Random Interview: Nicholas Tollervey

What's your name and what do you do?

My name is Nicholas and I work as a developer at Fluidinfo. We're building an openly writeable service for storing, sharing, searching and annotating data, mainly written in Python.

How did you start using Python?

I was a .NET developer at an investment bank in the UK and we needed some means of scripting a tool we'd written. I was given the task of investigating IronPython. The rest, as they say, is history...

Name one Python feature you wouldn't live without.

Generators. They're cool.

What is your talk/training about?

I help to run the London Python Code Dojo - my talk is about what we get up to and how this relates to the education, development and training of programmers.

Before becoming a developer I was a musician and teacher and read for a degree in Philosophy of Education so the talk will involve some reflections upon these subjects in the context of developer education.

Also, it won't be a "talk" in a traditional sense - I'll be encouraging interaction and discussion. It'll be fun!

Tease us with one secret that will be revealed during your talk/training

If there's a piano in the room, I'll play it to illustrate some of my examples ;-) ("Python - the Musical")

Name another talk you wouldn't miss in the same track on the same day, and why.

Ali's talk Latest advances in the Google APIs platform looks interesting. Ali is always a great speaker (he could make a three hour talk on drying paint interesting) and it's always fun to find out about the cute new opportunities Google gives us to allow them to mine our personal information for profit. :-)

What would you tell someone who is still in doubt whether to register to EuroPython or not?

I'd weep just like they do in Italian opera* and tell them that the fat lady hasn't yet sung for the end of registration... ;-)

(*NB - Opera was invented in Florence... how cool is that..?)

Next Interview Online: May 31th with Alex Martelli!