The PyCon US Blog

Doug Napoleone is encouraging people to organize panel discussions; see the Call for Proposals for details. Two panels are already being arranged. Titus Brown has asked for ideas for a Web Framework panel , and there will also be a python-dev panel .

Remember, the deadline for submitting talk proposals is October 31st, exactly one week away. Everyone always seems to send things in at the last minute, but don't delay too much longer; use the proposal system to submit your talk.

I've been looking over the mix of talk proposals we have so far for PyCon 2007. We're got 17 so far, with a good number of case histories. Now case histories are good, don't get me wrong, we want Python to be successful and it is interesting to hear how it is being used. But according to the feedback forms from last year, we need more talks that actually teach you how to be better programmers, especially if we want to bring new talent into the community. Where are the talks about how to best use select features of the language, that demonstrate how to use some of the more powerful design patterns in Python? Python 2.4 and 2.5 have added significant new capabilities to the language and we need the advance scouts to help some of us just now discovering them. Many of us do not adopt new features as soon as they appear. Often at PyCon we have looked to people like Alex Martelli to get down and dirty with aspects of the language, but unfortunately he is unable to make it in

I'd like to remind everyone that the PSF is still looking for bids for hosting PyCon 2008. Groups interested in hosting the 2008 conference need to have a proposal ready at the time of the 2007 conference, which is at the end of February 2007. For more details on preparing a bid, please read a posting in the PSF weblog titled "So you want to host PyCon 2008..." and read the list of location requirements .

The hotel's registration page for PyCon is now available; follow the link from the us.pycon.org hotel page to reserve rooms at the convention's room rate of $79 for 1-2 people or $89 for 3-4 people. Most people will want to see the conference program in order to figure out the length of their stay, so I don't expect many people to make reservations now. The conference program should be published some time in the last two weeks of November.

Jeffrey Elkner has created a wiki page for education-related activities at PyCon. If you're interested, please sign up! Doug Napoleone is drafting a call for panel discussions. Some ideas for web-related panels have been added to the Talk Ideas wiki page , and Jeff Rush explains further . Brett Cannon is thinking about organizing a python-dev panel . What other panel topics would be good? For people not familiar with panels: they're moderated discussions where 3-5 people discuss an issue. A moderator keeps the discussion moving and also has a list of topics for discussion so that the conversation doesn't die out. For PyCon, panels may end up being 45 minutes long; 30 minutes of discussion between the panelists and 15 minutes for audience questions and comments. And remember... only two weeks are left to submit proposals!