The PyCon US Blog

I recommend this article from the "My Bad Habits" blog: Good Conferencing Habits: Or, How I Learned to Have Fun and Still Get Some Sleep .

We are experiencing persistent problems with our credit card payment processor, a third-party. If you encounter a problem with credit card payment, don't panic . Please submit a change request and we'll respond as soon as possible. You will still be asked to pay the rate in effect at the time of your registration, not the time of your payment. The change request form is available via the My Registration page : click the link for your invoice, and you'll see links near the bottom of the page. Remember, we're volunteers, so PyCon problems usually aren't handled during our day jobs. Please be patient.

While the hotel is rapidly filling up, it is not yet full. If the online reservations system does not allow you to make a reservation, please call the housing bureau (the phone number is on the reservations site ).

The problem with credit card processing has been resolved. If you were affected, we'll send you email letting you know how to proceed with payment. Apologies for the inconvenience. Reminder: there's only one day left for early-bird registration.

We are currently experiencing problems with our payment processor, and are working with them to resolve the issue. Registrations and invoices that are submitted will be saved, and the early-bird price will be honored even if you end up completing the payment after the deadline. A PyCon representative will e-mail you as soon as the problem is resolved with instructions on completing the checkout process. We apologize for the inconvenience. UPDATE: The problem has been resolved. Register away!

The tutorials for PyCon 2008 are filling up quickly. We have ten rooms set aside for tutorials: five quite large (capacity 50), one medium-plus (capacity 24), two medium (capacity 20), and two small (capacity 14). We had no idea which tutorials would be the most popular, so we're using attendance numbers to assign the rooms. Greg Lindstrom (the tutorial coordinator) and I are watching the attendance numbers carefully. Yesterday we had to close the first tutorial as full: PM6, Faster Python Programs through Optimization and Extensions I , to be presented by Mike Müller. It's not the tutorial with the highest attendance, but we have no choice now but to put it in one of the medium-sized rooms, with a practical limit of about 20 people. There are six afternoon tutorials with larger attendance, which get the five large rooms and the one medium-plus room (and there's a battle going on there). These aren't full yet, but full enough to dictate the room assignment for PM6...

If you haven't registered for PyCon yet, now is the time! The early-bird registration deadline is February 20, one week away. After that, the price for registration will be going up. The deadline for hotel reservations at the conference rate is also February 20. Act now, because the regular rate is considerably higher! A reminder to tutorial and talk speakers: you are responsible for your own registration and hotel reservations. So don't delay!

Just a quick reminder -- applications for financial aid for PyCon 2008 are due on Monday, February 11th! Please see the PyCon website for application details.

There will be two pre-sprint sessions that will be run on Sunday afternoon, after the end of the conference talks. Intro to Sprinting (60 minutes, at 3:20 pm) This will be a plenary session, and will begin with a talk explaining what sprints are and how we do them at PyCon, followed by a panel discussion where the sprint leaders will answer questions. Sprint Tutorials (90 minutes to 3 hours, at 4:40 pm) After a break, participating sprint leaders will gather the sprinters of their projects, go to different rooms, and the project will be explained. Everything from code walkthroughs to granting repository access can be presented here. This way, you'll be able to start working on the sprints effectively on Monday morning, without a long setup delay. Happy coding!