No More Spreadsheets! Building PyLadiesCon Infrastructure with Python and Django

Speaker: Mariatta Wijaya

Room: CC 235

Time: Sun 3:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Format: Lecture (30 Min + Q&A)

Difficulty: Introductory

Track: Development & Dev Tools

Additional Tags: DevOps, Sustainability & Funding, Self-Hosting

Presenter Location: In-person

Experience: umpteenth time speaking

At: anywhere

Description:

PyLadiesCon is a global, 24‑hour online conference run entirely by volunteers — and for years, nearly every part of it was managed through spreadsheets. Volunteer sign‑ups, scheduling, sponsorships, logistics… if you needed information, there was a spreadsheet for it. While spreadsheets are great for capturing data, they quickly became a source of confusion, version drift, and collaboration headaches across a distributed volunteer team.

In 2025, the PyLadiesCon organizers decided it was time for a change. This talk shares how the team began building an open‑source conference infrastructure using Python and Django, replacing a maze of spreadsheets with a unified, maintainable web application.

Mariatta will discuss:

The unique challenges of running a multilingual, 24‑hour global conference

Why spreadsheets became a bottleneck for collaboration

How the team designed and built a Django‑based system to manage volunteers, scheduling, sponsorships, and more

Lessons learned from building infrastructure as a volunteer‑run open‑source project

How you can contribute and support the PyLadies community

Attendees will gain insight into the realities of running a global online conference and how open‑source tools can transform volunteer workflows.

Target Audience:

Community organizers

Python and Django developers

Open‑source contributors

Anyone interested in building infrastructure for large volunteer‑run events