DjangoCon US 2025: A Celebration of Community, Code and 20 Years of Django

DjangoCon US 2025 was a milestone year for the community, as we gathered in Chicago to celebrate 20 years of Django. Attendees from around the world came together to learn about the latest developments, share their work, and strengthen the bonds that make DjangoCon such a special event. Caktus was well-represented once again, with our team contributing as organizers, speakers, and active participants throughout the week.

As Conference Chair, I’ll also be sharing a series of blog posts that capture DjangoCon from three perspectives: planning the conference, experiences during the event, and reflections after. In this post, we look back at our time at DjangoCon US 2025: the talks that inspired us and the people we connected with.

What did you like most about DjangoCon 2025?

Mariatta:
I enjoyed reconnecting with the Django community members again. It’s been 7 years since the last time I attended DjangoCon in person. The community has always been very kind and supportive. I’m really inspired by all the talks about the community, the people, as well as all the technical talks. I got to meet Python community members from all over the world, and I’m always amazed by their dedication and their contribution to the global Python community.

Tobias:
I enjoyed being in Chicago with the Django community. In addition to the talks and hallway track during the conference itself, each evening was packed with different activities and dinner options. My favorite part of conferences is always getting to meet new people in a new environment and enjoy good food. One highlight: On Keanya’s recommendation, a group of us enjoyed lunch at Mr. Beef’s Deli a short walk from the venue, and the Italian beef with sweet and hot peppers, dipped, did not disappoint!

Colin:
As others have mentioned, it was great to see the Django community in person again. I missed DjangoCon last year, so it felt long overdue to reconnect with folks and meet new people. Beyond the conference itself, I also enjoyed exploring Chicago with other attendees, including several long sightseeing walks and the architectural boat tour. Oh and taking pictures!

Karen:
I loved the location, it was great for me on a personal level since I got to visit family, friends, and a longtime client that I’d never met in person before. I was also very lucky to get a room with the best view I’ve ever had!

Keanya:
What I liked most wasn’t one single talk, or one specific dinner, or even one highlight moment. It was the bigger picture: the energy, openness, and genuine spirit of the Django community. I loved watching attendees step out of their comfort zones, share their stories, and connect across backgrounds, geographies, and experience levels.

What was your favorite talk at DjangoCon 2025?

Mariatta:
All the talks were really good and I learned a lot, so it’s hard to pick just one. I appreciate Peter Baumgartner’s talk: High Performance Django at Ten: Old Tricks & New Picks, where Peter revisits the techniques and tools from 10 years ago to see which of those are still relevant now in the year 2025.

Another talk that I really enjoyed was from Kattni: The Source of Change: Bettering Online Open Source Communities Can Begin with You. In this talk, Kattni shared suggestions on how you can do your part to create a safe and welcoming environment in the open source community.

Tobias:
One of my favorite talks was Paulo Melchiorre’s Django’s GeneratedField by example. I hadn’t used generated columns in PostgreSQL before, so it was great to see how streamlined and powerful the GeneratedField model field is that’s available since Django 5.0.

Colin:
In addition to the others mentioned here, I enjoyed Big Bad World of Postgres Dev Environments presented by Elizabeth Garrett Christensen. She introduced me to a project called PostgreSQL Anonymizer, which is an extension to mask personally identifiable information (PII) in a database. This sounds very useful for some of our projects, and I look forward to checking it out.

Karen:
I thought the keynotes were all outstanding. If I had to pick one favorite it would be Lateral Thinking with Weathered Technology: How The Nintendo Philosophy Applies to Modern Web Development by Carson Gross.

Keanya:
DjangoCon US 2025 was full of incredible talks, each offering something valuable. But the one that stood out to me most was Mariatta’s session on reverse engineering the QR code generator and URL forwarder service. It was clear, practical, and inspiring. It sparked ideas for projects I’d love to play with on my own time.

What did you take away from DjangoCon that you are using right now at Caktus?

Tobias:
I’m already reviewing projects that use materialized views in PostgreSQL to see if and when a GeneratedField might be a better fit!

Mariatta:
I’m really intrigued about Django Field’s db_comment from Ryan Cheley’s talk: Django as Database Documentation Tool: The Hidden Power of Model Comments. I will be looking for opportunities to incorporate this into our codebase.

Colin:
An audience suggestion from the talk Automating initial deployments with django-simple-deploy prompted me to begin researching and collaborating on a new project: dsd-pythonanywhere. The goal is to create a PythonAnywhere plugin for django-simple-deploy, making it easier to use in the Django Girls tutorial. The project is underway, and I was grateful to collaborate with Eric Matthes on it during the sprints. I hope to have a functional version ready soon.

Karen:
Like Tobias, I am intrigued to see if we can use GeneratedFields to simplify some existing code written long before they existed.

Keanya:
Not actually using it at Caktus, however it inspired me to help my son with his side business. He’s been putting together a form for potential customers, and we thought why not add a QR code to make it easier to share? Thanks to Mariatta’s talk, we rolled up our sleeves and started experimenting. It’s been a blast tinkering with him, watching his excitement as the code turns into something people can actually scan and use.