The PyCon US Blog

We are proud to announce the first videos from PyCon 2009 US. Topics Of Interest - Ian Bicking ( Slides/Data ) Lightning Talk: New Python Licence - Jesse Noller

This morning the PyCon organizers received some bad news. Our photography coordianator, Steven Wilcox, has a family emergency and won't be able to attend the conference. We hope everything turns out well for Steven and his family. Unfortunately this has left us scrambling a bit, but in the spirit of "The show must go on", we are asking that any attendees who are photographers or photography buffs to step up and help out. We also ask that anyone who had arrangements with Steven for PyCon photography should contact us. We are particularly looking for session photographers and portrait photographers. Session photographers will take photos of speakers during thier talks, tutors during thier tutorials, sprinters during thier spints, and so on. The portriat photographers would be responsible for setting up and running a small studio to get portraits of Python people, for use by the PSF in future press releases. Of course everyone is welcome (and encouraged!) to take many pyco...

Organizers are already in place, preparing for the tutorials and summits that begin tomorrow... and here's the final PyCon 2009 press release. We hope your bags are packed! ---------------------- White Oak Technologies, Inc., Google, Sun Microsystems Sponsor World's Largest Python Conference Python 3.0 enters spotlight at PyCon 2009 CHICAGO - March 24, 2009 - PyCon 2009, the largest annual conference of the worldwide Python programming community, takes place March 25 - April 2 at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare and the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare in Chicago, IL. The core conference runs March 27-29, with days of special events both before and after the main conference. Last December's release of Python 3.0 marks one of the most important events in Python's history, and PyCon 2009 provides developers a chance to learn to adapt to it from the worldwide masters of Python programming. Though Python's 2.x series will remain viable for years, the Python community is cl...

This year, like the last few years, an open space room has been dedicated to friendly board gaming and cards. Last year there seemed to be a constant game of Fluxx and Settlers of Catan while Power Grid, RoboRally, Carcassonne, Bang!, Munchkin, Treehouse, piecepack, and a load of others opened some of our eyes to the engaging world of German style and abstract games. If you're looking for a low-key social activity at this year’s PyCon please join us in the open space area. If you have a game you’d particularly like to play, visit the Board Games Social wiki page at the PyCon web site and add the game so we may inform fellow players or pass word for someone to bring it. We'll have Chess, Scrabble and other standards if you're looking for something familiar, and some new variations such as Sorry Sliders, Yahtzee Free For All, Lost Cities the Board Game, Hive with the Misquito and Monty Python Fluxx. The games are brought by attendants and some loaners are being provided by T...

PyCon US is a 100% volunteer effort. In order for the conference to run smoothly we need a large on-site volunteer turnout. This year the conference is larger than ever. As a result we need more people than ever to step forward and volunteer their time at the conference to help make it a success for all. With PyCon less than a week away, we are in desperate need for Session Staff and Session Runners in particular. Being a Session Runner is a simple task where you work with presenters to make sure they are ready to present before they give their talk, and help the Session Chairs with the transition between speakers. The rest of the time you are free to see whichever presentation or other activity you wish. All session staff this year will have radios with headsets so staying in touch will be easy. Everyone can see which session still need session staff on the main Schedule ; those talks w/o star or clipboard icons. Signup is very simple, and this is a great way to be involved and ma...

Today (March 18) is the last day for online registration for PyCon 2009. While you can register on-site next week, registering online will save you money and time . See you in Chicago!

PYCON 2009 HOSTS CROSS-COMMUNITY SUMMIT MEETINGS CHICAGO - March 16 - Python programmers won't be the only ones coming to PyCon this month. PyCon 2009 is hosting two new summit events that will draw key developers and strategists not only from Python, but also from the Perl, Ruby, Java, .NET, and JavaScript communities. The Virtual Machine Summit on March 25, sponsored by Sun Microsystems, and Python Language Summit on March 26, both at PyCon 2009 in Chicago, are invitation-only events that will bring cross-discipline groups together to discuss and strategize on challenges that are common across their projects. Virtual machines - software layers that sit between machine-specific binary code and language-specific compilers, creating multi-language programming environments - have become a focus of modern language development. Virtual machine developers will attend from a variety of projects, based in a number of language communities: PyPy (Python), Parrot (Perl), Da Vinci (Java), D...

The deadline for PyCon 2009 hotel reservations at the conference rate is 3:00 pm (Chicago time; 21:00 UTC) on Friday, March 6. Act now, because the regular rate is considerably higher! If you haven't registered for PyCon yet, there is still time! The regular online registration deadline is March 18. After that, on-site registration will be available, but the price is higher.

A PyCon 2009 LinkedIn group has been created. If you've already registered for PyCon and agreed to have your name on the public attendee list , the e-mail address you used to register is pre-approved for the group.