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Randall Munroe

The PyCon organizers committee would like to confirm that Randall Munroe of xkcd is, in fact, banned from PyCon 2009. We apologize to all 2008 attendees for last year's disgraceful keynote, "Web Spiders vs. Red Spiders". PyCon is a serious conference and we will not countenance this sort of nonsensical frivolity. Many of our sponsors feel that Mr. Munroe is the single largest cause of programmer distraction and his presence would be inappropriate.

Registration volunteers have been instructed to refuse admission to Randall Munroe personally, and in fact, to any stick figures who may attempt to register, particularly if they are wearing hats. If Mr. Munroe happens to defeat our elaborate security protocols and attend nonetheless, we urge attendees to avoid any Open Spaces he may convene.

Comments

Alaric said…
Yeah, I work at SIGGRAPH every year and we had to escort him out last year because he kept doodling stick figures on all the signage! ;)
Anonymous said…
Watch for the sky. He could be using antigravity.
Anonymous said…
Brilliant (I love it! :o)
Anonymous said…
FREE RANDALL
Anonymous said…
I have to wonder why you gave a comic artist and casual python programmer the keynote. I can't help but laugh.

But yes, even as an xkcd fan I can see why you don't want him back. From what I've publicly seen of Randall he rarely takes things seriously.
Anonymous said…
Just be careful! He knows regular expressions.
Anonymous said…
From __joke-responses__ import whoosh

(unless anonymous above is Mr. Munroe himslef, which I half-suspect)
Anonymous said…
I will be attending PyCon 2009 in a Randall Munroe costume, as stick figure costumes are difficult to fit into.
Anonymous said…
Brilliant! :D
I got here from the forum's posts of the original joke, and it made me laugh a lot!
This great sense of humor is one of the things I love of python community.
+1 for you, guys!
Anonymous said…
As a professional Spiderologist, I have to disagree with you. Dr. Munroe's speeches are elegant and to-the-point. His oratory is as simple yet powerful as Python itself, and could in fact be called "executable pseudocode".
Anonymous said…
I can't quite tell if this post is serious... Hopefully this is a joke. Randall is brilliant. Many people that I know in the Python community love his work. PyCon would surely be better with Randall's comic relief. Lighten up.
Yarko said…
Ras - to put your mind at ease:

....It's a ...

Oh, no! I'm being escorted out!!!!

WAAAAAIIIIIT!!!!!

BUT I AM NOT! NOT! NNNOOOOTTT A STICK FIGURE!!!!
Steve said…
If you lot can't behave I'm going to have to send you all to bed without any tea. Good heavens, you meet with the Board for one hour and all hell breaks loose ...
Unknown said…
To Ras Samual...

O.o

If you believe for a second that this is serious, then perhaps I should suggest you take your own advice and lighten up.
Edward said…
Ras

Someone is _wrong_ on the Internet, and *you* can't go to bed until that condition is rectified. This is an extremely serious matter. Let us know how it works out for you.

Hint, hint.
Vince said…
For every organization, there is a foil / lampoon. Show me a group that cannot incorporate that into their own workings, and I'll show you an entire conference taking themselves entirely too seriously.
Anonymous said…
There are legitimate reasons to ban Randall,( but we all know that those are mundane compared to what he can contribute:))