You might not have noticed a subtle, yet significant change on the front page of the PyCon 2011 site - but earlier this week, we were honored to add a new Diamond Level sponsor - QNX Software Systems. For those that aren't familiar with them, they're an operating systems development company - most recently it was announced they would be producing the OS for the RIM BlackBerry Playbook, RIM's entrant into the tablet world (QNX is a subsidiary of RIM).
When Van and I were initially approached about the sponsorship, we were incredibly happy - first, of course, we have a new sponsor - second, Python in QNX? We were pretty amazed, stunned actually. Then we also found out today that QNX will sponsor R. David Murray's email6 module work as well - QNX is certainly entering the Python community's consciousness with a bang.
QNX is pretty mum on what they're using Python for (exciting!) - but QNX’s Andy Gryc, who will attend PyCon 2011, had this to say:
QNX as a company really appreciates clean and elegant designs. Good software architecture is one of the key principles that drives our engineering, and Python makes a great addition to our toolkit for that reason. However, a big reason we’re using Python is because of the amazing developer productivity that it enables.
I asked them a bit about what role Python is playing - or going to play - strategically for them in the future - but they're staying pretty mum - but if this is any indication:
QNX will directly support Python in future products. Similarly to how we have participated in open source tooling with Eclipse, we plan to invest in developing Python, both for utilization within QNX products and in open source contributions back to the Python community. To that end, we’re interested in hiring Python developers and working with companies who do Python work.
Python looks to have gained itself a pretty significant contributor to its community. We're very appreciative of QNX’s sponsorship of PyCon - say hello to their team members when you see them in less than a week!
I also wanted to take a moment to thank all of our sponsors - Google, whose continued support of PyCon and the Python Software foundation - and Python community as a whole - has been stunning. They’ve consistently been a Diamond level sponsor for the conference, and have given the community as a whole a lot.
There’s also Microsoft - our one platinum sponsor this year, who once again continues to support PyCon as they have for a few years now. Their continued support is awesome, and their work (for example, open sourcing IronPython under the Apache license, and doing amazing Visual Studio Python support work) for the community is greatly appreciated.
Then there is the list of all of our Gold Sponsors, who also help make PyCon viable and accessible to all of us:
- Walt Disney Animation Studios
- Nasuni Corporation
- Rackspace
- JetBrains
- CCP Games
- Linode
- Canonical
- Github
- Bitbucket
- WhiteOak Technologies
- Evite
- ZeOmega
- ActiveState
- Caktus
- Dropbox
- Uber
- Gondo.io (From Eldarion)
As well as our Silver Sponsors, businesses who really step up and help us out as much as they can, and also contribute a great deal to both the conference and community:
- FreshBooks
- Accense
- Wingware
- Imaginary Landscape
- Net-ng
- Revolution Systems
- esri
- Loggly
- Disqus
- Emma
- Threadless
- Eutaxia by OpenEnd
- Enthought
- SurveyMonkey
- PiCloud
- CMGdigital
- 10Gen
- American Greetings Interactive
- Eucalyptus Systems
- TrueCar
Without these sponsors - PyCon couldn't happen. They help keep the conference affordable and afloat in many ways - not to mention, most, if not all of them are going to be actively hiring at PyCon 2011.
So, our hats go off in thanks to QNX, our latest sponsor, and all of our amazing and generous sponsors we have. We encourage you to check out what they have to offer - and to pack your resume along with you to PyCon next week!
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