The PyCon US Blog

The A/V team has begun posting recordings from PyCon 2008 to our YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/user/pycon08 . These are mostly raw, unedited videos that will only show the speaker and audience. We hope to edit them later, adding slides and other material, but wanted to make the talks available as soon as possible. We're also planning to revive the audio-only podcast, selecting those talks that work without the accompanying slides or demos.

2008-03-18: Steve Walsh of Vocalo.org interviews David Goodger on Chicago Public Radio (starting at 1:30:25 on the on-line widget; here's a direct link to .mp3 , where it starts at 1:31:30).

We also have a short employment opportunities and sponsor feedback survey . If you're looking for info from sponsors or a new job, this is a simple way to get started.

We need your feedback! Your feedback helps immensely to improve PyCon. Please fill out a conference feedback form and (as appropriate) tutorial feedback forms . Thanks!

The Python Lab event will happen Friday (today!) from 7:30pm to 9:30pm in the Kitty Hawk (lower lobby). The Python Lab is an event where teams of 3 to 5 people work together to solve problems in Python. This is not a competition and you need not be a Python guru. Anyone with an interest in solving and learning to solve problems in Python is welcome. We are looking to have novices and experts work side by side on problems for a greater understanding of the Python language and how to make it work for you. One hour will be given to work on problems. Afterward, each group will have the opportunity to present a solution they find interesting and have an open discussion. It is recommended you bring a laptop with Python 2.5, but it's not required as people are encouraged to try paired programming and share resources. This is a perfect opportunity to network and meet interesting people, and a great way to practice for the sprints next week. For more details see http://us.pycon.org/2008/c

Our own Doug Napoleone is the guest on the This Week in Django podcast, episode 14 . He talks a bit about PyCon-Tech and a lot about PyCon. Great job, Doug!

Please take a look at the Attendee Notes page on the PyCon site . It's full of useful info, a FAQ of sorts. Spread the word! You can help improve that page too. There's a link to a wiki page for any additions or changes you can think of. See you in Chicago!

1. You can now upload your presentation files using the PyCon Schedule App . Log in to your site account. Locate your talk, hover over the title, wait a second or two while the data loads, then click the "Upload File" link in the pop-up that appears. 2. There are Tips for Speakers posted on the site. (Yes, it's a bit late for this, but maybe some of the tips will help ease presenter stage fright.) Good luck with your talks. See you at PyCon!

We're getting close enough to PyCon to look at the weather forecast. You should certainly bring at least a light jacket and gloves; bring a heavier jacket if you're not used to cold temperatures. According to Frommer's Portable Chicago, the average temperatures in Chicago in March are a high of 44 degF / 7 degC and a low of 28 deg / -1 degC. The temperatures predicted for the week match the averages: high temperatures of about 40-50 degF / 5-10 degC, and night temperatures of around freezing. There are chances of rain on Wednesday night and on Monday, and a chance of light snow on Friday night. Winds are predicted to be moderate, so wind chill is probably not going to make things much colder. Here's a banner from Weather Underground showing the current conditions for the hotel's postal code:

The PyCon organizers are excited to announce the start of the PyCon 2010 planning process! Moreover, we're looking for motivated local groups to spearhead this volunteer-run, community-based conference. In years past, the locale for the next year was arranged about a year in advance. That worked while we were a smaller conference with many venues to choose from. PyCon 2008, to be held soon in the Chicago area, has over 950 registered attendees at this time. That is over one and a half times the number of attendees from just the year before! We're excited to see PyCon grow, but it also means that how we plan PyCon needs to change just a little bit. The first change is a change in the timeline. Starting with PyCon 2010, we're aiming to begin planning two years ahead. To help us do that, PyCon 2009 will also be held in the Chicago area, at the same venue as 2008. The second change is that the bid process will not be as detail-heavy and will not demand as much initial wor

Thanks to Doug Napoleone's work, the PyCon schedule planner is back this year. You can use it to lay out your conference ahead of time: click on events and talks you'd like to attend, and then export your selected events in iCal format or print a customized schedule. Your choices are saved on the PyCon server, and the organizers can see a summary of the popularity of each event. This lets us compare the popularity of various talks. At last year's PyCon, we swapped a few room assignments when a talk scheduled for a smaller room proved unexpectedly popular; I bet we'll do the same this year, too. Known bug: the popups don't work with Safari 3.0.4 on Leopard; bug #247 describes the problem.

For this year's PyCon, we're encouraging attendees to make use of various social networking sites to make the conference more useful and more fun. (We're sure we've missed useful sites and channels; please suggest others in the Python wiki .) Internet Relay Chat During the conference, many attendees will chat using IRC on the #pycon channel on irc.freenode.net. Twitter During the conference, the organizers will post tasks and volunteering opportunities to the pyconvolunteers channel. Jaiku Jaiku is a micro-blogging site like Twitter, but with some extra features. Unfortunately, as of this writing they are not accepting new accounts while they deal with their acquisition by Google. Pre-existing members, though, do have a limited number of invitations they can give out. On Jaiku there is a #PyCon channel as well as a general #python channel. Slideshare Presentations in PowerPoint/OpenOffice /PDF format can be posted to the PyCon 2008 event . Flickr Please tag any ph