Madison Swain-Bowden
Hey there, I'm Madison! 💖 I'm an experienced data engineer passionate about open source, automation, and maintainable code.
Openverse
An open-source search engine for openly licensed media aggregated from numerous sources across the web.
Stack: Python, Airflow, Postgres, Django, Elasticsearch, Docker
Role: Core Maintainer
Repo: WordPress/openverse
OpenOversight
A searchable database of law enforcement officers backed by public records requests and user-supplied photos.
Stack: Python, Flask, Postgres, Pandas, Docker
Role: Primary Maintainer
CellProfiler
A FOSS application which enables biologists to easily employ image processing and analysis on cellular images.
Stack: Python, Numpy, Scikit-image, wxPython, Docker
Role: Contributor Emeritus
Other Pursuits
Talks & Presentations
- Airflow 3.0 - Roadmap Discussion (Panel) [Airflow Summit 2024]
- As Easy as Breathing - Manage Your Workflows with Airflow! [Women in Data Science: Puget Sound 2024]
- Empowerment Journeys: Entering, Exceling, and Exceeding Expectations in the Data Science Workforce (Panel) [Women in Data Science: Puget Sound 2024]
- Forging the Future: Five years of fabricating with Airflow [Airflow Summit 2023]
- Managing a search engine for over 600 million openly licensed media records [PyData Seattle 2023]
- Introduction to Open Source and Python Web APIs with Openverse [Women Who Code 2022]
- Dataclasses as Pipeline Definitions in Airflow [Airflow Summit 2021]
Podcasts
Tech-related
- Volunteering, Organizing, and Finding a Python Community [Real Python Podcast (Episode 159)]
- Wait, you can Google that? [PythonBytes Podcast (Episode 268)]
For Fun
- States' Wrongs [Mechanical Freak Podcast (Episode 118)]
- Running Up That Hill [Mechanical Freak Podcast (Episode 132)]
- AmeriPUN Idol with A.D. Miles [Office Hours Live (Episode 199)]
Publications & Posts
- Openverse Wins the 2023 OEG Open Infrastructure Award [WordPress.org]
- A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic [tumblr.com staff blog]
- Integrated intracellular organization and its variations in human iPS cells (Viana, M.P., Chen, J., Knijnenburg, T.A. et al.) [Nature]
- Automated human induced pluripotent stem cell culture and sample preparation for 3D live-cell microscopy (Gregor, B.W., Coston, M.E., Adams, E.M. et al.) [Nature Protocols]
- Automattic’s First Data+ Meetup [data.blog]
- Women of Datamattic: Madison Swain-Bowden [data.blog]
Organizing
I have been an organizer of PyCascades, a regional Python conference in the Pacific Northwest area, since 2020. I've served in the following ways each year:
- 2021: Diversity Chair
- 2022: Co-Chair
- 2023: Diversity Chair
- 2024: Chair At-Large
- 2025: IT Chair