Mark your calendars: Tutorial days : Wednesday March 25 & Thursday March 26, 2009. (Two days of tutorials next year instead of one!) Conference days : Friday March 27 through Sunday March 29, 2009. Development sprints : Monday March 30 through Thursday April 2, 2009. Venue Change PyCon 2008 was far more popular than we originally planned for, and we nearly filled the venue, the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare hotel. We had hoped to have more tables ("classroom" layout) in the ballrooms, but we had to cut back and use mostly chairs ("theater" layout) in order to fit everyone in. One of the compromises we had to make was in catering. With so many people, the hotel was unable to provide proper sit-down hot meals, simply because the space was't sufficient for everybody to sit banquet-style. Once the conference days were over, there was no problem seating the sprinters (on the first day of the sprints, there were more sprinters and hangers-on than anticipated