The PyCon US Blog

PyCon 2013 is shaping up to be the largest PyCon ever; not only in terms of attendees but also in terms of opportunities to hear new ideas and meet new people. The conference will have six talk tracks (up from five in 2012), a PyData conference during the sprints, and a large number of the ever popular open spaces. As we move closer to the conference, travel plans get finalized and excitement builds. You may find yourself wishing that you’d presented a talk or got involved in some other way.  Luckily the opportunity is still out there: The 4th annual PyCon poster session ! Why present a poster? The poster session offers a unique experience both for presenters and attendees. As a presenter, you get to interact directly with your audience, share your passion and your idea, and immediately address questions in a more conversational manner. On top of that, the environment is generally less stressful and more easygoing than giving a formal talk. The layout of the event is very open...

We’re tossing around a lot of ideas as we dive deeper into preparing PyCon 2013 , and one that came up was the offering of childcare services. We’re planning some big things for the upcoming conference and we want everyone to be involved. Whether you’re a local who would like to spend a few extra days at the sprints or an out of towner who wants to tack PyCon on the end of a family vacation, we’d like to find out who would consider taking advantage of such services. Keep a few dates in mind as you think about this: The tutorials run Wednesday and Thursday March 13 and 14. The main conference dates are Friday through Sunday, March 15-17. The sprints will run Monday through Thursday, March 18-21. If you have children and are considering attending PyCon, we hope you can spare one or two minutes for this quick survey at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dE9NTEt0Z1hTU2h5TEo1UVZTY1pEYVE6MQ As the title of this post and the survey say, we’re floating the idea of subsidizing...

You know what's better than one huge conference? One huge conference, and another on huge data! (Sorry, I couldn't resist) Today, I am proud to publicly announce a new development for PyCon / PyCon 2013 - we're partnering and working with the awesome team behind the PyData Conference to bring PyData Silicon Valley to the Santa Clara Convention Center during the sprints  - that's right, come for PyCon, stay for the sprints and PyData! PyData Silicon Valley will happen in the same building as the PyCon 2013 Sprints: PyData Tutorials: Monday, March 18, 2013 PyData Conference: Tuesday-Wednesday March 19-20, 2013 A bit more about PyData: The PyData conference and workshop is a semi-annual event for scientists, engineers, and data analysts in the Python community. The conference focuses on techniques and tools for management, analytics, and visualization of data of different types and sizes with particular emphasis on big data. Python is already the de-facto langu...

You're probably wondering where the program is for PyCon 2013 coming in March. The short version is that, well - the program committee is having meetings almost every day trying to go through 459 individual talk proposals.  Yes. Four Hundred and Fifty-Nine. That's astounding . Literally unprecedented in the history of the conference. You can ask the team - I was fretting and hand wringing and pacing all over worrying about not having enough proposals and then the tidal wave hit. 459. Amazing. To top that? 129 tutorial proposals. This is amazing . It also presents the staff, volunteers and program committee a conundrum. With the 5 tracks PyCon's main conference has room for maybe 90 talks . That's if we squeeze and push. With 459 proposals, the majority of which are exceedingly high quality, incredibly interesting and completely community driven, the program committee is under immense stress and an astounding workload. So, to relieve some of it - and to be able to s...

PyCon is  a lot of things . It’s the largest Python conference around in many aspects, with more talks, more tutorials, more days, and more people than any others. It’s one of the cheapest big conferences around, with ticket prices that haven’t changed in years. It’s the largest gathering of the best minds in the community. With the conference back in Silicon Valley for a second year and an expanded capacity of 2500 attendees, you will not find a bigger gathering of the best Python users around. We’ve had people consider PyCon their vacation. We’ve had people in attendance from all around the world. We’ve had people bring their kids. We’ve had people try to buy next year’s tickets before the current conference was over. This community loves PyCon, and we love working on it. What we need is more  sponsorship . What does the community get out of sponsorship? Financial Aid PyCon prides itself on being an affordable event for attendees starting with the low ticket prices, and extendi...