James Powell
James Powell is the founder and lead instructor at Don’t Use This Code. A professional Python programmer and enthusiast, James got his start with the language by building reporting and analysis systems for proprietary trading offices; now, he uses his experience as a consultant for those building data engineering and scientific computing platforms for a wide range of clients using cutting-edge open source tools like Python and React.
He also currently serves as a Board Director, Chair, and Vice President at NumFOCUS, the 501©3 non-profit that supports all the major tools in the Python data analysis ecosystem (i.e., pandas, numpy, jupyter, matplotlib). At NumFOCUS, he helps build global open source communities for data scientists, data engineers, and business analysts. He helps NumFOCUS run the PyData conference series and has sat on speaker selection and organizing committees for 18 conferences. James is also a prolific speaker: since 2013, he has given over seventy (70) conference talks at over fifty (50) Python events worldwide.
Sessions
You use pandas every day. You know every keyword argument on every function, even .melt! You even know whether it's .rename, .rename_axis, or .set_axis that you want—and you get it right on the first try! So why bother learning Python? Sure, pandas is written in it, but outside of assembling parts of the pandas API, what's there that has any value in your life?