Tennessee, on the outskirts of Knoxville, when I got my first fang level job, which my only fang level job, because I'm not, I've learned quickly. I'm probably not fang material. I talk too much. But my grandfather, who was the first person to put a computer or a keyboard in front of me, said, when did you become so popular? This was a thing now where I'm at the role that I'm at now, and as a staff developer advocate, I know one other staff developer advocate that's black. I know two, three, if you include Kelsey Hightower. I personally know. Well, I've met Kelsey, Kelsey's greatest three staff level ad like staff level or higher people in developer relations, and that's, that are black and that's it. So there is a visibility problem of this is a career path for people. They don't ever see it. I love talking to high school students, especially students that are about to graduate, because I love that they always ask me, like, how much money I make, because they're just, it's a thing that they're like, they are very real. Like, like, it's a reality for them. It is. I am trying to decide whether or not I should go to college or help my mom pay bills at home. I know people who have to make that decision of, I can pick up a second job and that will help cover my mom's rent, or I can take this shot and eventually buy my mom a house. It has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with the person that they are. Black python devs does two things. One, we don't meet at bars unless it's a barcade. Because video games are just fun. We get ice cream instead. Ice cream is significantly cheaper than alcohol. There's a lot of cultural stigmas around alcohol that we just try to avoid. Instead, you can get ice cream of any kind nowadays. You can get vegan ice cream, dairy free ice cream. When you choose to do the more accessible thing, you start seeing the crowd change. Also, when you start lowering the price of entry, then it starts to look a lot different. We don't go to places where you got to dress up. This is the most I've dressed up in, like, forever. I'm just wearing a baseball jersey. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That's it. Jay Miller: But there are a lot of things that we as a culture, just black Americans as a culture, but also black developers as a culture. We have to do some work on our end as well. But also to anyone that's trying to go in and say, you shouldn't have to think about the money, I don't know. Pew Research center said money is a big thing that most people are thinking about. Our thinking about the money isn't necessarily so that we can buy messenger bags. Although, yes, I do love a good messenger bag and coffee. I'm a big coffee fan. But it's often because we grew up not being able to give our parents things. And the way that our culture is set up, like most basketball players, most musicians, the things that we see ourselves in media as a popular culture, the first thing you always hear them say is, the first thing I did was I bought my mom's house so that she doesn't have a payment anymore. I'm happy that, like, this was the first year. Like, I took my mom and we got many pedis. Like, my clear polish isn't showing up well on here. But that's the first, like, multi hundred dollar gift. Because we didn't do, like, the basic one. We did like, the vip treatment with jelly Aroma. Like, we went all out. Like, self care. My mom tells me self care is selfless. Treat yourself and like to be able to do the two hour vip spa session with my mom and not even think about whether or not I could afford it, or think about what sacrifices that she would have to make or that I would have to make that happen. That's why conversations around rank, like, where you are in the chart matters. That's why conversations around compensation and payrol. And the best advice you can give somebody is how to negotiate a salary, because there are so many people out here who are afraid to ask for real money, and they, unfortunately, a lot of them look like me, and a lot of them look like Kelly. Maybe a little less look like you, Sean, but I think some. I think some of them probably look like you, too. Sean Tibor: I'm sure it's a non zero number. Jay Miller: Yeah, we have to start having those conversations and we have to do it with a level of the companies are looking at us as, hey, it's strictly business. We need to be able to look back at them and go, hey, it's strictly business. And I think once we start normalizing that, what you're going to see is you're going to see a lot of people who felt like they didn't have a voice all of a sudden be some of the loudest voices in the room for good reason, because they have a lot of good things to say and they're so brilliant. I've seen so many brilliant people that are just like, I'm really scared to ask for more money because I'm just happy that they're offering me the job. And it's, no, we need to change this mindset. Let's completely erase them. That's the work that we're doing if folks want to be a part of that one. If you're a black python developer, feel free to join blackpythondevs.com dot. There's a link to the discord. If joining a community called Black Python devs probably doesn't feel comfortable for you, there are other ways that you can do that. We have a support link. We're sponsored by the Gnome foundation, and they are our fiscal hosts. Basically, they allow us to raise funds and. And they also teach us how to be a nonprofit organization, which I never thought I would say again, which is, like, weird. Hey, I helped run a nonprofit. That's. It's a very different thing than, like, I write code all day. Sean Tibor: Yeah, but you know what? It's all interesting problems to solve. It's all things that they're worth solving. They're worth going after. I love the fact that it's there. We're better off for having that community there because there's room for everybody. Right. That's the best part, is there's room for everyone. So let's get more people involved. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I knew this was going to be a really long talk and I was super excited. And I'm glad I got to steal you away for 15 minutes prior to everyone else so I can ask you all the burning questions that no one else got to hear. Maybe next time my kids more than. Jay Miller: Happy to come on whenever my kids. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Will want to get tucked in. And so that that mom thing has to happen. Jay Miller: I'm ignoring my kids mom and dad thing, too, because I got to do the same thing. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, but it's only me here, so it's a mom thing for me. Yeah, you got mom and dad dad Sean and mom Sean, too. So I know how it is. We all have little kids, so oh, my gosh, I could talk forever. So Sean, do your thing. Sean Tibor: All right, Jay, first of all, thank you again for joining us today. It's been really great and this will not be the last time you're on the show. We're just happy to have you here. Also, we'd love to have more people from black python devs in the community. It doesn't all have to ride on your shoulders. If you've got people that would be great on the podcast, bring them in. We'd love to have them. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Or seven more people. Jay Miller: I've already, I've got three or four more, too. Sean Tibor: All right, good. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Send them to us. Jay Miller: Awesome. Sean Tibor: Excellent. Well, that does it for this week, Jay. If people want to learn more about black python devs, blackpythondevs.com if I remember. Jay Miller: Correctly, you can email me directly to leadershiplackpythondevs.com dot I think you can put anything@blackpythondevs.com and itll eventually make its way to me. But thats the official email. Sean Tibor: Then theres also the discord. Theres a way to get connected. Theres the conferences meetup group as well, LinkedIn group. So just however you want to connect, theres a path for you. And as Jay mentioned, theres also the support link as well. So I'll plug that also to say go for it and support. Kelly, any other announcements that we have this week or anything upcoming? Lots of summertime interviews. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: This summer we have the professors of law from Duquesne University. So not Dukesne Duquesne talking about it had to as a learning curve. Jay Miller: I've learned something new today. Duquesne I called it du quince for the longest. Okay, so they might not join now? Sean Tibor: No, they already said they would, so I think it's legally binding. I'm not a lawyer, but they are. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: So they're going to talk about getting lawyers all pythoned up or Python all lawyered up, you know, something like that. But yeah, lots of great speakers lined up. It's going to be fun. We have Doctor Chuck coming on in July and we've got Brianne Kaplan code your dreams coming on as well. Great talks. I've scheduled Sean out, so lots of live streams, so it'll be exciting. Jay Miller: Is that Chuck severance by any chance? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yes, Doctor Chuck. Jay Miller: Another person I owe my Python career to because the YouTube series are absolutely. Yes. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yep. July 1, save the day. Jay Miller: A lot of python through that. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: July 1, save the date. Sean Tibor: It's going to be great. So we'll wrap it up here. Thanks again, Jaydeh. We'll have more coming from you in the future. And keep an eye out for black Python devs. So for teaching Python, this is Sean. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And this is Kelly signing off.