[this revision supersedes what I posted to edu-sig earlier today, a few typos fixed. Note that I'm not actually signed up for Pycon at this time, just using it as an exercise to polish my rap. All of the events, persons and institutions mentioned herein are quite real however].
=== Although I haven't been invited to keynote in Dallas -- although I did volunteer (given my considerable experience) -- I thought a next best thing would be to lead by example, and encourage other subscribers to draft little keynotey things that would give us a sense of the vision and/or mission and/or state of our snake in our schools, so to speak. I would cite my gigs with Saturday Academy of Silicon Forest, both with the police (George Heuston of HPD), and through Portland State, both outreaches to youth somewhat at risk of corruption and/or losing their way amidst a bewildering wilderness of mirrors. At the police station (West Precinct) we harped on the downside of the Internet, a haven for perps, pervs and predators, especially adult, plus a constant source of temptations, e.g. of pirated goods, which might only serve to get you in trouble with the authorities. But George was uncomfortable with this sustained negative note, all downsides and terrors, when boyz and girlz just wanna have fun with all the new toyz, so if there is *any* safe way to enjoy this bonanza, maybe the police could role model it? They brought in some hired guns: me, of 4D Solutions, and Jerritt Collord, then of linuxfund.org, and long time veteran of North Portland's open source scene (I'm more the old hippie, mostly cut my teeth on closed source offerings in Southeast, am now just getting my second wind, thanks in part to Free Geek and Ron Braithwaite). Jerritt's take was decidely different from the more negatory stuff. He really knew his engineering, and if packets weren't encrypted, and hogged the shared public air, well then he, as a member of said public, wasn't being all that sneaky or outside of his rights if he just opened a few. Sysadmins do the same, and know if wired or wireless dorms use more Bittorrent than Jabber, and which servers enjoy the most traffic. The packets themselves tend to tell you that, by design, as a part of the monitoring infrastructure, which is needed to pinpoint bottlenecks, as well as to cut down on hogging, abuse, taking unfair advantage of resources we share. So there we were, the first day of class, immediately into sniffing packets, thinking about packets, where they come from, where they go, what they do. Enter 'Warriors of the Net', a great cartoon intro, and which I highly recommend to school teachers in Texas, if at all interested in what we in Oregon are into. [pause to show excerpt, with big speaker surround sound, however they do it in Texas http://www.warriorsofthe.net/]. Anyway, the kids found this refreshing: real hackers hacking, not just lecturing on criminal pathologies. George sat in on a few classes and I think he could see where we weren't just training up a new generation of law breakers. We were showing off our hacker subculture as highly ethical, and interested in sharing a growing stockpile of wealth that we ourselves create. We're not thieves. We *own* our code *and* choose to share it with peers. That's the message to youngsters in any case. We want 'em to grow up proud of their heritage. You can grow up to become a freedom loving hacker *and* be tough on crime, if that's what you'd like. Be like George for example, a computer forensics expert in charge of many a crime scene investigation, lots of FBI background. There's no contradiction here. Jerritt and I forked off in different directions after that class. He had a girlfriend in Montana, no obvious ties to Portland. Last we met, he was thinking about Japan. As a Portland native, I stuck with Saturday Academy and plodded along in a more academic vein, working in purer and purer forms of Python, with ever more math in the mix, sometimes to the exclusion of all else. Group theory, number theory, synergetics... burning the midnight oil. I was losing my Jerrittish side, given he wasn't around to reinforce it so directly. I missed the power of our HPD course, even though my more purist stuff got me gigs at Europython in Gothenburg, at the London Knowledge Lab, and as our BDFL's sidekick and Minister of Education at that Shuttleworth summit last April (I'm giving a talk on that meeting, check your program). [ pause to show excerpt of London Knowledge Lab talk -- on second thought, I don't think it's high rez enough. For printed copy, see these relevant links: http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2005/06/europython-2005.html http://www.bfi.org/pythonicmathematics ] Slowly, I've been building up that other side of my body, to where I can talk about Internet protocols, the stack, the heap, with some confidance and gusto. Dr. Sonnenfeld of New Mexico Tech was inspiring, reminding me of the relevance of the homespun, the down and dirty (he studies lightning), the importance of coming down from those mountain peaks on occasion. Dr. Bob Fuller, veteran of the Calculus Reform movement (largely successful) was likewise an inspiration, reminding me not to get lost in the clouds, over lattes in Oregon. This restored sense of balance gives my students more insights into the likes of Twisted, into the nuts and bolts of the Internet itself. Plone... Zope. I'm not being too prejudicial in my teaching them Python, not even in terms of their becoming computer scientists. That's for them to decide. I'm just here to show 'em some ropes, open some doors. wxPython, ODBC to MySQL, IronPython, Mailman... these all could be a "next step" for you, or maybe you're ready to teach them? We encourage peers teaching peers in our models, already the most tried and trusted vector for spreading a global geek culture. My own "next step" has been in the direction of VPython and its promise of easy OpenGL. Like Arthur on Edu-Sig, I see that Ruby is strong in this area, and Ruby toons (animated cartoons by or about Ruby) may well eclipse our snake's chances for more public exposure, if we don't act in concert. I'm thinking of rebranding my own Hypertoons [tm] to 'Anime on Rails' and invading the Japanese market, a pre-emptive strike. [pause for audience laughter Hypertoons: http://wiki.python.org/moin/HyperToons ] Happily though, I think peaceful co-existence with RubyToons is the most likely outcome, just like we in Python Nation already enjoy good relations with our closest long time neighbor, the Republic of Perl. Now, I know you're all wondering about YouTube and Google, and how this all fits with Intel's Viiv. I'd say, on behalf of the Portland Knowledge Lab, that yes, the goal is open source, lots and lots of it, so you can download and splice stuff together with wild abandon, not feeling encumbered by the prospect of lawsuits left and right, because of the blanketly permissive copyrights and licenses we'll be providing as shielding. In this way, our ability to cut and paste video, as easily as we cut and paste source code, will grow by leaps and bounds, to the great advantage of a knowledge based economy such as our own, wherein screencasting, including mathcasting, is an essential ingredient in building up the alphanumeracy skills of our future workforce. However, YouTube and Google Video aren't currently high rez enough to make looking at source code anything but painful. So the challenge is to develop a multi-tiered system of video distribution, and yes, the higher the bandwidth the more likely it'll end up costing you something, if not in terms of actual dollars, then in terms of disk space or rebranding rights. Great works of art (like Valve's Half Life, like Cyan's Uru) still don't come cheaply, and we're happy to pay for it, by and large, including sometimes through Foundation support of the artists. How will Python fit in to our open source video economy? At least one thing is clear: it'll be a lot easier to teach effectively, as will be the other languages. The rest is up to the developers and/or curriculum writers (not always different people). If you like our snake, and want to build in some bindings to your product, open source or proprietary, we hope you'll seriously consider doing so and follow through. Python, like any language, benefits from brand loyalty. Guido has never insulted our intelligence with a second rate offering. Our goal should be to continue his most excellent track record. Thank you and good afternoon. Kirby -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
