Polyglot Unconference is back on October 17, and PyLadies Vancouver members get $20 off

Last October I went to the Polyglot Software Unconference for the first time. I pitched a talk, half expecting nobody to vote for it, and then watched it show up on the schedule. I spent the rest of the day in rooms full of people who program in languages I don’t, arguing about the same problems I have. I left thinking it was one of the best days I’d spent with Vancouver’s tech community in a long time, and that more PyLadies should be in those rooms. (I wrote a full recap, a year late, over on my blog: Polyglot Unconference 2025: a recap.)

Last year the Polyglot team shared a discount code with PyLadies Vancouver, and this year they’ve done it again: PyLadies Vancouver members get $20 off their ticket. Thank you to the Polyglot Software Association. They didn’t have to, and it says a lot about the kind of community they’re building.

Polyglot 2026 is Saturday, October 17, 8 AM to 5 PM at UBC Robson Square (800 Robson Street, downtown).

How to claim the discount

1. Go to the Polyglot 2026 ticket page.
2. Enter the code pyladies26 at checkout. It takes $20 off. If you used the link above, the code is already applied.
3. Done. Tickets are normally CA$35 to CA$80, so depending on the tier this covers a good chunk of it.

What Polyglot is, if you haven’t been

It’s a one-day unconference, which means there is no program in advance. There are no “speakers” and “attendees,” only participants. First thing in the morning, anyone who wants to lines up and pitches a topic in two or three minutes: a question they’re stuck on, a tool they want to compare notes about, a talk they’ve prepared. Everyone votes in a web app, the winning sessions go on the schedule, and then you spend the day moving between four to six concurrent sessions and talking with the people who showed up for the same thing. It draws a few hundred people: developers, data folks, designers, PMs, students, professors, founders, across every language and stack.

If you’ve ever come home from a conference and said the hallway track was the best part, Polyglot is a whole day of hallway track.

A few things I wish I’d known going in

• You don’t have to pitch anything. Showing up and joining sessions is fully participating. If you do pitch, the room is kind about it.
• But if you have an existing talk, bring it. Even at an unconference, being prepared pays off. I didn’t write anything new for Polyglot; I pitched a talk about generating QR codes in Python that I’d already given at DjangoCon, and it got voted in. You’d be surprised that people actually want to hear it, and if it doesn’t get picked, you’ve lost nothing.
• The sessions aren’t all about code. Some of the ones I got the most out of were about teams and leadership. You don’t have to be a developer to take part.
• Moving between sessions is expected. With no abstracts, an interesting-sounding title can turn into a session that isn’t for you. The rule is: if you’re no longer learning or contributing, get up and go to another room. Nobody minds. It took me a while to believe this.
• Bring something you’re actually curious about. The sessions where I had a real question beat the ones that just sounded impressive.
• Tell us that you’re going. I will be there. Come say hi.

Hope to see you there.

Mariatta, for the PyLadies Vancouver organizers

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