Jackie Kazil

Summary Jackie Kazil has led a distinguished and varied career with a strong focus on providing information and tools that empower others. This includes her work in data journalism, as a presidential innovation fellow, co-founding 18F, co-authoring a book, and being elected to the board of the Python Software Foundation. In this episode she shares these stories and more with us and how Python has helped her along the way. Brief Introduction Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great. I would like to thank everyone who has donated to the show. Your contributions help us make the show sustainable. When you’re ready to launch your next project you’ll need somewhere to deploy it. Check out Linode at linode.com/podcastinit and get a $20 credit to try out their fast and reliable Linux virtual servers for running your application. You’ll want to make sure that your users don’t have to put up with bugs, so you should use Rollbar for tracking and aggregating your application errors to find and fix the bugs before your users notice they exist. Use the link rollbar.com/podcastinit to get 90 days and 300,000 errors for free on their bootstrap plan. Visit our site to subscribe to our show, sign up for our newsletter, read the show notes, and get in touch. To help other people find the show you can leave a review on iTunes, or Google Play Music, and tell your friends and co-workers Join our community! Visit discourse.pythonpodcast.com to join other listeners of the show and share ideas for how to make it better. Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Jackie Kazil about her work with 18F, writing Data Wrangling with Python, and her career with Python. Interview with Jackie Kazil Introductions How did you get introduced to Python? Looking at your background it shows that you got your start in Journalism and that you are now working on an additional degree in Computational Social Science. Can you share a bit about that journey and what set you on that path? What is computational social science and what has your particular focus been within that field? How has your work in news media prepared you for your current role? One of your many notable achievements is co-founding 18F. Can you start by explaining what that organization is and how you got involved in the efforts to build it? What are some of the notable uses of Python at 18F? In what ways did your experience working with 18F differ from the work you have done at companies outside of government? You recently co-wrote and published Data Wrangling with Python through O’Reilly Media. What kind of subject matter do you cover in the book and who is the target audience? There are a number of resources available to learn the various tools for working with data in Python. What is the gap that this book is aiming to fill and how did you get started with it? What are some of the most interesting things that you learned while working on the book? Keep In Touch Twitter Email Picks Tobias Jason Bourne Movies Jackie Czech Dumpling Dough Links Byteback NetworkX Project Mesa GeoQ openFOIA OpenFEC API The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA