Dmitriy Chukhin
This is the third post in the 2018 edition of our annual PyCon Must-See Series, which highlights the talks our staff especially loved at PyCon. While there were many great talks, this is our team's shortlist.
A talk I remember well from PyCon 2018 was Don't Look Back in Anger: Wildman Whitehouse and the Great Failure of 1858. By describing the process and mistakes involved with building the first transatlantic telegraph, Lilly Ryan, a software and systems engineer and former historian, goes over some of the major pressures, events, and disagreements made during the project. Specifically, she describes:
- Team conflict
- Time pressure
- Hero mentality
Moreover, she describes the importance of the following values for development teams:
- Treating feedback sensibly
- Open-mindedness
- Self-reflections and post-mortems
This entertaining 30-minute talk provides multiple examples of ways in which tech projects can go awry, and how to avoid the same mistakes in the future. I hope to practice the values Ryan mentions, and help my team to practice them as well. The advice from Ryan is helpful and relevant for anyone working on or managing a technology project or team.
