PyCon 2012: Official PyCon 2012 Artwork - Awesome!

I've got the great pleasure to finally show off something that's been in the works for awhile - we got to partner with well renown designer and djangonaut Idan Gazit for the PyCon 2012 artwork.

The result is pretty awesome and epic and will take form in the t-shirts, program guide and other areas of the conference. Take a look for yourself:

I was pretty ecstatic when Idan sent it over - he also added a pretty mind-blowing time lapse video of how it was created, saying:

… If you’ve ever wondered how the design sausage is made, look no further! Note the vast amount of time spent iterating, trying things out, seeing what works and often discarding things that don’t. It sucks to discard work you’ve spent time on, but that’s really just the nature of the beast, and better to fail early and try something different than keep beating a dead, er, snake.

You can see his thoughts, and the time-lapse video over on his blog. We're psyched to have Idan involved in the art for the conference!

In addition to this awesome artwork, we have to give a major amount of credit to the Eldarion team (specifically, their designer Yulka Plekhanova) for the awesome website design we have this year - the website represents a giant leap in terms of visual design for PyCon, and we can not thank them enough.

Awesome art, for an awesome conference and a blowout year!

PyCon US 2012: You want hotel? We have hotels!

As noted in the previous post - we had a minor blip regarding the PyCon 2012 hotel - by minor blip, I mean we completely booked the Hyatt (our main hotel).

This issue has been resolved without needing me to resort to going to Home Depot and buying "The Dummies Guide to Hotel Building".

We now have plenty of rooms at:

Hilton Santa Clara - within walking distance of the venue. These rooms are marked as 159$/night - however, as we want to do whats right for attendees, we have asked the Hilton to credit each room night booked under out block 10$, while the PyCon master account will absorb the 10$ additional cost. This means that the base room rate for attendees will be 149$/night, matching the cost for the Hyatt.

The Avatar Hotel, Santa Clara - this one is not within walking distance, however the cost per night is 149$/night - matching our other rates, and we have negotiated a free shuttle for attendees to and from the Santa Clara Convention Center.

Finally, we are closing a deal with the Marriott Santa Clara - again, maintaining the room night cost, and while it too is not within walking distance, we are negotiating a free shuttle to and from the convention center!

I must note: All of these agreements include room minimums - this means that PyCon will get charged a lot of money if we do not book the blocks we have contracted for.

In order for us to get credit for your hotel bookings, you must book through our registration and housing system at: https://us.pycon.org/2012/registration/register/ - or by contacting our housing bureau at pycon5-reg@cteusa.com or by phone at 847-759-4277.

Please book your rooms through us, and please book as soon as you can! You'll not only get a room for the conference - you'll help us out, and be a part of what is already the biggest Pycon on record. If you haven't registered? You need to - registration is capped at 1500 attendees, and by all estimates, we are going to hit that number and soon. (All financial aid recipients are accounted for in attendance and hotel, by the way.)

Jesse Noller, PyCon Chair.

PyCon 2012: Hotel Availability

Oh man.

It seems that every time we turn around that we're blowing out all the limits - real or perceived that we had for PyCon 2012. This time, we've booked - and I mean booked the Hyatt - our primary venue hotel.

The good news is that we have all pending hotel requests, and are working with the Hilton Santa Clara (right next door) to get you the same rates as the ones we have at the Hyatt. We are working around the clock to get this set in place and to process all pending requests.

I sincerely apologize for this blip in operations - but we will have rooms for you, and we will continue to provide the absolute best customer service you have come to expect from us. If you have any issues, you can contact pycon-reg@python.org or contact our excellent customer service team at pycon5-reg@cteusa.com or by phone at 847-759-4277

Once again, I apologize - and don't worry - you'll all have rooms! Even if I have to build a hotel myself.

Jesse, Chair - PyCon 2012

DNS problems with the us.pycon.org conference website are resolved

Our hosting provider has informed us that the DNS problems have been resolved. 

Thank you for your patience and understanding while this problem was being addressed.

DNS problems with the us.pycon.org conference website

The PyCon website is currently experiencing DNS resolution problems. We are working with our hosting company and their upstream provider to resolve this issue. We hope to have this problem resolved soon.

Due to all your interest in the conference and the community help, this will be the best PyCon in history.

Thank you all for your patience while we resolve this issue.

UPDATE 9:55am Saturday (GMT):  The DNS resolution issue has been fixed. Some problems may exist for the next hour while the DNS update propagates.

Early Bird Rates Ending January 25

If you haven’t already done so, now would be a good time to register for PyCon 2012! You know why? It’s cheaper if you do it soon - by the end of January 25. We already think PyCon is an extraordinary value with ticket prices that haven’t changed in years, but we want to take that a step further. With discounts as high as 25%, the clock is ticking to get the deal of the 2012 conference season.

If your company is sending you to the conference, they can get you in the door for $450, with that rate going up to $600 after Wednesday. Another thing your company might be interested in is sponsorship, which among other benefits, helps PyCon keep these great low rates year after year.

If you’re paying for yourself or are employed by a non-profit, the regular $350 rate is reduced to $300 and gets you a one-way ticket to awesome. If you don’t believe me, check out this schedule. We think think you’ll love it. In fact, we think you’ll find slots in the conference where every single talk is one you want to go to. Thanks to our amazing community, we’re honored to have created problems like this for you :) Don’t worry, we’re recording all of the talks again so you won’t completely miss out on the other four presentations in a given slot.

If you're in school, either as a student or an educator, you can save $25 by purchasing early at $200. When it comes to education, we have a lot of it. Our two days of tutorials, March 7 and 8, are filled with sessions taught by the best and brightest in the community. With two three-hour sessions occurring each day, there’s a lot to learn and at a great rate: $150 per tutorial.

Remember, the rates go up January 25 so now’s your last chance to save a few bucks. The full details of registration are on our site at https://us.pycon.org/2012/registration/. See you there!

PyCon Poster Session - Third Time's the Charm

17, 31, 50...

PyCon 2012 marks the third year of the Poster Session.  The Poster Session has been training in the off-season and is back, bigger and better than ever.  This year we have 50 posters for your PyCon enjoyment with the full list of accepted posters coming soon to the site.  We've grown a lot since the original 17 posters of the inaugural session2 years ago!

Wondering how you'll manage your time and make it to all the posters that call to you? Wondering what's on the list? 

We'll have Robots that test mobile applications and play Angry Birds in their spare time...

You can learn how people are using Python Power to increase student engagement...

You can find out how Python helps keep the Chandra X-ray Observatory operating safely...

You can get tips on Python Community development and the details of PSF Sprint Sponsorship...

Innovative uses of Django, doing Bioinformatics, Packaging, Cython and much, much more!

So be prepared - the PyCon poster session happens on Sunday, March 11 right after the morning keynote. An hour and half, 50 posters, robots and plenty of people excited about their projects to talk to...come ready.  The poster session is a great way to connect with people of similar interests, get new ideas and start new collaborations.  Is all of that not enough to excite you about the Poster Session?  We also have snacks...

(from Zac Miller and Vern Ceder, Poster Session Co-Chairs)

PyCon 2012: Early Bird approaches; how much awesome can a conference contain?

Wow.

It feels like only a few days ago I was still in the midst of helping wrap up PyCon 2011. In reality, PyCon 2012 is under 50 days away. At this point I feel like a deer in the headlights!

For example - Early Bird registration rates end on January 25th - that's only 7 days away! With the Early Bird discount, and attendance capped at 1500 attendees - now is the time to get registered! Registration includes breakfast, lunch and snacks too!

We have an amazing list of tutorials you can attend, a jam-packed line up of main conference talks,  the Poster session is going to be awesome (the full list of accepted posters is coming), our Keynotes and Plenary speakers are amazing (and I haven't even added Guido to that line up yet!). We'll be holding a PyCon 5k Fun Run for charity, Startup Row has returned, and we're raffling off a robot!

If you need it - the room sharing page is live - and we're just beginning to organize the list of sprints for the conference - if the trend continues from past PyCons, sprint attendance this year will be massive.

We have a list of sponsors that's stunning - so many (over 100!) in fact we've had to update the prospectus to remove booth spaces - we filled the San Jose convention center's expo hall! Note, we are still looking for Summit and Sprint sponsors - email jnoller@python.org if interested.

Just to add fuel to the fire - we are also in the process of planning and announcing a dedicated on site Job Fair to happen in the expo hall alongside the poster sessions on Sunday the 11th! That means if you're looking for a job - bring your resume, github/bitbucket/etc link or business cards!

All of this - and we still have more announcements coming - I'm going to pack as much awesome into this conference as I can (or until I fall over). Open Spaces, Lightning talks, tutorials, posters, sprints, sponsors, robots - I'm not sure if the venue knows what's coming for them.

So get registered! If you're interested in volunteering on site - sign up to the pycon-organizers list. If you're attending - use the #pycon2012 hashtag on twitter - or add yourself to the Lanyrd directory.

I'm obviously excited - the team, the community and sponsors have all shown up in force to make this mind-numbingly awesome.

Thank you.

Jesse Noller, Chair - PyCon 2012

PyCon 2012: Close of Sponsorship applications

This is the strangest announcement - one that I never dreamed of making. Ladies and Gentlemen, PyCon (sponsorship) is full.

The Expo Hall, anyway. At least close enough that we need to do the unthinkable - we need to announce that sponsorship applications for PyCon 2012 will be closing (unless you don't want a booth!).

The Python Software Foundation, and the entire PyCon US 2012 team would like to thank all of our current (and pending!) sponsors. We have an unprecedented 94 sponsors and other partners (such as PyLadies, OSU/OSL and others) not including pending sponsor applications.

This is amazing. It is a huge milestone for PyCon and the foundation and we can not thank all of the sponsors enough. On a personal level, I would like to thank each and every one of them - it has been an honor and privilege working with them and seeing their support for PyCon and the community as a whole.

Therefore I am announcing that we will close the conference to any new sponsorship as of Friday January 20, 2012.

We do still have sponsorship opportunities available until this - you can view our prospectus page for details, or email me with any questions you may have.

Also, remember to check out the PyCon Jobs Fair page - more and more sponsors are listing open positions!

Registration is open - we still have plenty of hotel rooms and tickets - but early bird rates end on January 25th.

Our Diamond sponsors are: Google, Dropbox, and Heroku.

Our Platinum sponsors include: Microsoft, New Relic, Survey Monkey, Nasuni Corporation, Facebook, Nebula, Gondor.io and EventBrite.

Gold sponsors include: ZeOmega, Bitly, White Oak Technologies, DotCloud, OpDemand, CCP Games, ActiveState, JetBrains, Caktus Consulting, Enthought, Cloud Foundry (VMware), Linode, Disqus, Spotify, Leapfrog Online, Loggly, Snoball, Evite, PlaidCloud, Revolution Systems, Canonical, Aldebaran Robotics, Mozilla, Lab305 JP Morgan, PiCloud, Splunk, Milo.com and Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Silver level sponsors are: Urban Airship, Cox Media Group, Eucalyptus Systems, Olark, WiserTogether, ESRI, Accense Technology, AG Interactive, Vocollect, 10gen, BigDoor, The Open Bastion, Toast Driven, Net-ng, MyYearBook, Threadless, gocept, Lex Machina, Aarki, FreshBooks, Github, fwix, Imaginary Landscape, OpenStack, devsAr, Stratasan, MapMyFitness, Kelly Creative Tech, Bitbucket, Mailgun, Opscode, Continuum Analytics, Wingware, Emma, Shining Panda, Python Academy, Cisco, Addison-Wesley/Prentice Hall, Kontagent, DataStax, EnergySavvy, O'Reilly and Truveris.

Thank You.