The PyCon US Blog

It seems that I missed Jesse Noller's contribution: jessenoller.com: PyCon 2010: Talks I want to see; Keynotes, registration open: I thought I’d share the talks I’m pretty jazzed about, as well as some other bits of PyCon-related news. First up – early bird registration is open – early bird reg nets you a decent discount on registration fees for PyCon, and will run until January 6th. Next – for those of you who didn’t see the news, Mark Shuttleworth will also be doing a Keynote at PyCon – this is awesome news. I think both keynotes, his and Antonio Rodriguez’ will be great. I don’t want to speak as to the content just yet – but with two high caliber entrepreneurs/founders, I’m dead sure it will be awesome. As for the talks I want to see – well, this is criminally difficult. I pretty much want to see almost every single invited talk we have (I’m especially excited about Alex’s, Jack’s, Joe’s and Ned’s talks. I think our invited speakers this year will be very, very popular. ...

The deadline for getting early-bird pricing at PyCon is coming up ( register by January 6! ), and people are starting to see just how great the schedule is for this year's PyCon. From around the web: PyOraGeek: PyCon pre-favorites : When I look over the PyCon 2010 talk list , I'd like to be at about half of them (a physical impossibility, until I master self-multiplexing). Still, these are the ones that I'll move heaven and earth to be at. What about you - what are your favorites? Click through for the whole list, but Catherine highlights (among others) Extending Java Applications with Jython ... IronPython Tooling ... Python in the Browser .... and others, and then ends with the magnificent: An Underwater Python: Tortuga the Python Powered Robot because, deep down inside, people everywhere are the same; we all want to be loved, and Python-powered robot submarines . Carl Trachte then weighs in: pyright: PyCon pre-favorites, the Carl T. edition : These are my picks (not ...

A quick reminder that the deadline for submitting a financial aid application for PyCon 2010 is today! Please see http://us.pycon.org/2010/registration/financial-aid/ for details & instructions.

The PyCon 2010 organizing committee has decided to extend the deadline for financial aid applications to December 22, 2009. If you or anyone you know is interested in attending but cannot afford it, we may be able to help. There are two financial aid funds available: the PSF Grant and the Financial Assistance Grant for Women. PSF Grant The PSF Grant is open to anyone and can help cover: • registration for PyCon • hotel room at the conference hotel • flight or other transportation Financial Assistance Grant for Women The Financial Assistance Grant for Women is geared specifically toward helping women who are interested in using Python in their research, school work, careers or other avenues. It includes help with: registration for PyCon tutorials at PyCon hotel room at the conference hotel flight or other transportation Please see http://us.pycon.org/2010/registration/financial-aid/ for details & instructions. The deadline for applications is December 22, 2009.

World's Largest Python Conference Comes to Atlanta ATLANTA - December 18, 2009 The Django Pony made her sparkly public debut. The infamous Beards of PyCon were captured on film. Guido van Rossum announced the beginning of his gradual retirement as Python's Benevolent Dictator for life - then kidnapped the Django Pony. Backseat language drivers were threatened with the terribl(y silly) fate of being Van Lindberg'd. PyCon 2009 drew nearly a thousand Python programmers from around the world, representing projects on all seven continents - including Antarctica! They gathered for serious learning, discussion, and strategizing... and for not-so-serious fun. PyCon 2010, the eighth annual conference of the Python programming community, promises even more on all counts: more talks, more education, more creativity; more work and more play. Interest in PyCon is growing along with the use of the Python language itself. This year alone has seen a 50% increase in the number of talk propo...

Financial aid for PyCon 2010 has just gotten even better. Because of some very generous donations from the community, we are adding a second grant fund called the Financial Assistance Grant for Women. This fund is geared specifically toward helping women who are interested in using Python in their research, school work, careers or other avenues. It includes help with: registration tutorials lodging transportation The existing Python Software Foundation Grant will continue to be funded at the same level and can provide assistance for: registration lodging transportation Please see http://us.pycon.org/2010/registration/financial-aid/ for details & instructions. The deadline for applications is December 18, 2009.

As the financial aid coordinator for PyCon 2010, I'm pleased to announce that the Python Software Foundation has created a fund to help people attend PyCon 2010. If you're interested in attending but cannot afford it, we may be able to help. Financial aid can help cover: • Your registration for PyCon • Your hotel room at the conference hotel • Your flight or other transportation Please see http://us.pycon.org/2010/registration/financial-aid/ for details & instructions. The deadline for applications is December 18, 2009.

Registration for PyCon 2010 is open! You should register for PyCon 2010 here (and don't forget to make your hotel reservations here ). We are doing a number of things this year to make this the biggest and best PyCon ever. To start with, there is more PyCon to love. We will be having five separate tracks of talks, covering everything from Python in space to Python on Wall Street . There should be something for everyone. Interested in Java? You can see how to extend Java applications with Jython or how the military is using Jython to model real-world battlefield scenarios . Interested in .NET? You can learn about what Microsoft is doing to support IronPython in their tools or how to use Silverlight to run applications in your browser . Are you a scientist or do you need to crunch big data? Python is being used to crunch data from telescopes and for natural language processing with Hadoop . You can also brush up on algorithmic optimization , agent-based modeling of systems , and...

PyCon registration has opened! Registering early gets you early-bird registration rates, guarantees you the tutorials you want ( here's the tutorial schedule ), and helps the PyCon volunteers plan better. We'll see you in Atlanta! Spread the word!

The deadline for PyCon poster proposals is coming up soon - November 30! Poster Sessions are a new PyCon feature for 2010. Poster sessions provide an alternative presentation mechanism that facilitates more one-on-one communication between the presenter and the audience. Poster sessions are particularly suited for topics of interest to a subset of the community, and we anticipate these sessions will provide an "incubator" for further discussions. More information about the what, how, when, and why of poster sessions is at http://us.pycon.org/2010/conference/posters/cfp/ .

Last week I met Van (PyCon Chair) and Ewa (PyCon Coordination Angel) in Atlanta to get more familiar with the Hyatt Regency floor plan and the sponsor coordination issues that I am responsible for this year.  While I was there I got to participate in some behind the scenes meetings.  I will blog about these issues in the following weeks. I will start with one of the really fun tasks - meeting the Hyatt Sous Chef ,who will be working on PyCon with us, and sampling the various choices for salads, entrees and desserts. I remember the 'good ol days' when we ate box lunches in DC that consisted of ham and cheese sandwiches, chips, apple and a cookie.  So, I am still blown away while sitting down to plan a nice catered lunch menu.  WOW!  1000 Python developers dining together in a huge banquet room.  It is amazing how far PyCon has come - and I hope PyCon attendees appreciate how well they are treated for their registration investment - and the effort by t...

The PyCon program committee has announced an unprecedented program of 95 talks for PyCon 2010. Talk abstracts can be browsed at http://us.pycon.org/2010/conference/talks/ . With a record-breaking pool of submissions to choose from, the committee has assembled a program of enormous variety and quality, representing topics across the whole range of Python programming. Talks cover not just Python's traditional CPython implementation, but newer Python implementations on a variety of platforms, including Java, .NET, Parrot, and Python itself. As always, scheduled talks are only the tip of the PyCon iceberg, which also includes tutorials, Open Spaces, keynotes, Lightning Talks, poster sessions, development sprints, hands-on lab, exhibit hall, and no end of unscheduled discussion and fun. PyCon 2010 takes place Feb. 17-25 in Atlanta, GA; see us.pycon.org .

RuPy is the strongly dynamic conference concerning mostly Ruby and Python programming languages (7 & 8 November, in Poznan, Poland). Registration has been open for some time, and now we have also completed the agenda . There will be a load of talks and many stars of the geek world will come to talk about their experiences. After the first day of talks, we invite all attendees to join the Geek Party on Saturday night, where one can discuss Ruby and Python-related issues while holding a glass of cold beer. The list of speakers and talks include: Michael Dirolf - "An Introduction to MongoDB" Obie Fernandez - "Rapid Application development with Rails and MongoDB" David Goodger - Community-oriented talk Charles Oliver Nutter - "JRuby: Pushing the Boundaries" Paolo Negri - "RabbitMQ" Tarek Ziade - "The Python Packaging Ecosystem" Scott Chacon - "Mastering Git" Check out the complete list of speakers at http://rupy.eu/speakers/ ...

The vast majority of talks at PyCon go through a challenging submission process where they are weighed against the other submitted talks - 179 submissions this year. A few speakers, however, have been so consistently and overwhelmingly popular at previous PyCons that this year's program committee has invited them to skip the usual review process, reserving talk slots for topics of their choice. The PyCon 2010 invited speakers and their topics are Ian Bicking, On The Subject Of Source Code Jeff Rush, Interfaces, Adapters and Factories Jack Diederich, Python's Dusty Corners Mike Fletcher, Debating 'til Dawn: Topics to keep you up all night Raymond Hettinger, Mastering Team Play: Four powerful examples of composing Python tools Bob Ippolito, The other kind of testing Alex Martelli, Powerful Pythonic Patterns Joe Gregorio, Threading is not a model Ned Batchelder, Tests and Testability Holger Krekel, The Ring of Python Ted Leung, A Survey of Concurrency Constructs

Starting at PyCon 2010 in Atlanta, GA, we're excited to announce the addition of organized poster sessions during the regular conference days. Every year, PyCon US has tried to highlight new, interesting, and noteworthy things going on in the Python Community... and every year, we've been amazed by the variety and depth of interesting projects that have been presented. Up until now, that information has been formally presented using a combination of invited and reviewed talks, lightning talks from attendees, and open-space events. While these are all good in their own right, we've decided that perhaps one more presentation model would be a good fit with PyCon... Poster sessions have proven to be a fantastic way to facilitate direct contact between presenters and audiences at other conferences and we're excited to be able to bring them to PyCon in 2010. We will have two designated plenary poster sessions and will be providing space for posters up to 4ft. by 4 ft. in ...

PHP-Québec , Montréal-Python , Ruby Montréal , W3Qc , and OWASP Montréal are organizing the first edition of the ConFoo.ca conference , which will be held in Montréal, Canada, on March 10th through 12th at the Hilton Bonaventure Hotel. With over 500 attendees expected, ConFoo.ca will be one of the largest web development conferences in North America. ConFoo.ca is looking for great speakers willing to share their experience and skills with programmers, managers, marketers and decision makers. The conference will be divided into two parts: A technical part, encompassing different aspects of web development: PHP, Python, Ruby, security, project management, CMSs and frameworks, databases, systems administration, web standards, accessibility and agile methods. A decision-making part: referencing (SEO), web marketing analysis, and social networking. Presentations can be in English or in French, and should be roughly one hour long. Presentations may be recorded for later broadcast in digit...

pyTexas , the 3rd annual regional Python conference, is coming up in only ten days . It is being held Oct 24-25 Sat/Sun in Ft. Worth at the University of North Texas Health Science Center. The format is scheduled talks on Saturday morning followed by open space talks driven by the attendees in the afternoon. On Sunday there will be sprints on various projects and, in parallel, a Python Lab that tests the attendees with interesting programming puzzles. There is no cost to attend but we would appreciate you adding your name to the registration wiki to give us a better idea of attendance. We expect the conference to be a small, interactive gathering of the Texas community, not a big stuffy conference. It will be a lot of fun. We hope to see you there! Jeff Rush , an organizer

The main keynote speaker at Kiwi PyCon 2009 , Joel Burton, an internationally recognised trainer and presenter, will explain how the programming language Python is becoming the language of choice for developing websites due to its simplicity and flexibility. The conference will be held at the Canterbury Innovation Incubator in Christchurch on November 7th and 8th. Other tracks at the conference will include: GUI, Science & Math, Game, and Applications. The conference will also have a dedicated Web track, which will include presentations about many Python web technologies, such as: Django, Twisted, Zope 3, Grok, and Plone. The conference has attracted a lot of interest from many universities throughout the country and staff and students from Auckland, Massey, Canterbury, and Otago universities will be presenting regarding how they've used Python in their research. “As Christchurch has the reputation of being the Silicon Valley of New Zealand, its been really great to see a numbe...

Talk submissions for PyCon 2010 have closed, with an astonishing 179 talks proposed. (For comparison, PyCon 2009 received 118 submissions - and many attendees called 2009 the best PyCon ever.) Thanks to everyone who submitted! The all-volunteer Program Committee is now busy with the difficult but delightful task of selecting the very best from this huge pool of submissions. Expect a PyCon program with breadth and quality like never before! Tutorial proposals remain open through October 18: http://us.pycon.org/2010/tutorials/proposals/

For Python language enthusiasts across India, all roads led to the Lecture Hall Complex at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore on 26th and 27th Sep. The reason - to attend and be part of the first PyCon India which was held during the week-end. The event saw tremendous enthusiasm and participation from all over the country. Over 350 delegates and 30+ speakers attended the event. The event generated a lot of interest in the academia, with a large number of college students and fresh graduates attending it. A notable instance is the participation of 75 students from the Rajalakshmi Engg. College in the neighboring city of Chennai, who just hopped on a train to Bangalore en-masse. This is a worthy example of how Python has caught the imagination of young programmers in the sub-continent and that the language is poised for steady growth and adoption in India. The opening keynote talk by Dr. Prabhu Ramachandran was well attended and appreciated by the crowd. Dr. Ramachandran talked ...