# My experience at PyCon US 2026

DevFeed: [My experience at PyCon US 2026](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/my-experience-at-pycon-us-2026-21750.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<http://blog.pamelafox.org/2026/05/pycon-2026-reflections.html>)

Author: Pamela Fox (noreply@blogger.com)

Published: 2026-05-20T05:41:47Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Pamela Fox](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/pamela-fox.md>)

Topics: [Python](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/python.md>), [MCP](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/mcp.md>), [MCP Server](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/mcp-server.md>), [Tutorial](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/tutorial.md>)

Tags: [2026](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/2026.md>), [conference](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/conference.md>), [experience](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/experience.md>), [mcp](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mcp.md>), [mcp-server](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mcp-server.md>), [python](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/python.md>), [tutorial](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/tutorial.md>)

## AI overview

A personal recap of PyCon US 2026 describing the author's tutorial on building MCP servers, including its preparation, delivery to 84 attendees, and use of coding agents, agent frameworks, FastMCP, and Keycloak.

## Source excerpt

I'm writing this post on the flight back from PyCon US 2026 in Long Beach, California. It was my second time attending PyCon, and it was a fantastic conference - a cornocopia of Python knowledge, but more importantly, a coming-together of developers across the Python ecosystem. I'll recap my PyCon US 2026 experience in this post, both what I contributed and what thousands of others contributed. First, a big old disclaimer: part of my job as a developer advocate at Microsoft is to attend conferences like PyCon, so I was able to expense my travel and spend my work days on my PyCon contributions. But that's also why I picked my job, as it gives me the excuse to do things that I'd want to do anyway, like attending the largest gathering of Python devs in the world. My tutorial Since I've been spending so much time on Model Context Protocol (MCP) in the past year, I submitted an idea to the PyCon CFP to run a tutorial walking developers through the process of building their first MCP server. I was thrilled that the tutorial was accepted, but nervous since I'd never delivered a tutorial at a PyCon before. Fortunately, I was able to test it out with the SF Python meetup group a few days before, and their feedback helped me streamline the tutorial experience immensely. I delivered the tutorial at PyCon to a packed room: 84 people, all seats filled, bright and early at 9AM on Wednesday morning, the first slot of the week-long conference. We started off the tutorial with an icebreaker, which included attendees inventing their own meaning for "MCP". Of course, my not-so-secret goal was for them to get to know their neighbor, to encourage pair debugging during the exercises. I alternated between slides and exercises in the 3.5 hours tutorial, trying to give attendees enough background knowledge while also giving them the time to get hands-on. We started off with attendees using MCP servers, via both coding agents (Copilot/Claude Code) and agent frameworks (Pydantic AI, Langchain