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Announcing the PyCon 2012 talks

On behalf of the PyCon Program Committee, I'm thrilled to announce the list of talks for PyCon 2012 ! It's an amazing program that's a true testament to Python's reach: we'll have talks covering embedded programming, REST APIs, GIS, cloud computing, web development, relational and non-relational databases, design, 3d printers, testing, debugging, high performance, scientific computing, and more. The unifying theme? Python makes it all possible. As you may already know, this was a very hard decision process: we had roughly 380 submissions for only 95 slots on the program. Further, the quality of submissions was very high; the committee debated each and every talk very closely. I want to sincerely thank everyone who submitted a talk: the quality of PyCon comes from our speakers, and this year you all blew it out of the water. Over the next few weeks we'll finish up and publish the conference schedule, so stay tuned. Remember: Early-bird registration closes January

Financial Aid Extended to January 7

Last Friday I posted a guide for the PyCon 2012 financial aid program . Yesterday I got some good news: the deadline for applications has been extended from January 2, 2012 to January 7, 2012. The date for award notices remains the same at January 10, 2012. For more information on PyCon's Financial Aid committee and their offerings, see https://us.pycon.org/2012/assistance .

HOWTO: PyCon US Financial Aid Application

Each year the PyCon Financial Aid committee sets out to make getting to and attending the conference more affordable for those who need assistance. Whether you've got a flight halfway across the world or live down the street and have to pay out of your own pocket, PyCon thrives on the diversity of the attendees and the organizers hope make the conference possible for those who want to come. Applications for financial aid are due by January 2, 2012 January 7, 2012. New for this year's financial aid application process is an online form rather than the persuasive letter format of past years. As with any application, it starts with your name and contact info. What follows are a series of questions to figure out which conference-related expenses you'll need aid with. Rationale Here's where you sell your case for who you are and why you would benefit from assistance. Tell us where you're coming from and what you're up to. If you're unemployed, say so. If

PyCon US 2012: I've got something special for you.

I'm going to take a moment to admit something - chairing PyCon 2012 is close to a full-time job. You're working constantly - negotiating, planning, thinking about ways to make the conference better than it has been in the past. There are some less-fun parts, too: legal negotiations, making hard decisions - all the things you might think come along with trying to manage a volunteer run, community-driven conference. My family and coworkers are most probably tired of hearing me talk about everything going on that's going on to make this PyCon the biggest and best yet. That said, being chair has its special moments. Even before PyCon opens in March, I get the privilege to work with an amazing community of volunteers and to act as a representative for the Python community as a whole. I get the privilege to hear about all sorts of wonderful, new places where Python is popping up. I get to have conversations with people and sponsors all over the world and to hear how Python is he

Registration for PyCon 2012 Opened, Tutorials Announced

The PyCon organizers have announced the opening of early bird registration and financial aid application for PyCon 2012. As with 2011, the conference rates are being kept the same across the board, with individual and corporate tickets selling at the early-bird rate of $300 and $450 USD respectively. Students are welcomed to purchase tickets at the reduced rate of $200. With a cap of 1500 attendees and many records already broken, taking advantage of early-bird rates will ensure you get in and at a great price. These early bird rates are valid until January 10, 2012. Also staying in line with 2011 is the tutorial rate of $150 per session, an unparalleled value which includes one three-hour class as well as lunch and break refreshments. With a total of four sessions over the two days, March 7 and 8, 2012, we’ve already heard around the web that there are “too many awesome tutorials being offered,” so you’ll need to choose wisely. The schedule includes a sampling of veterans and ne

Announcing the PyCon 2012 Tutorials

The tutorials team is pleased to announce that the PyCon 2012 tutorials have officially been selected and announced . The tutorials will be presented on the two days prior to the main conference - March 7th and 8th. Each year we struggle to find the best selection of tutorials that will benefit the wider Python community. We only have a few slots, so we want to find tutorials that hit the sweet spot - excellent instructors, timely material, and broad interest. Making the selection was especially difficult this year due to the amazing array of tutorials proposed - and we are grateful for each person who submitted a proposal, even those we regrettably couldn't accept. Each tutorial was reviewed by a panel of independent reviewers, followed by ten to fifteen hours of meetings where we discussed every proposal and made the hard choices of which tutorials we thought would best serve PyCon and the attendees. It was worth it, though; this year's tutorials present an astounding array

PyCon US: Information for International Attendees

Just a quick message today for all attendees - but especially for international attendees. It has been brought to my attention as conference chair that there are time issues when dealing with the acquisition of visas for attendees outside of the US - as has been previously noted , the Program Committee is running behind schedule due to the sheer volume of talks submitted. We plan on announcing accepted talks as soon as possible. Registration, and therefore Financial Aide applications will be opening soon, tutorial selection is rapidly coming to a close. While I can not disclose details on talks or tutorial selection or rejection, I can go out of my way to assist international attendees. Given the timelines involved, I am offering to immediately start assisting international attendees with the required visa recommendation letters as chair. I will draft and sign letters certifying your attendance and value to the conference regardless of speaker status - the assumption being that even

What's up with the program committee?

"What's up with my PyCon proposal ?" That's the question I've gotten pretty much since the day the call for proposals closed for PyCon 2012. Since the program committee does most of its work in private, it can try anyone's patience waiting to find out how their proposal fared. Well, starting with this post I'll do my best to keep you informed of where we are. As Jesse announced last month , we had record-breaking levels of talk submissions this year -- about 380 talk proposals. And it's not just quantity: the quality has been breathtaking. Sadly, we have just over 100 spots on the schedule. Selecting the best proposals is quite a challenge. Let me tell you a bit about how our review process works: First, the committee reads through proposals and scores them (using a system based on the Identify the Champion system). The goal here is to identify "champions" -- a committee member who feels strongly that the proposals should be placed on the sc

Announcing our second PyCon 2012 keynote speaker: Stormy Peters

I am very pleased to announce the second (and final) PyCon 2012 Keynote speaker - Stormy Peters . Stormy is the Head of Developer Engagement at Mozilla . She is also an advisor for HFOSS , IntraHealth Open and Open Source for America , as well as founder and president of Kids on Computers , a nonprofit organization setting up computer labs in developing countries. Stormy joined Mozilla from the GNOME Foundation where she served as executive director. Previously, she worked at OpenLogic where she set up their OpenLogic Expert Community as well as founding the Hewlett-Packard Open Source Program Office. Stormy graduated from Rice University with a B.A. in Computer Science. She is passionate about open source software and educates companies and communities on how open source software is changing the software industry. She is a compelling speaker who engages her audiences during and after her presentations - and has spoken at OSCON, GUADEC and other conferences. Her talk " Would

PyCon 2012: Announcing New Diamond Sponsor: Heroku, Call for Proposal Ends

The PyCon team is honored and proud to announce a new  Diamond Sponsor for the conference and also that the record-breaking  call for proposals has closed. We are very proud to announce that  Heroku — a premiere Platform as a Service provider — has joined PyCon as our final Diamond level sponsor. Heroku joins Google and Dropbox as the premier sponsors of PyCon 2012. Heroku recently announced first-class Python support on their platform;  their blog post announcing this support shows that they care about Python and have a long term dedication to the language and its community. We thank and welcome Heroku, and we look forward to their involvement in PyCon and the Python community. Just as amazing as a new Diamond sponsor is the fact the PyCon 2012 Call For Proposals is now closed. Speaking as a team, we can say: “This. Is. Amazing.” We broke all records on the number of talks (374 as of this writing) and tutorials (89) submitted. Further, the quality, breadth, and depth of those

PyCon DE 2011 - The First

What a conference. 200 Pythonistas met for the better part of the last week in Leipzig. We started out with a tutorial day. More than 80 people took advantage of the opportunity to attend 13 tutorials covering diverse topics including algorithms, database programming, web frameworks, scientific data analysis and Python introduction. In parallel to the tutorials we had a barcamp with about 30 people that discussed different topics and had lightning talks. Topics included web frameworks and SQL/NoSQL compassions. The core conference had three parallel tracks with 30-minute and 60-minute slots. Our rather rigorous time management worked out: all presenters stayed within their allocated slots. It is a German conference after all. ;) Over three days we had 55 talks. The topics covered a wide range. Web development and scientific applications were the two largest themes but many other topics such as teaching Python, migration to Python 3 or Python compiler were covered. All talks are on vide

Proposals are due tomorrow. Start one today!

We're pretty lenient around here and don't mind if you start your work the night before, unlike some of our teachers in college. In fact, we don't even mind if you turn in incomplete work by the deadline, as long as you work with us to fill in your details. If it's October 12 somewhere in this world, we'll take whatever proposals you have for PyCon 2012 and we'll start working through them to plan the 2012 conference, taking place March 7-15. PyCon's new home is Santa Clara, CA for the next two years, and we hope you can join! If you want to be a part of the show but haven't nailed down an idea, don't worry, we already did some research. After emailing over 100 Python user groups and other Python related communities, we sifted through the results and came up with lists of talk and tutorial ideas. PyCon is a great platform to share your projects, ideas, thoughts, or whatever else you have. The Wednesday October 12 deadline is for all tutorial and

Time is running out: PyCon 2012 submissions end in 4 days!

Yup! Time is running out for PyCon 2012 talk and tutorial submissions. The call for proposals ends in 4 days! The good news is that if it is Oct 12th anywhere in the world, you will still be able to submit proposals to the system - but you shouldn't wait until the last minute to get your proposal in. Proposals can be in rough draft form - the program committee can, and will help you refine and improve your submission as needed. This includes talks and tutorials. Remember - accepted talk and tutorial speakers/instructors do get guaranteed registration - we've set a hard cap on registrations of 1500 attendees again this year, and by all estimations we're going to hit that cap very quickly! If you need help thinking of ideas - check out our posts on Posters , Talks , and Tutorial ideas - there's also a post about reaching out to people you'd love to have speak at the conference. There's also the #pycontalksiwant search on twitter. We're looking forward

You Should Propose A Poster

You really should. The poster session is perhaps the most interactive portion of the conference, putting the presenters and the audience on the same stage (well, the floor). As the audience comes and goes amongst the rest of the posters, your presentation could go in any direction. The creator of one of your dependencies might show up. One of your competitors might show up. People who don't know anything about your project might show up. People who maximize your project to its fullest extent might show up. Guido van Rossum might show up. You never know. The layout of the event is very open, with rows of 4'x4' poster boards, leaving plenty of room for gatherings at each board and allowing attendees to flow from poster to poster. Find one you like? Stop by, listen in on the conversation, and chime in with your questions and comments. Not interested in one? Grab a snack and check out another poster. (The delicious daily snack stations usually run near the poster room.) W

Suggest Speakers for PyCon 2012

As we step within one week of the PyCon proposal deadline , we're hoping the community can help make sure we put together the best conference possible. We've been reaching out to plenty of groups and people we know around the world, and Doug Hellmann recently posted about another approach: having you, the community, reaching out to the speakers you want to see. His post, titled Choose Your Own (PyCon) Adventure , explains his experience as editor of Python Magazine and how he went about getting writers. One of his most successful ways was to win over potential writers was contacting them directly as individuals. With that said, suggest away. Got a speaker you want to see? Contact them and see if they'll submit a proposal. Don't know how to get a hold of them? We'll try and track them down and see if they'll propose a talk. Feel free to leave a comment here on the blog, use the #pycontalksiwant tag on Twitter, or email the program committee . We'll see w

PyCon DE 2011 - Three Keynotes: From the Outside, From the Inside, and Scientific

There will be three keynotes with different perspectives on software development and Python. Jan Lehnardt, a CouchDB developer, looks at Python from the outside and analyzes why some people tend to be religious about programming languages and what could be done about it for the benefit of the whole programming community. Paul Everitt of Zope and Plone fame provides a deep inside into the development of Zope and other long-running, successful Python projects in general. Andreas Schreiber from the German Aerospace Center sees the future of software engineering in the field of science and engineering in Python-based solutions. Examples from high performance computing demonstrate the power of Python in this field.   The first PyCon DE will be held October 4-9, 2011 in Leipzig, Germany. A tutorial and barcamp day is followed by three days with talks in three parallel tracks and two days of sprints. More details can be found on the PyCon DE website. Please pass this post on

PyCon DE 2011 - Only 25 Tickets Left

There are only 25 Tickets left. Online ticket sales will close September 30. So hurry to get yours now.   The first PyCon DE will be held October 4-9, 2011 in Leipzig, Germany. A tutorial and barcamp day is followed by three days with talks in three parallel tracks and two days of sprints. More details can be found on the PyCon DE website. Please pass this post on to those you feel may be interested.

PyCon DE 2011 - Program as App

The conference program is now available as an App . There are 54 talks plus three keynotes and three lightning talk sessions spread over three days. The topics cover a wide range. There should be something interesting for everybody interested in Python. The first PyCon DE will be held October 4-9, 2011 in Leipzig, Germany. A tutorial and barcamp day is followed by three days with talks in three parallel tracks and two days of sprints. More details can be found on the PyCon DE website. Please pass this post on to those you feel may be interested.

Need Tutorial Ideas?

To follow-up with last week's post on talk ideas , we've done some digging into what topics would make for good tutorials. The resulting lists contain a lot of the same topics as talk ideas, with a few interesting requests, including "anything from [ plenary speaker ] David Beazley". We're now 15 days away from the October 12 deadline for proposals, and we don't want to start the review process without your proposal. PyCon's success depends on you, the community, to keep cranking out the great presentations you're known for. Tutorials are an especially great time at PyCon, as they're an excellent chance to expand your skill set thanks to the great educators of the community presenting their three-hour sessions at a bargain price. If you're interested in flexing your teaching skills but need help narrowing down a topic, we recently polled the Python community to find out what they want. When asked, "Are there any particular subjects tha

Need Talk Ideas?

As you may know, the deadline for PyCon proposals is approaching. We're within 20 days of the October 12 deadline , so start finalizing your drafts, or for some of you procrastinators in the group, start thinking about what you want to submit! If you're just getting started, have a look at our call for proposals . We're accepting proposals for tutorials, talks, and posters, so think about where your ideas fit in and submit away. For 2012, we've imposed a limit of two accepted proposals per person, but there's no limit to how many you can submit. We want to hear all of your ideas, but realize that we all need to share the stage. If you're looking for ideas, we recently ran a survey of the Python community and found some interesting results which we've curated below. We've done some massaging of the data to pick out the core ideas and come up with what we feel is an accurate list of topics that people were asking for. When asked, "Are there any pa

Announcing the first PyCon 2012 Plenary Talk - David Beazley, Mad Genius

I am very pleased to announce our first Plenary talk for PyCon 2012 - David Beazley. David should be very familiar to everyone in the Python community - he's a prolific trainer, developer, author and, well - mad genius. He is the brain behind the mind blowing Python GIL talk at Chicago Chipy meeting and the followup PyCon 2010 talk on understanding the Python GIL as well as his diabolical PyCon 2011 " Using Python 3 to Build a Cloud Computing Service for my Superboard II ". David is an independent software developer and book author living in the city of Chicago. Primarily working on programming tools, provide custom software development, and teach practical programming courses for software developers, scientists, and engineers. He is best known for his work with the Python programming language where he have created several open-source packages (e.g., Swig and PLY) and authored the acclaimed Python Essential Reference. I've written David a blank check on subject ma

Announcing the first PyCon 2012 Keynote speaker: Paul Graham

I am pleased  to announce the first keynote speaker for PyCon 2012 - Paul Graham of Y Combinator and Lisp/Arc fame. PyCon 2012 represents the 10th annual PyCon US - and on this special occasion, I am proud to have Paul back as a keynote speaker (he did the keynote at PyCon 2003). Paul Graham is an essayist , programmer, and investor, and recently well-known as one of the founders of Y Combinator . With PyCon held right in the heart of Silicon Valley, it seemed fitting to welcome Paul back for not just that it is the 10th anniversary, but also to celebrate the many startups and entrepreneurs that have come out of PyCon. One of Paul’s signature essays is “ The Python Paradox ” - describing his experience that people doing interesting and innovative things are frequently attracted to Python. Paul’s insight has proven true, as Y Combinator has funded and advised numerous Python-using companies, from Dropbox to Disqus , to Reddit , Justin.tv and Convore . The list is sure to expand

PyCon DE 2011 - Talks Timetable Published

The timetable of talks is online . There are 54 talks plus three keynotes and three lightning talk sessions spread over three days. The topics cover a wide range. There should be something interesting for everybody interested in Python. The first PyCon DE will be held October 4-9, 2011 in Leipzig, Germany. A tutorial and barcamp day is followed by three days with talks in three parallel tracks and two days of sprints. More details can be found on the PyCon DE website. Please pass this post on to those you feel may be interested.

Announcing the PyCon 2012 "Jobs Fair" page, sponsor benefit.

One of the things that the PyCon team struggles with each year is how to maximize the visibility of our sponsors - not only do they financially support PyCon, but many of them contribute back to our open source community, hire you - members of the community - and overall help lift all of us up. Maximizing visibility though, can be difficult. There are lines we should not cross due to the community and people focus of PyCon - it is a fine line to walk between maximizing sponsors' return on investment, and the needs and interests of attendees, and the community. This is why I am happy to announce today, we, the PyCon team feel that we have found another great way to both showcase our sponsors, without whom the conference would not be possible, and also provide something of need and interest to the Python/PyCon community. Today, we're unveiling the " PyCon Jobs Fair " page. This is a new page on the PyCon website dedicated to job listings from our sponsors and will li

Writing a Good Proposal

As you may know, the call for proposals for PyCon 2012 is open, and we're waiting for you to submit your best talk, tutorial, and poster ideas at http://us.pycon.org/2012/speaker/ . If you haven't submitted yet, don't worry, you have 42 days and we'll give you some tips along the way. If you already submitted, take a chance to fine tune your proposal with some tips on each section of the proposal form. Title The first and sometimes last thing your prospective audience will see is the title. With PyCon being a multi-track conference, no matter what kind of proposal you're writing, you're going to be up against others when it comes time for the big show. Tutorials usually run two at a time, talks run five at a time, and posters run all at once. If you want to attract attendees, you'll need to hook them with a solid title. Kind With this year's call for proposals being a unified format, we're using a unified proposal page for all types. Each type

PyCon DE 2011 - Only two Days for Early Birds

There are only two days left to take advantage of the early bird rate for PyCon DE 2011. Don't forget to register for the conference and for tutorials by August 31, 2011. There is a very interesting  program with a variety of talks. The talk schedule will be announced in a few days. The first PyCon DE will be held October 4-9, 2011 in Leipzig, Germany. A tutorial day is followed by three days with talks in three parallel tracks and two days of sprints. The program will be announced in a few days. More details can be found on the PyCon DE website . Please pass this post on to those you feel may be interested.