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Press release #1

PyCon 2009's first official press release has been posted on the Press page . Help spread the word about PyCon 2009! For less formal channels (like mailing lists), here's a shorter and simpler announcement. Cut, paste, and share at will. PyCon 2009 Python community conference Chicago, IL March 27-29, 2009 http://us.pycon.org/ PyCon 2009, the seventh annual community conference for the Python programming language, will take place March 27-29 at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare Hotel in Chicago, IL. The pre-conference tutorials have been expanded to two days (March 25-26), and the conference will be followed by four days of development sprints (March 30 - April 2). As Python usage has grown rapidly, PyCon has grown as well. PyCon 2008's attendance topped 1000, up from 410 just two years before. Organizers expect this PyCon to be the biggest and most active ever. All interested community members are invited to help make PyCon great. The Call for Proposals is open to receive s

PVote on NPR Science Friday

U. S. citizens are preparing to vote next month. Unfortunately, many of their votes will be collected by software of unverifiable quality and accuracy. Carl Flatow of NPR's Science Friday came to PyCon 2008 during the after-conference sprints. One of the leading lights of the Python community that he met was Ka-Ping Yee , who has done important work on this very problem. With elections looming, Carl has released his video interview with Ka-Ping about open source vs. proprietary voting software in general, and about PVote in particular. View it at the NPR Science Friday website!

Statistics for PyCon proposals

Doug Napoleone, who maintains the web application used for tracking talk proposals, has opened up the proposal system's statistics to the world; previously, this page was restricted to members of the program committee. It's still early, so only four proposals have been submitted at the time I'm writing. The graph of activity will get more interesting as the deadline approaches and the program committee begins intensively reviewing and commenting. Remember, the deadline for tutorials is October 31 and the talk proposal deadline is November 3, so start thinking about what you could do!

PyCon 2009 (US) - Call for proposals

Want to share your experience and expertise? PyCon 2009 is looking for proposals to fill the formal presentation tracks. The PyCon conference days will be March 27-29, 2009 in Chicago, Illinois, preceded by the tutorial days (March 25-26), and followed by four days of development sprints (March 30-April 2). Previous PyCon conferences have had a broad range of presentations, from reports on academic and commercial projects to tutorials and case studies. We hope to continue that tradition this year. Online proposal submission will open on September 29, 2008. Proposals will be accepted through November 03, with acceptance notifications coming out on December 15. For the full details, please see our detailed call for proposals . We look forward to seeing you in Chicago!

Pycon 2009 (US) – Call for Tutorials

The period for submitting tutorial proposals for Pycon 2009 (US) is now open and will continue through Friday, October 31th. This year features two "pre-conference" days devoted to tutorials on Wednesday March 25 & Thursday March 26 in Chicago. This allows for more classes than ever. Tutorials are 3-hours long on a specific topic of your choice. Last year we featured classes on Learning Python, Web Development, Scientific Computing, and many more. Class size varied from 10 to over 60 students. The extended time spent in class allows teachers to cover a lot of material while allowing for interaction with students. The full Call for Tutorial Proposals , including submission details, an example proposal as well as a template, is available at: http://us.pycon.org/2009/tutorials/proposals/ . Tutorial selections will be announced in early December to give you time to prepare your class. PyCon will compensate instructors US$1,500 per tutorial. If you have any questions, please c

PyCon UK 2008: September 12-14

PyCon UK Registration is Open. The conference takes place in Birmingham UK from 12th to 14th September 2008. A full programme includes a day of tutorials; bookings are being taken at http://www.pyconuk.org/booking.html . The early bird rate has been extended to 11th August. Plenary talks will be by Mark Shuttleworth, Ted Leung and Raymond Hettinger. There is a list of already accepted talks at: http://pyconuk.org/talk_abstracts.html A schedule for the tutorial day is at: http://pyconuk.org/timetable.html [text by Michael Foord]

Plans for PyCon 2009: Dates & Venue

Mark your calendars: Tutorial days : Wednesday March 25 & Thursday March 26, 2009. (Two days of tutorials next year instead of one!) Conference days : Friday March 27 through Sunday March 29, 2009. Development sprints : Monday March 30 through Thursday April 2, 2009. Venue Change PyCon 2008 was far more popular than we originally planned for, and we nearly filled the venue, the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare hotel. We had hoped to have more tables ("classroom" layout) in the ballrooms, but we had to cut back and use mostly chairs ("theater" layout) in order to fit everyone in. One of the compromises we had to make was in catering. With so many people, the hotel was unable to provide proper sit-down hot meals, simply because the space was't sufficient for everybody to sit banquet-style. Once the conference days were over, there was no problem seating the sprinters (on the first day of the sprints, there were more sprinters and hangers-on than anticipated

PyCon FR: May 17 & 18, 2008

(In case you didn't see it on the PSF Blog or on the python.org front page :) The second national Python Conference in France, PyCon FR 08, will be held at the Cité des sciences et de la Villette in Paris. The program has been posted (in French -- an English version is available as a blog post ).

PyOhio

PyOhio, the first annual Python programming miniconference for Ohio and surrounding areas, will take place Saturday, July 26, in Columbus, OH. The conference is free of charge. It will include scheduled talks, Lightning Talks, and unconference-style Open Spaces. To get more information or to volunteer, see http://pyohio.org . See http://wiki.python.org/moin/PyOhio/CallForProposals for information on proposing a talk.

PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report, Part 22: Conclusion

I hope there are a few people still reading! There was a lot to talk about in an 8-day, 1000-plus-attendee, volunteer-run conference like PyCon 2008. Organizing a conference of this scale is a lot of work, much more than any one person could do. I didn't mention everyone who helped out... but you know who you are. To all the speakers, sprinters, attendees, sponsors, organizers, and volunteers: Thank you! I had a blast chairing this year's PyCon, and I hope that next year's conference is even better. To me, PyCon is no longer primarily about the talks, or the projects, or the code. (I hardly got to see any talks this year, my projects are on hold, and I haven't written much non-work code lately…) Don't get me wrong -- talks, projects, and code are important, especially to new attendees. These aspects used to be the most important parts of PyCon to me too. The talks and projects are what allow us to have a conference at all; they're the framework everything

Part 21: 2009 & 2010 (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

PyCon 2009 PyCon 2009 will take place in Chicago again. This year's venue was near capacity; we're currently exploring options that will allow PyCon 2009 to have more elbow room and even grow. Stay tuned for more. This report has discussed mistakes that were made this year, which we will not repeat next year. If you have ideas or opinions that haven't been covered, please reply in the comments, email me (goodger at python dot org), or better yet, join the mailing list! I will chair PyCon again in 2009. But while I intend to stay involved beyond that, I do not intend to chair PyCon 2010. Changes of leadership bring fresh ideas and perspectives, which is a good thing. We'll be looking for a "chairperson-in-training"; let me know if you're interested. PyCon 2010 Very shortly we'll be deciding the venue for PyCon 2010: the deadline for bids is May 1, 2008. An earlier blog entry describes the process , which is much simpler than in previous years. We

Part 20: Future Growth (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

PyCon has shown impressive growth. As PyCon continues to grow, we'll continue to outgrow venues. At some point growth will plateau, and eventually we may even see declines, but for the near future growth seems to be on the menu. (I'm not expecting PyCon 2009 to grow another 77%; but who knows?) Keeping the community/volunteer nature of PyCon as it grows will be a challenge. We have to decide which direction to take. I see several options: Cap attendance. We had about 1040 people at PyCon 2008, and the venue has a hard limit of about 1200 people. Hopefully we won't need to take this drastic a measure. We'll do everything we can to avoid it. Raise rates to limit attendance. This would mostly affect the attendance of hobbyists, independent consultants, developers at startups & small businesses, and students. One way to counter that would be to offer discounts or financial aid, but that entails a lot of additional work (I know, having handled financial aid last

Part 19: Organizing PyCon (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

PyCon is organized and run by volunteers. How? The PyCon organizers are a self-selecting group. You can't make people volunteer, or make them do things they don't want to do once they have volunteered. All you can do is ask for help, and encourage people to take full ownership of their area. As the "leader" of the PyCon organizers, I was less a manager and more a cheerleader and a watcher of the "big picture". The people who helped to organize and run PyCon were doing what they chose to do, what they wanted to do. That alone provides plenty of motivation. Boiled down to the essence, the PyCon organizers all wanted a great conference, and they did whatever needed to be done to achieve that. However, we all have day jobs and lives, and some things fell through the cracks. PyCon 2008 was very ambitious, and many people put in enormous efforts. We didn't really have backups or deputies for most areas, but that's something we should consider for

Part 18: PyCon-Tech (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

The website software and the registration system saw a complete overhaul this year, mostly implemented by Doug Napoleone. It was absolutely necessary, as we were unable to collect the data we needed previously. However, the registration system and the rest of the Django-based PyCon-Tech project is very ambitious and there's a lot left to do, and some rough edges. Brantley Harris did an initial site design. And then, when we didn't have the volunteer capacity for some much-needed further work, we bought some discounted development from Imaginary Landscape (also a PyCon sponsor). PyCon-Tech is an open-source project based on Django, and other conferences are looking into using it. Hopefully they'll contribute to it too! Of course, there's a PyCon-Tech mailing list where you can help out!

Part 17: Finances (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

PyCon is a community conference run by volunteers, and is underwritten by the Python Software Foundation (a non-profit public charity). The PSF wants PyCon to be an accessible, affordable conference. To that end, every year PyCon is budgeted to operate at a (small) loss. But (almost) every year we have had more attendees and more sponsorship than the year before, and PyCon has always come out in the black. We're still receiving invoices and paying bills for PyCon 2008, and won't know the final results for a while yet. Any proceeds go into the PSF's general funds and are used for the good of the community. For example, in recent years, the PSF has sponsored other conferences and events: EuroPython, PyCon UK, PyCon Italia, Jornada Python en Santa Fe (Argentina), and more. Corporate Rate PyCon introduced a new, higher "corporate" registration rate (the old "regular" rate was renamed to "hobbyist"), and I was pleasantly surprised by how many at

Part 16: Professional Meeting Planner (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

This year for the first time, PyCon is working with professional meeting planners. Working with Conference Technology Enhancements (CTE) has helped a lot, and I wouldn't want to go back to the old way. Without CTE's help, either PyCon would not have been able to take place in anything near its present form, or I would have lost my job and gone insane. Possibly all of the above. CTE handled the negotiations with the venue: room rates, catering, A/V, and more. Volunteers did this in the past (Jeff Rush in Dallas, Steve Holden in DC), and perhaps they enjoyed it (although I doubt it), but I wanted to have as little to do with negotiation as possible. Also, CTE continues to offer us a wealth of experience and ideas. For example, CTE originated the idea of significantly increasing the sponsorship levels while increasing our investment (in the Expo Hall, etc.), in order to properly value the conference. I couldn't imagine a conference of this size and complexity without t

Part 15: PR (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

This year as in years past (especially, I think, last year), the grass-roots blogging and word of mouth served to get the PyCon word out. This year we also tried something different: professional PR. Last August Van Lindberg got in touch with Page One Public Relations , a PR firm specializing in open source companies. Page One offered their services to PyCon at a discount, and we took them up on the offer as an experiment, to promote PyCon and Python. Catherine Devlin and Van coordinated efforts with Daniel Schneider of Page One PR. Daniel wrote and distributed four press releases , but much more importantly he arranged for multiple telephone, email, and in-person interviews with reporters, resulting in at least 25 articles, podcasts, professional blog posts, and event listings (listed below). I personally took part in several telephone interviews (5 or 6), some for podcasts, others for press. We don't know how many articles may have originated with the press releases. When I

Part 14: Financial Aid (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

The budget for PyCon 2008's financial aid was several times that of 2007, and we were able to help more people come to PyCon than ever before. Over 40 people received financial aid of some form. This is a trend I'd like to see continue. Almost everyone who asked was granted aid. Only a few were turned down, either because their application was incomplete (after multiple requests for clarification) or because they requested an excessively large amount. As I stated in my opening remarks, I believe I was the recipient of the first PyCon financial aid back in 2004, PyCon's second year. I hope that this year's aid recipients were able to get a fraction as much out of PyCon as I have, and I hope they give back to the community in turn. Ted Pollari was in charge of financial aid this year. Thanks Ted! Ted could use some help next year...

Part 13: Swag (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

We had some great conference swag this year. When the Python xkcd strip came out, the Python blogosphere exploded. It didn't take long before the idea arose -- from several people simultaneously -- to use it for the conference shirt . Ted Pollari was particularly enthusiastic and tracked down the artist to secure his permission. ( And Randall Munroe has done it again, this time in a more philosophical way. ) We decided to upgrade the conference bag this year -- it's really sharp. In addition to being attractive, it's durable, and a useful size too. I can't wait to see one in the wild, and I fully expect to. Use your bags! It's great advertizing for Python. The good people at Python Magazine worked with Van Lindberg to produce PyCon's first program guide . And is it ever slick! 60 full-color pages, a real collector's item. A special PyCon edition of the March 2008 Python Magazine was also part of the swag. And stickers! We had thousands of Pytho

Part 12: Sponsorship & Expo Hall (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

Businesses are a big part of the Python community, and sponsorship is a major way for companies to show their support and enable us to keep PyCon affordable. Sponsorship allows companies to interact with individuals, raise awareness, recruit, and even sell some product. We increased the sponsorship rates significantly this year, to bring PyCon more in line with other conferences of our size, and the sponsors responded generously and in great number. Sponsorship was at an all-time high: three times the budgeted amount. Among other effects, the exceptional response from sponsors enabled us to offer catered lunches on all four sprint days, and allowed us to record all of the scheduled talks. The results are beginning to be seen in videos published on the web. Interesting aside: the lanyard sponsorship was a very popular option; several sponsors asked about it. Next year we'll have to add a significant fee on top of the simple production costs. There was a mix-up in the timing of

Part 11: Development Sprints (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

After the lightning talks session on the afternoon of Sunday March 16 (by all accounts the best one, natch), we had an "Intro to Sprinting" talk & panel led by Brett Cannon. The talk was one of the few I actually saw (much of), and it should become an instant classic once it hits the web. This was followed by sprint tutorials, where each sprinting project went off and did introductions of various lengths. The sprint tutorials seem to have been quite successful, and were a good way to segue between the conference and the sprints (a transition which felt a bit jarring in the past). Many new sprinters learned what they needed to be productive during the sprints themselves, and many people who couldn't stay this year may have been convinced to extend their stays next year. There were over 20 projects sprinting. On the first sprint day (Monday March 17), there were over 250 people participating. There were 263 people at lunch, and I know of several who ate elsewhere;

Part 10: Open Space (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

Open space was under-utilized at the beginning of PyCon. It was slow on Friday, and it only really kicked into high gear on Saturday evening. I don't think it was used much at all during the day, opposite talks. The open space rooms should have been used for more follow-up sessions after talks. Next year perhaps we'll offer the scheduling of open space as a service to speakers; a debate is going on now . We had a split upstairs/downstairs venue this year, with talks in the ballrooms upstairs, and open space rooms downstairs. There wasn't an ideal place to put the open space schedule board. Upstairs it would have caused terrible bottlenecks, but downstairs (where we did put it) it wasn't "in your face" enough. In the future, no matter what the physical layout of PyCon, we need signs directing people to the different areas. It seems that another reason for the slow start may have been because many attendees didn't know exactly what open space was, or

Part 9: Lightning Talks (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

(Here's the part many of you have been waiting for! ;-) We had more time for lightning talks this year than ever before: 5 hours total. I'm looking forward to seeing many of them when they show up on the web (the disadvantage of chairing PyCon is that I didn't actually get to see much). Last year we invited sponsors to give lightning talks during a special lunchtime "sponsor lightning talks" session. This year's sponsor package repeated the offer of sponsor lightning talks. We didn't have any sessions at lunch time though, because that scheduling decision had mixed reviews. Many sponsors took us up on the offer this year -- too many perhaps. It seems that 2007 was a sweet spot, with few enough sponsors that sponsor lightning talks were feasible. 2008 saw too many sponsor lightning talks, and they crowded out the attendee talks. It seems that the nature of the talks was not communicated as well as it could have been, leading to some confusion. There

Part 8: Keynote Talks (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

We experimented with the keynote format this year. Rather than daily 90-minute talks, we had 60-minute and 15-minute keynotes. The format seemed to work well. The choice of keynote speakers and talks also seemed to work well. It's impossible to satisfy everyone, and foolish to try. I believe keynotes should not be music to everyone's ears, but should be challenging as well as informative. I think this year's mix of technical and general talks was successful. What do you think? We also had short keynotes from our diamond sponsors (White Oak Technologies and Google). While I heard some grumbles of discontent, most feedback was very positive. Should we change the keynote format further, keep this year's format, or return to the old format? Should we continue having diamond sponsor keynotes in 2009, or drop them, or modify them in some way? We'll be discussing these issues and more over the coming months. I'd like to thank Noah Kantrowitz for wrangling detail

Part 7: A/V & Power (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

Carl Karsten was a real hero of PyCon 2008. His seemingly boundless energy and wealth of ideas catapulted the technical aspects of PyCon far beyond what we'd had before. He worked with the hotel's A/V staff to record every talk, and is currently leading the effort to organize, edit, and post the videos to the web. Tip to organizers of other conferences: get a clone of Carl. You can't have Carl though, he's ours. I first noticed Joe Baker going from room to room on tutorial Thursday, changing tapes in the video cameras. Joe appeared as if from nowhere (from my perspective), and it was great having him there. Cosmin Stejerean, who ran the Python Lab in open space, also helped out the A/V effort a lot. At one point there was a cot in the A/V room -- Joe and Cosmin were rotating between sleeping and swapping tapes in the cameras for digital video playback to computer files. That's dedication! The results of this year's A/V efforts are beginning to show up on t

Part 6: Conference Talks (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

The PyCon Conference Days took place from Friday, March 14 through Sunday, March 16. More than 60 speakers gave freely of their time, and presented some great talks. On behalf of the PyCon organizers: thank you all! We received over 140 proposals for talks, more than twice as many as we could accept, and unfortunately we had to turn down many good proposals. The PyCon Program Committee (all volunteers, led by Ivan Krstić) did a great job in the long selection process, but it's hard to balance the needs of beginners and gurus alike. It's inevitable that there were some complaints. The only way to improve in the future is to have more participation, especially from under-represented sectors: core Python, advanced topics, PyPy, etc. There has been talk of switching to a topic-based track program (web track, advanced/technical track, introductory track, etc.). This could work, but it needs the participation of many experts. If you care about Python's North American flags

Response to Titus Brown's "PyCon '08: The Brain Dump"

This is a response to Titus Brown's article, "PyCon '08: The Brain Dump" . My response was too long to post as a comment. Titus' text is in block quotes (indented): I wholeheartedly support the adoption of an advanced-technical-only track. As it was this year the talks I was interested in (mostly very technical) were embedded in the middle of a bunch of other talks that were not technical. I wasn't up to picking them out of the mix. I hope you show your support by joining the PyCon organizers , and specifically the program committee ! We need people with backgrounds in different areas, to help make a well-rounded conference. Speaking of "good talks", I think the whole review system is effed up. What's with the anonymous authorship of proposals? There's an anonymous review phase, during which proposals are rated based on the information we were supplied. This is to level the playing field and allow new speakers a chance. Then there's

Part 5: Tutorials (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

PyCon 2008 had 28 tutorials in three sessions (morning, afternoon, and evening) on Thursday March 13. Over 420 people attended, more than the total attendance of PyCon 2006. Almost all of the tutorials were full. More than half of the attendees took 3 tutorials, resulting in a very full day for many people. I'm sure more people would have taken more tutorials if they hadn't filled up. We were using the ten largest breakout rooms, in the lower level of the hotel. They were of different sizes. The five largest rooms could handle up to 70 - 90 people, according to the hotel's capacity chart. We limited registration to 50 in these rooms. The other rooms could handle anywhere from 18 to 36 people. We limited registration in these rooms too, cutting about 20% off the maximum, to allow for elbow room. It's a good thing we set these limits, because the hotel capacity charts leave out one crucial detail: the maximum capacities listed are for a room crammed full of table

Part 4: Catering (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

Our original plan was to have plated, hot lunches. When attendance went through the roof, we had to abandon that plan. The problem wasn't the hotel's ability to produce the food, it was their ability to serve it, and provide seating. There just wasn't space for everybody to sit at a table, so a "sit anywhere" approach had to be substituted. Next year we hope to solve that issue. Our meeting planners worked with the hotel's chef and catering staff to customize the "boxed lunches" we had, with soup and other hot side dishes. With the space constraints (that we imposed upon the hotel, with PyCon growing to over 1000 attendees!), they did the best they could. There were some complaints that the food & drinks were being removed too quickly. I spoke with the hotel about it, and that seemed to solve it. At least, I didn't hear any complaints after that.

Part 3: Network (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

In his "Back from PyCon" post, Grig Gheorghiu wrote : Whatever the critics say, I know I'll be back in Chicago next year for sure. I just want better network connectivity (why is it so hard to ensure decent wireless connectivity at PyCon year after year? it's a mystery) and better food. Yes, the wireless network this year was less than stellar. It was nearly unusable on tutorial Thursday and only approached usability Friday afternoon. The equipment deployed precluded wired connections in many rooms. For a detailed analysis and recommendations, see Sean Reifschneider's report . Two years ago, PyCon's first year in Dallas, we trusted the hotel when they said they could handle our wireless networking needs. That was a mistake: they couldn't. It took a lot of effort, by Sean Reifschneider and others, to make their wireless configuration usable. Last year, Sean designed a wireless architecture for us and we deployed our own equipment. It worked beautifully,

Part 2: Attendance & Registration (PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report)

From 2006 to 2007 we saw an increase of about 43% in attendance, from 410 to 586 attendees. I was expecting 800-900 people for 2008, but I feared we would see more... and my fears were realized with over 1000 attendees, an increase of 77% over PyCon 2007. We had over 420 people registered for tutorials on the Thursday before the talks (March 13), more than the total conference attendance in 2006 (the first year with a PyCon tutorial day). Attendance at the development sprint was at an all-time high: at least 250, possibly many more. Registration started late this year, as did early-bird registration. Early-bird registrations accounted for about 75% of the total, and about half of the early-bird registrations were done in the last week (300 over 4 days; over 100 in a single day!). Next year we must open registration earlier and close early-bird registration much earlier, so we have some real numbers to work with early enough to be useful (e.g. for swag orders & catering plans).

PyCon 2008 Chairman's Report, Part 1: Introduction

PyCon 2008 has come and gone. Overall, it was a great success. We tried some new things -- some worked, others didn't. There were some problems, which I will address in later posts, and which we'll correct in the future. I think that the PyCon organizers -- volunteers all -- put on a great event. I've been collecting notes since before PyCon for a grand report. I was adding to it, polishing it, and it was growing to the point where it would be too long for anyone to read the whole thing. Also the longer it takes to post the report, the less relevant it may be. So with "publish early and often" and "just publish!" in mind, over the next week or so I'll post what I have, in small chunks, and see how that goes. We won't know how many parts there will be until there's a post titled "Conclusion". This way, each post can start a separate, focused discussion, here and on the pycon-organizers mailing list . Please join and help out

Article on InternetNews

Kevin Dangoor, Michael Foord, and I participated in interviews with Sean Michael Kerner of InternetNews.com. Here's the result: "Python Fans Take Aim at the Enterprise". Apart from a couple mistakes (it's the Python *Software* Foundation, and I'm a director, not the director), it's a good article. I still have my original (extensive) answers to his questions, which we should be able to find a use for...

PyCon videos on YouTube

The A/V team has begun posting recordings from PyCon 2008 to our YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/user/pycon08 . These are mostly raw, unedited videos that will only show the speaker and audience. We hope to edit them later, adding slides and other material, but wanted to make the talks available as soon as possible. We're also planning to revive the audio-only podcast, selecting those talks that work without the accompanying slides or demos.

Python Lab: Solve This!

The Python Lab event will happen Friday (today!) from 7:30pm to 9:30pm in the Kitty Hawk (lower lobby). The Python Lab is an event where teams of 3 to 5 people work together to solve problems in Python. This is not a competition and you need not be a Python guru. Anyone with an interest in solving and learning to solve problems in Python is welcome. We are looking to have novices and experts work side by side on problems for a greater understanding of the Python language and how to make it work for you. One hour will be given to work on problems. Afterward, each group will have the opportunity to present a solution they find interesting and have an open discussion. It is recommended you bring a laptop with Python 2.5, but it's not required as people are encouraged to try paired programming and share resources. This is a perfect opportunity to network and meet interesting people, and a great way to practice for the sprints next week. For more details see http://us.pycon.org/2008/c

Attention PyCon Speakers!

1. You can now upload your presentation files using the PyCon Schedule App . Log in to your site account. Locate your talk, hover over the title, wait a second or two while the data loads, then click the "Upload File" link in the pop-up that appears. 2. There are Tips for Speakers posted on the site. (Yes, it's a bit late for this, but maybe some of the tips will help ease presenter stage fright.) Good luck with your talks. See you at PyCon!

The Weather During PyCon

We're getting close enough to PyCon to look at the weather forecast. You should certainly bring at least a light jacket and gloves; bring a heavier jacket if you're not used to cold temperatures. According to Frommer's Portable Chicago, the average temperatures in Chicago in March are a high of 44 degF / 7 degC and a low of 28 deg / -1 degC. The temperatures predicted for the week match the averages: high temperatures of about 40-50 degF / 5-10 degC, and night temperatures of around freezing. There are chances of rain on Wednesday night and on Monday, and a chance of light snow on Friday night. Winds are predicted to be moderate, so wind chill is probably not going to make things much colder. Here's a banner from Weather Underground showing the current conditions for the hotel's postal code:

So you want to host PyCon 2010...

The PyCon organizers are excited to announce the start of the PyCon 2010 planning process! Moreover, we're looking for motivated local groups to spearhead this volunteer-run, community-based conference. In years past, the locale for the next year was arranged about a year in advance. That worked while we were a smaller conference with many venues to choose from. PyCon 2008, to be held soon in the Chicago area, has over 950 registered attendees at this time. That is over one and a half times the number of attendees from just the year before! We're excited to see PyCon grow, but it also means that how we plan PyCon needs to change just a little bit. The first change is a change in the timeline. Starting with PyCon 2010, we're aiming to begin planning two years ahead. To help us do that, PyCon 2009 will also be held in the Chicago area, at the same venue as 2008. The second change is that the bid process will not be as detail-heavy and will not demand as much initial wor

Schedule planner now available

Thanks to Doug Napoleone's work, the PyCon schedule planner is back this year. You can use it to lay out your conference ahead of time: click on events and talks you'd like to attend, and then export your selected events in iCal format or print a customized schedule. Your choices are saved on the PyCon server, and the organizers can see a summary of the popularity of each event. This lets us compare the popularity of various talks. At last year's PyCon, we swapped a few room assignments when a talk scheduled for a smaller room proved unexpectedly popular; I bet we'll do the same this year, too. Known bug: the popups don't work with Safari 3.0.4 on Leopard; bug #247 describes the problem.

Social web sites for PyCon 2008

For this year's PyCon, we're encouraging attendees to make use of various social networking sites to make the conference more useful and more fun. (We're sure we've missed useful sites and channels; please suggest others in the Python wiki .) Internet Relay Chat During the conference, many attendees will chat using IRC on the #pycon channel on irc.freenode.net. Twitter During the conference, the organizers will post tasks and volunteering opportunities to the pyconvolunteers channel. Jaiku Jaiku is a micro-blogging site like Twitter, but with some extra features. Unfortunately, as of this writing they are not accepting new accounts while they deal with their acquisition by Google. Pre-existing members, though, do have a limited number of invitations they can give out. On Jaiku there is a #PyCon channel as well as a general #python channel. Slideshare Presentations in PowerPoint/OpenOffice /PDF format can be posted to the PyCon 2008 event . Flickr Please tag any ph

Payment Problems

We are experiencing persistent problems with our credit card payment processor, a third-party. If you encounter a problem with credit card payment, don't panic . Please submit a change request and we'll respond as soon as possible. You will still be asked to pay the rate in effect at the time of your registration, not the time of your payment. The change request form is available via the My Registration page : click the link for your invoice, and you'll see links near the bottom of the page. Remember, we're volunteers, so PyCon problems usually aren't handled during our day jobs. Please be patient.

Credit card payment not working

We are currently experiencing problems with our payment processor, and are working with them to resolve the issue. Registrations and invoices that are submitted will be saved, and the early-bird price will be honored even if you end up completing the payment after the deadline. A PyCon representative will e-mail you as soon as the problem is resolved with instructions on completing the checkout process. We apologize for the inconvenience. UPDATE: The problem has been resolved. Register away!

Tutorials filling up -- One full already

The tutorials for PyCon 2008 are filling up quickly. We have ten rooms set aside for tutorials: five quite large (capacity 50), one medium-plus (capacity 24), two medium (capacity 20), and two small (capacity 14). We had no idea which tutorials would be the most popular, so we're using attendance numbers to assign the rooms. Greg Lindstrom (the tutorial coordinator) and I are watching the attendance numbers carefully. Yesterday we had to close the first tutorial as full: PM6, Faster Python Programs through Optimization and Extensions I , to be presented by Mike Müller. It's not the tutorial with the highest attendance, but we have no choice now but to put it in one of the medium-sized rooms, with a practical limit of about 20 people. There are six afternoon tutorials with larger attendance, which get the five large rooms and the one medium-plus room (and there's a battle going on there). These aren't full yet, but full enough to dictate the room assignment for PM6

Deadlines for hotel reservations and early-bird registration coming soon!

If you haven't registered for PyCon yet, now is the time! The early-bird registration deadline is February 20, one week away. After that, the price for registration will be going up. The deadline for hotel reservations at the conference rate is also February 20. Act now, because the regular rate is considerably higher! A reminder to tutorial and talk speakers: you are responsible for your own registration and hotel reservations. So don't delay!

Intro to Sprints sessions

There will be two pre-sprint sessions that will be run on Sunday afternoon, after the end of the conference talks. Intro to Sprinting (60 minutes, at 3:20 pm) This will be a plenary session, and will begin with a talk explaining what sprints are and how we do them at PyCon, followed by a panel discussion where the sprint leaders will answer questions. Sprint Tutorials (90 minutes to 3 hours, at 4:40 pm) After a break, participating sprint leaders will gather the sprinters of their projects, go to different rooms, and the project will be explained. Everything from code walkthroughs to granting repository access can be presented here. This way, you'll be able to start working on the sprints effectively on Monday morning, without a long setup delay. Happy coding!

Publicizing PyCon

We need you to let people know about PyCon! PyCon has always relied on the community to get the word out. This year, we've put together a "Publicizing PyCon" page under the "Helping Out" section of the PyCon website . It includes Blog badges Sample announcement emails A poster/flyer to print out A slide to drop into live presentations Now is the perfect time to spread the word - registration is open, and early-bird rates are available through Feb. 20. Thanks for your help!

PyCon 2008 Financial Aid Available

The Python Software Foundation has allocated some funds to help people attend PyCon 2008. If you would like to come to PyCon but can't afford it, the PSF may be able to help you. The financial aid can cover some or all of the following: • Your registration for PyCon • Your hotel room at the conference hotel • Your flight or other transportation Please see http://us.pycon.org/2008/registration/financial-aid/ for details & instructions. The deadline for applications is February 11th.

PyCon 2008 Registration Open!

I am pleased to announce that PyCon 2008 registration is now open! Early-bird registration is open until February 20, so there's one month to register at the low rates. Regular on-line registration will be available from February 21 through March 7. PyCon 2008 will be held from March 13 through 20 in Chicago: Tutorials: Thursday, March 13 Conference: Friday, March 14, through Sunday, March 16 Sprints: Monday, March 17 through Thursday, March 20 Register early, especially if you'd like to attend a tutorial or three, as tutorials fill up early. And yes, you heard that correctly -- this year, we have three tutorial sessions: morning, afternoon, and evening. There are 29 great tutorials to choose from. More about the tutorials soon, but for now, you can check out the descriptions yourself The talk schedule is also up (in a preliminary form), although some changes are expected. Hotel reservations are also open. The rate is $99/night plus tax ($112/night net), also until Febr

PyCon Tutorial Sessions Announced

I'd like to announce the tutorials sessions for PyCon 2008 (US). As you may know, this year PyCon is being held in Chicago, Illinois March 14-16 with the Thursday before (the 13th) being "Tutorial Thursday". We are expecting nearly 600 Python enthusiasts to meet up for the conference and have 29 tutorial sessions scheduled on Thursday in three sessions; morning, afternoon, and evening. There is an extra fee to attend a tutorial, but the sessions are 3 hours long (with a break) and are taught by some of the smartest cookies in the Python community. Pop on over to http://us.pycon.org/2008/about/ for more information Here's a list of the sessions currently offered (we may cancel a session if there are fewer than 10 people registered, but that doesn't happen very often). In particular, note that there are 4 different introduction to Python tutorials aimed at different audiences. Morning Session (9:00am-12:20pm) Eggs and Buildout Deployment in Python (Jeff Rush

PyCon 2008 talks announced

The Program Committee has selected 64 talks for PyCon 2008, from over 140 proposals received. List of accepted talks Thanks to Program Committee Chair Ivan Krstić and the Committee's members for their efforts reviewing all those proposals. Doug Napoleone, author of the reviewing application, discusses the process and shows an interesting graph of the proposal change histories. The talks haven't been arranged into a schedule yet; we're still working on that.