DjangoConUS 2025: Finding Purpose in the Noise

My biggest takeaway from DjangoConUS this year was purpose.

At our core, we are in the business of solving problems. Along the way, though, it’s easy to lose sight of that. We get distracted. We chase the latest shiny framework or tech and sometimes forget the deeper “why” behind what we do.

Purpose Over Shiny Tools

Carson Gross, in his keynote Lateral Thinking with Weathered Technology: How The Nintendo Philosophy Applies to Modern Web Development, reminded us of the story of Gunpei Yokoi, creator of the Game Boy. Yokoi’s philosophy was about applying “seasoned” (withered) technology in lateral ways — leveraging what was battle-tested and reliable to serve a greater goal. Technology is not an end in itself, but a tool in service of purpose.

That resonated deeply. It reminded me of Simon Sinek’s Start with Why, which argues that companies succeed not because of features or price, but because of a clear sense of purpose. It was the perfect reminder that what we build matters less than why we build it.

The AI Question

That question of “why” was especially present in the conversations about AI. Marlene Mhangami, in her keynote Reimagining Django for the Age of AI, pointed to some radical, if not absurd quotes, like Anthony Levandowski’s claim that "AI is God", and Sundar Pichai’s statement that AI is “more profound than fire or electricity”.

Is it? Or is it just the biggest hype cycle since crypto?

Is AI at our service, or are we at its service — with its vast energy needs, risks, and unintended consequences?

Dwayne McDaniel, in his talk on AI risks, highlighted how 6% of public repos with GitHub Copilot enabled had private API keys committed, versus 4% in general. This raises a deeper issue: are these errors the fault of AI, or the result of our own carelessness when we lean too heavily on tools without intention?

Purpose in Communication

Purpose also matters in how we communicate. Muhammad Abdugafarov gave a lightning talk on misalignments caused by cultural differences, drawing on the book Foreign to Familiar. He contrasted “hot” vs. “cold” cultures, where even a simple “yes” can mean very different things — from a soft commitment to a firm guarantee.

This reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, where he describes how high power distance cultures contributed to airline disasters because of communication failures between the cockpit and air traffic control.

For most Django projects, the stakes aren't so high, but the thread is the same: clarity of purpose and intention in communication is critical, especially in diverse and distributed teams.

Other takeways

• Paolo Melchiorre’s talk Django’s GeneratedField by Example gave me real-world use cases for a feature I had barely considered.
• Eric Matthes’s work on django-simple-deploy offers a promising path to simplifying deployment — and may be the answer to Django’s deployment story.
• Richard Terry’s Nanodjango lowers the barrier to entry for starting a Django project to just a few lines of code.
• Lincoln Loop founder and colleague Peter Baumgartner’s talk High Performance Django at Ten: Old Tricks, New Picks was another highlight, and I hope enough people have pressured him to publish a second edition!

Gratitude

A heartfelt thank you to Lincoln Loop for giving me the opportunity to attend DjangoConUS 2025 and for sponsoring the event. Your support made this experience possible.

Postmortem Ride

Outside the conference halls, another tradition continued. This was my third year riding bikes with my friend Drew Winstel. Unfortunately, Drew’s riding came to an abrupt halt after hitting a pothole in Evanston at full speed and blowing both of his tire tubes.

I carried on and logged 221 km over the week, including a longer ride this morning that took me across the state line into Indiana. It’s become a highlight — a chance to reflect, recharge, and connect beyond the conference itself. Of course, waking up at 5:30 after long evenings of socializing to get those rides in means I’ll be catching up on sleep soon.

Closing Reflection

Be purposeful. Be deliberate. That’s what I’m taking away this year — in the tools we choose, the code we write, and the way we work together.

And ironically, I used AI to help write this post. But only because it serves my purpose.