Panaghiusa: Forging the Future with Python at PyCon Davao 2025

16 min readNov 11, 2025

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by Eve Loraine Nuñal and Alex Neal Albinda, Marketing Organizers of DurianPy

You could feel the energy in the room as Python enthusiasts from across the country gathered in Davao City. On the first day, October 25, which served as the main conference, that featured a packed schedule of insightful talks, hands-on workshops, and engaging panel discussions. The event continued on October 26 with the dedicated sprint day, providing a fantastic opportunity for attendees to collaborate with peers and contribute to the open-source community.

Together in Panaghiusa

PyCon Davao thrives because of the people who show up, contribute, and support one another. The spirit of Panaghiusa (unity) was palpable in the diverse crowd of students, academics, startup founders, and industry professionals — the collective energy that keeps this movement growing. To make sure this home was resilient and open to all, we lowered barriers through a range of ticket options, from scholarship rates to premium passes, and strictly upheld the Code of Conduct, ensuring a safe and welcoming environment.

Every handshake, hallway chat, and collaborative idea helped make PyCon Davao 2025 more than just a conference — it became a true community home for builders and enthusiasts.

October 25: A Main Conference of Inspiration and Insight

The main conference day was a whirlwind of intellectual exchange. Following the Opening Remarks, participants eagerly proceeded to the two breakout rooms: Datu Hall and Clarissa A. Throughout the day, attendees navigated a rich schedule designed for both visionary insight and practical skill-building.

Participants in the Datu Hall during the event

During the conference, more than 250 attendees filled the venue, with 75% being professionals and 25% being students. The event brought together a vibrant mix of industry experts and aspiring learners, fostering meaningful discussions and connections throughout the day.

Participants line up to register for PyCon Davao 2025

Keynote Spotlight

The event kicked off with inspiring dual keynotes. In Datu Hall, attendees dove into “Building a Python Web Framework in 2025,” while in Clarissa A, the focus was on immediately applicable knowledge with “Python Tricks That You Can’t Live Without: 2025 Edition.” These sessions challenged attendees to think deeply about Python’s role in building ethical and sustainable technology in the Philippines.

Building a Python Web Framework in 2025

Daniel Roy Greenfeld

Daniel Roy Greenfeld is a prominent Python engineer, one of the co-authors of the Two Scoops of Django series, and the creator of the Air Web Framework. His keynote, “Building a Python Web Framework in 2025,” detailed the creation of Air and its design to enhance FastAPI for HTML-focused web applications.

Python Tricks That You Can’t Live Without: 2025 Edition

Audrey Roy Greenfeld

Audrey Roy Greenfeld is a highly influential Python developer, known as the creator of the project templating tool Cookiecutter, a co-author of Two Scoops of Django, and a co-founder and first president of PyLadies. Her keynote, “Python Tricks That You Can’t Live Without: 2025 Edition,” was a session that shared advanced tips and powerful lessons from decades of development experience.

PyTalk Spotlight

A rich variety of sessions followed across both halls, providing both visionary insights and immediately applicable skills. Talks spanned a comprehensive range of categories, including AI/ML, Web Development, DevOps, Software Architecture, and Python internals, ensuring the there was a track for every interest.

Let’s Make a Realtime Chat with Django Channels!

Sony Valdez

Sony Valdez is a seasoned developer with over 30 years of experience, a founder of Python Philippines, and currently a Senior Developer at Pure Ride specializing in backend development. His PyTalk, “Let’s Make a Realtime Chat with Django Channels!,” demonstrated how to leverage Django Channels to build dynamic, realtime web applications within the Django framework.

Making a Programming Language for Fun using exec() and Tree-Sitter

Ned Palacios

Ned Palacios is a Software Engineer at Betterteam based in Davao City, known for building efficient applications and for his leadership roles in community organizations like PWA Pilipinas Davao. His PyTalk, “Making a Programming Language for Fun using exec() and Tree-Sitter,” explored the inner workings of programming languages using Python’s exec() function and the Tree-Sitter parsing library.

Vision ML Model Explainability with Integrated Gradients and XRAI

Kyle Nathan Naranjo

Kyle Nathan Naranjo is a Data Engineering Consultant at Thinking Machines Data Science who designs and delivers enterprise-grade data platforms, backed by extensive experience and multiple certifications across Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS. His PyTalk, “Vision ML Model Explainability with Integrated Gradients and XRAI,” introduced practical approaches to explainability for vision machine learning models, demonstrating their application in Python for building more transparent and accountable AI systems.

A Pythonista’s Guide to Competitive Programming

Sharmaigne Angelie Mabano & Legolas Tyrael Lada

Sharmaigne Angelie Mabano during her PyTalk

Sharmaigne Mabano and Tyrael Lada are passionate Pythonistas and competitive programmers who regularly tackle coding challenges on platforms like Codewars and Codeforces. Their PyTalk, “A Pythonista’s Guide to Competitive Programming,” broke down real algorithmic problems and shared solution strategies for using platforms like Codeforces and Leetcode to sharpen coding and algorithmic skills.

Empowering Your AI Assistant: Software Architecture for Smarter Assistance

Mark Maglana

Mark Maglana is a Senior Systems and Software Engineer at The Linux Foundation, with a strong track record in bringing real-world Python applications to life through automation, cloud technologies, and optimized developer workflows, and has presented at international conferences like AnsibleFest. His PyTalk, “Empowering Your AI Assistant: Software Architecture for Smarter Assistance,” dove into why foundational principles like Hexagonal Architecture matter for AI companions, enabling them to generate more accurate, context-aware code and avoid hallucinations.

Building Bridges Across Asia: The Role of the Python Asia Organization (PAO)

Freilla Mae Espinola

Freilla Mae Espinola is the Executive Director and Board Member of the Python Asia Organization (PAO) and has dedicated her career to advancing diversity, accessibility, and innovation in technology, notably as the Lead Organizer of Django Girls CDO. Her PyTalk, “Building Bridges Across Asia: The Role of the Python Asia Organization (PAO),” introduced this newly established non-profit, sharing its early achievements and discussing its mission to connect Python communities across East and Southeast Asia.

Containerizing and Deploying Python App with Azure Container Apps

Mark Anthony Estopace

Mark Anthony Estopace is a Senior Full Stack Developer at Cambridge University Press & Assessment with deep expertise in web and cloud technologies, known for leading the Microsoft Azure Community Philippines and serving as HQ Lead for DEVCON Philippines. His PyTalk, “Containerizing and Deploying Python App with Azure Container Apps,” walked attendees through building Docker images and efficiently deploying scalable, resilient, and cost-effective Python applications using Azure Container Apps.

Building AI Agents for E-Commerce Analytics with LangGraph

Sandy Lauguico

Sandy Lauguico is a full-stack data practitioner and independent consultant currently working as an AI/ML Engineer with deep expertise across the entire data lifecycle, leading projects in predictive modeling, causal inference, and end-to-end ML pipeline development. Her PyTalk, “Building AI Agents for E-Commerce Analytics with LangGraph,” explored how AI agents, using LangGraph and Claude, can connect to data sources like Snowflake to run context-aware analysis and deliver actionable, automated business intelligence recommendations.

Your First Pandas Contribution

Kevin Christian Amparado

Kevin Christian Amparado is a DevOps Engineer at ImportGenius and an active contributor to the Pandas open-source project, known for his work on performance optimizations and documentation improvements. Leveraging this expertise, his PyTalk, “Your First Pandas Contribution,” guided attendees through the complete process of contributing to the essential Python library.

Observability in Action: Monitoring and Tracing Python Apps

Cleo Credo

Cleo Credo is the CTO at Full Scale and a Google Developer Expert for Firebase, who combines expertise in systems architecture design with a passion for community empowerment, notably as the co-lead of the grassroots Python group, PizzaPy in Cebu. Her PyTalk, “Observability in Action: Monitoring and Tracing Python Apps,” dove into how monitoring and distributed tracing provide deeper visibility into systems, demonstrating how to instrument Python apps using tools like Prometheus and OpenTelemetry to uncover performance bottlenecks.

Using Python to Programmatically Manage Kubernetes Clusters

Romar Mayer Micabalo

Romar Mayer Micabalo is a Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at meldCX and an open-source advocate with over 20 years of experience managing cloud-based infrastructure and technical teams for various communities, including Mozilla Philippines and OpenStack Foundation. His PyTalk, “Using Python to Programmatically Manage Kubernetes Clusters,” demonstrated how to combine Python with Kubernetes to programmatically manage cluster objects and automate tasks, making cloud orchestration more efficient and dynamic.

Setup Declarative Python Development Environments with devenv

Denrei Keith De Jesus

Denrei Keith De Jesus is a DevOps Engineer | Python Backend Engineer at Mugna Tech, who demonstrates a strong passion for both engineering and community building through his active role in organizing workshops and tech events. His PyTalk, “Declarative Environments: Python Development with Devenv,” introduced Devenv, an approach using Nix to build fast, reproducible, and composable Python developer environments, tackling common issues like dependency and Python version conflicts.

Life Under the _: A Guide to Python’s Internal Conventions

Neil Christian Riego

Neil Christian Riego is a Tech Lead at Control Flow Labs and a passionate software engineer who actively contributes to the local tech ecosystem as Vice President for Technology at DEVCON Manila and a Meetup Lead for AWS User Group PH. His PyTalk, “Life Under the _: A Guide to Python’s Internal Conventions,” dove into one of Python’s subtle features, the underscore, breaking down the five distinct patterns to help attendees write cleaner, more Pythonic, and expressive code.

Hands-On Workshops

The workshop room, Clarissa A, was consistently at full capacity as participants eagerly followed along, gaining practical experience in guided, hands-on sessions such as “Python for Data Engineering.”

Python for Data Engineering

Myk Ogbinar

Myk Ogbinar is the Head of the Data & Analytics Group at San Miguel Corporation, where he leads data and AI strategies across various industries, and is the founder of Data Engineering Pilipinas, a community focused on data literacy and open-source. His workshop, “Python for Data Engineering,” showed how Python forms the foundation of reliable data pipelines that power analytics, dashboards, and AI systems, providing practical examples of well-structured, scalable solutions.

Participants during the Data Engineering Workshop

His workshop drew an impressive turnout, with the room packed wall to wall. The overwhelming attendance showed just how much interest there is in learning practical, real-world data engineering with Python.

If you’d like to explore the workshop materials, the GitHub repository used during the session can be found here:
https://github.com/ogbinar/py-dataengineering-workshop

Lightning Talks

In a dynamic segment, both participants and speakers had the chance to step on stage for three minutes to share anything Python-related, from passion projects to quick tips, showcasing the community’s spontaneity and diverse interests.

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Lightning talk lineup:

Sony Valdez — My Global Game Jam Entry
Lord Ian Paquiao — The Role of Hashing Libraries in Flash Application Security
Yldevier John Magpusao — Ethical Hacking: Automating Privilege Escalation using Python Scripts
Nhyl Bryle Ibañez — Building performant and cost-effective data pipelines with AWS Glue and Apache Spark
Mark Jaily Peña — Dockerizing your Django Application
Zaldy Pagduan Jr. — Exploratory Data Analysis with Python and Kaggle
Tyrael Lada — Built-in efficient iteration with itertools
Kevin Amparado — Molten.nvim: nvim x python secret sauce
Sharmaigne Mabano — You Don’t Need to Pay For That!!!
Freilla Mae Espinola — My Favorite Debugging Trick
Ned Palacios — PWA Karaoke Application with FastAPI and React

Panel Discussion

The highlight was the panel, “The Future of Python Development.” Moderated by Arnel Jan Sarmiento, this session featured insights from esteemed industry figures including Daniel Roy Greenfeld, Audrey Roy Greenfeld, Myk Ogbinar, Sony Valdez, Romar Mayer Micabalo, and Freilla Mae Espinola. Guided by the spirit of Panaghiusa, these seasoned professionals explored how Python continues to shape technologies, from data and analytics to cloud infrastructure and community growth, envisioning the next chapter of Python’s innovation and collaboration.

Open Spaces

Some of the most valuable learning and connection-building occurred in the Open Spaces, where attendees joined attendee-led discussions. This collaborative setting allowed anyone to propose topics, share ideas, or host mini-activities, maximizing the spirit of unity and shared knowledge.

October 26: Sprint Day — Unity in Action

If Day 1 was about absorbing knowledge, Sprint Day on October 26 was about channeling it. Developers of all experience levels, from first-time contributors to core library maintainers, sat side-by-side. Participants had the opportunity to contribute to major projects, including Pandas and the Air web framework.

Mentors patiently guided newcomers through their first pull requests. This was Panaghiusa in its purest form: the community not just using the tools, but coming together to build and improve them for everyone.

Pull requests merged to the Air Framework during the Sprint:

#706 — feat: add.url() method to route functions
#671 — docs: removed one slash in the link preview, and added one slash in the link url (issue #613)
#670 — docs: issue 618 — Change ‘Reference for all the entire’ to ‘Reference for the entire’
#672 — docs: fix inspirations grammatical error
#674 — docs: Correct example usage from ‘app = air.App()’ to ‘app = air.Air()’
#673 — fix: remove self-closing slashes from void elements
#677— docs: fix (line 11) word from engineer to databases
#680 — fix: grammatical errors in jinja.md
#683 — docs: Update badges and improve index.md formatting
#682 — docs: change syntactal to syntactic from docs/about/inspirations.md
#684 — Fix/docs/readme comment error
#685 — docs: fixed pluralization issue on the word routes
#663 — test: add tests for compute_page_path
#664 — docs: README comment typo
#676 — Update github oath demo removed the duplicateof databases = {}
#691 — replaced pico to picocss
#692 — Tests: missing_examples.py script tests for functions
#693 — docs: fixed checkbox formatting on roadmap.md
#696 — docs: fixed code shadowing on air = air.Air()
#695 — docs: fix missing closing > in Jinja example (#609)
#686 — chore: address inconsistent default response
#698 — Fixed deprecated issues and passed all Air test
#700 — DOC: add missing space before parenthesis on CONTRIBUTING.md
#703 — docs: clarify explanation for Variables in URLs
#702 — refac(src_examples): add samples and tests for other htmx requests besides get request
#715 — add create_sync_engine example
#713 — Sprint day updates
#711 — Feat(benchmarks)/print memory scaling results
#705 — chore: enable PLC rules and update files that break it

In just one day, 16 new contributors joined the Air repository, with several making their first open source contributions. During the Sprint, contributors submitted 44 pull requests to Air.

Pull requests made to pandas during the Sprint:

#62856 — TST : Removed ensure_clean from test_common_basic.py #62425
#62860 — STY: Enforce Ruff rule B905 for scripts/validate_unwanted_patterns.py
#62857 — STY: add strict in zip on test_frame_subplots.py
#62854 — STY: changed the strict value to True
#62852 — STY: use strict zip in pandas/tests/window
#62858 — DOC: removed @Appender and @Substition and replaced with docstrings
#62859 — Remove ALL gitpod/docker/devcontainer related files and docs

Over the course of the Sprint, 4 new contributors joined the pandas repository, with several making their first ever contributions to open source. A total of 7 pull requests were submitted to pandas.

The day concluded with a heartwarming closing where the mentors shared short, encouraging messages and took the time to personally acknowledge each participant who successfully contributed to an open-source project. This ceremony truly celebrated the spirit of shared success and collaboration.

A Future Forged, Together

PyCon Davao 2025 was far more than a conference; it was a milestone for the Python community in Mindanao and the wider region. Reflecting on the event, its success, measured both by the energy in the room and the overall turnout, proves the power of a united vision. We witnessed the spirit of Panaghiusa in every handshake, every shared solution, and every line of code committed.

The future of Python is bright, and its next chapters are being written by the powerful connections and collaborations that started right here in Davao. The future has been forged, and we built it together. A heartfelt thank you to our speakers, sponsors, volunteers, and every single attendee who shared in this journey.

With that, we’d like to take the time to talk about what’s to come in the future of Python here in the Philippines.

PythonAsia 2026

PythonAsia 2026, organized by our friends at Python Philippines, is shaping up to be an exciting gathering for Python enthusiasts across the region. With hands-on workshops, inspiring talks, and plenty of opportunities to connect, it’s a celebration of learning, collaboration, and community. Keep an eye out for updates from their official social media outlets, and get ready to join fellow Pythonistas in March!

After the success of PyCon Davao 2025, the Python community in the Philippines is more energized than ever. With PythonAsia 2026 on the horizon, there’s plenty of excitement brewing, and talk of PyCon Davao 2026 has everyone curious. Meanwhile, the DurianPy community will continue hosting regular meetups, keeping local developers connected, sharing knowledge, and building momentum throughout the year.

We look forward to coming together again at future Python events, through DurianPy or wherever the community gathers next.

To the People Who Brought It All Together

This collective success was powered by the incredible volunteers who brought it all together. They exerted tremendous effort before, during, and after the event to handle everything from logistics to clean-up. By documenting and preserving our memories and experiences, this strengthens the unity we’ve built and paves the way for a brighter future for PyCon Davao.

With gratitude to everyone who made this happen:

Project Head

Arnel Jan Sarmiento

Program Committee

Design Committee

Marketing Committee

Logistics Committee

Engineering Committee

Communications Committee

Technicals Committee

Hosts

In partnership with:

AWS User Group Davao
Computer Studies Student Executive Council — ADDU CS
Data Engineering Pilipinas
DEVCON Davao
DICE — Davao Interschool Computer Enthusiasts
DICT Region 11
Google Developer Group Cagayan de Oro
Microsoft Azure Community Philippines
PizzaPy — Cebu Python Users Group
PyBalanghay
PyTsada
UP Mindanao Society of Programmers And Refined Computer Scientists

#DurianPy #PyConDavao2025 #Panaghiusa #PyCon