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Announcing Keynotes: Van Lindberg, Jessica McKellar, and Fernando Perez

On Monday, we announced the first two keynote speakers for PyCon 2014: Python's creator Guido van Rossum and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, John Perry Barlow. We're happy to announce that Van Lindberg, Jessica McKellar, and Fernando Perez will be joining them in the morning keynote slots!

Van Lindberg
Van brings a unique background to the keynote stage, being both a technologist and a lawyer. He currently serves as the Python Software Foundation's chairman, and he's Vice President of Intellectual Property at Rackspace. In 2008 he authored Intellectual Property and Open Source: A Practical Guide to Protecting Code, and in 2010-11 he served as the chairman of the Atlanta PyCons. He'll be giving the chairman's address, talking about the Python Software Foundation and Python community as a whole.

Jessica McKellar
Jessica serves on the PSF's board of directors with Van, is an entrepreneur and open source developer, and leads the hugely successful Boston Python Workshop. Her open source contributions and actions have been huge for the Python community. She contributes to OpenHatch and Twisted, among other projects, and shares the Workshop materials, which have been used by many to run workshops in their own communities. Her contributions have also extended to writing, including the second edition of Twisted Networking Essentials and contributions to The Architecture of Open Source Applications.

Fernando Perez
Fernando comes from a background of theoretical physics and applied mathematics, but has for the past decade led a double life split between the traditions of academic research and the world of open source development. He's currently a research scientist at the University of California - Berkely, and leads the IPython project. What started as an afternoon hack has blossomed into an incredible piece of software, earning him the Free Software Foundation's "Advancement of Free Software" award in 2012.

Each day of the Friday through Sunday conference kicks off with conference-wide keynote talks, before breaking out into the five separate tracks that make up the rest of the day. Our Program Committee is hard at work reviewing the 565 talk proposals that make up our schedule, as well as the schedule of tutorials for the Wednesday and Thursday tutorials. We're expecting to announce the schedule in December, so be on the lookout for that.

Ticket sales are now over 300 of our 800 available early bird discounted rates, which offer savings of 25% on corporate passes at $450, and bring the individual rate down to $300. Student rates were cut in half for PyCon 2013 to $100 during the early bird period, and we're offering that same deal once again.

Be sure to register at https://us.pycon.org/2014/registration/ and check out our financial aid program if assistance can make PyCon a possibility for you.

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