The PyCon US Blog

PyCon has grown in just about every way possible, and it’s due in part to the generosity of the organizations that pledge their support each year. 2013 is going to be the biggest and best year yet with many new initiatives on tap like the Young Coder event and the recently announced Sponsor Tutorials . We’re up to a few more things you’ll find out about in the coming months, so for now find out what some of our sponsors are up to. LadyCoders LadyCoders is one of several supporters in our OSS/Community Sponsors group, and we’re glad to have them on board this year. The Coders consist of a group of of women who, simply, write code. They’re not a Python specific group, but they support the conference because of the environment it promotes. “From the code of conduct, to PyLadies and PyStars, to the general feeling of welcoming that we always feel when amongst the Python community, this is a mission that we support and of which we are incredibly happy to be a part,” says Tarah Wheeler Van...

We’re all about schedules around here. We got started by announcing the tutorial schedule , then a bit later put out the talk schedule . Just the other day we announced the sponsor tutorial schedule . The poster session is on the master schedule from 10:10 to 1:10 on Sunday March 17, but the event itself doesn’t have a schedule, so we present to you, the poster list . The poster session is a recent addition to the PyCon schedule, being introduced in Atlanta for PyCon 2010 with a showing of 17 posters. As with just about everything relating to PyCon, the event has grown significantly to where the 2013 list includes 50 posters and will take place in a room several times the size of the 2010 event. Think of a poster as a more intimate talk, where the discussion is driven by who’s at the poster and what they’re interested in engaging. When you’re in a talk or a tutorial, you sit and listen to the talk the presenter has prepared, then ask questions at the end. When you’re at a poster, you j...

As we announced on Friday, Sponsor Tutorials are a new event for PyCon 2013, and we’ve added them to the schedule on our site: https://us.pycon.org/2013/schedule/sponsor-tutorials/ . These workshops will run concurrently with our instructor-lead tutorials on March 13 and 14. The 90 minute sessions are lead by our sponsors and are being offered free of charge. They provide a great opportunity to learn something new from some of the coolest Python using companies around. The new schedule includes detail on each of the tutorials and profiles for each other presenters, just like we do for our tutorials and talks. You can now see that Mitch Garnaat will be taking you through the process of setting up an AWS application, and Jason Carr will help you plug Selenium into your Jenkins or Travis environments. Check out the full schedule for more detail from all of our awesome sponsors who are participating!

Dave Beazley is no stranger to PyCon. He’s been attending them since the beginning, including a few last-minute road trips, the ones close to home in Chicago, and all the ones in between. Throughout the years he’s given several mind blowing talks, followed up some of those talks with equally mind blowing open spaces. He has presented before the entire audience on the plenary stage, and has brought his educational skills on the road for numerous tutorial sessions. For PyCon 2013 he’s running two great tutorials: Wednesday afternoon’s “ Learn Python Through Public Data Hacking ”, and Thursday afternoon’s “ Python 3 Metaprogramming .” The first aims to introduce Python to complete beginners, and the second aims to fill the advanced user’s tool belt with some of the shiny new features of Python 3. He’s also sponsoring this year’s conference, a first for Dabeaz, LLC . For the Beginner When it comes to the Learn Python tutorial, the emphasis really is on the first two words: Learn Python. “I...

PyLadies Lunch @ PyCon This year, there is such an amazing line up of talks, tutorials, events, and sponsors that we're sure you don't have enough planned. PyLadies have organized to host a lunch for women attending the conference who love Python, or who want to learn more about Python or PyLadies. What's this all about? PyLadies is a mentorship group for women in the Python community. Come join us for an opportunity to chat with your fellow female Pythonistas while taking a break from the jam-packed PyCon schedule. Who : Women who love coding in Python When : Saturday, March 16th, 12:30pm - 1:30pm Where : Second floor, Rooms 209/210 We invite any woman conference-goer to lunch at an informal, friendly meet & greet to form connections, and share Python programming stories. RSVP! Be sure to reserve your spot as space is limited! If you have any questions, feel free to contact Lynn Root .

Young Coder Registration Now Available! Back in July, we announced The Young Coder: Let's Learn Python tutorial. We've received an overwhelming response of excitement and interest. Registration is now open! About the Tutorial This free tutorial will explore how to program using Python by making games. The workshop will start with learning Python's simple data types, including numbers, letters and strings, and lists. We will also explore comparisons, if-statements, and loops. Finally, we will combined our new knowledge by creating our own game using the PyGame library. Timing The one-day workshop is being hosted on Wednesday, March 13th and Thursday, March 14th. Originally, one day was planned, but added a second day to accommodate demand. Which day should you choose? Wednesday's tutorial is for 12 year olds - 15 year olds. Thursday's tutorial is for 15 year olds - 18 year olds(ish). What is the day schedule? 9:00am - 1:00pm: Introduction + P...

When we said we were pulling out all the stops for PyCon 2013, we weren't kidding. We've put together an increased selection of talks . We'll be running a tutorial for children . There's an education summit . PyData is running a conference during the sprints. There are a lot more events to list, and there's a bunch we're still working on (top secret stuff). One that we're happy to announce today is the Sponsor Workshop series. Nine of our sponsors will be running free workshops throughout the tutorial days on Wednesday March 13th and Thursday the 14th, starting at 9 AM and running into the early evening. Each workshop is 90 minutes long and gives you a chance to interact with the brains behind some of the Python world's coolest products. SendGrid will be getting into hardware hacking. Heroku is talking about the 12-factor app.  New Relic and Disney are looking into performance. Amazon Web Services is sharing their productivity secrets. Sauce Lab...

Oh, its getting closer - 48 days until PyCon US 2013 kicks off - you have  registered , right? One of the joys I get helping the foundation put together PyCon US is being able to tap the talents of amazing people - one of those is  Idan Gazit , who designed the non-web  artwork for PyCon 2012 , and has once again done it for PyCon 2013. Each of his designs has been unique, but I have to say, 2013's design really takes the cake:   This piece just makes me happy on so many levels - it's retro and futuristic at the same time - it incorporates the theme ("Change the Future") and hints and the surprises we have in store for the conference. It's beautiful in its simplicity. This artwork will be featured in the mobile application we will once again have, the print program and the t-shirts. Note, that t-shirts are an additional cost / checkbox when registering for PyCon 2013 - we've focused majority of the funds this year to some special projects - Financial Aid ...

Larry Hastings had a busy 2012. Throughout the year he made his way to five continents, attending 10 Python conferences. The 3.4 release manager and host of Radio Free Python was on stage for four of them, and sprinted at each of them. Most of all, he had a blast and got to meet wonderful Python people all around the globe. Larry got his introduction to Python around 1996, and his time as a core CPython contributor started within the last few years. However, he did have a contribution accepted into Python 1.5.1b2, but it was backed out before the final release and was revived again for 3.1, almost 11 years later! The first PyCon Larry attended was in 2008, the first of two events in Chicago. He followed that up with each US-based PyCon since then, making the trips to Atlanta and Santa Clara, before adding EuroPython to the mix in 2011. “After that it sort of snowballed,” he said of what became of 2012. Here’s where he ended up: Santa Clara, California, USA for PyCon US Florence, I...

Just a heads up - PyCon US 2013 Financial Aid emails have been sent out! Just be sure to check your spam folder; for some reason GMail chose to mark them as phishing/spam. If you're unsure; email pycon-aid@python.org!

Our sponsors make PyCon possible, and every year we’re happy to see the returning organizations joined by first time supporters. We continue our sponsor highlights with Lincoln Loop, a first time sponsor! Lincoln Loop “Python makes what we do possible, so sponsoring events like PyCon is a no-brainer,” says Pete Baumgartner of Lincoln Loop . They’re a full-stack web shop that makes use of Python everywhere they can, from the back end to testing, deployment, and everything in between. Django is one of their specialties, and they’ve drafted up many of their best practices to share with the community. “Sponsoring and attending PyCon helps us grow our network and brings us more business,” says Pete of their move to support the conference. A healthy Python community benefits Lincoln Loop, so they’re more than happy to give back and ensure the success of PyCon and Python. Last year they were added as a sponsor member of the Python Software Foundation. They’ve recently released a team discuss...

At PyCon, we love our sponsors, and we hope you do as well. They help us keep the conference affordable, allow us to do the big things we have planned, and they’re a source of jobs for you - the community. Check out what a few of them are up to. net-ng Net-ng came to the Python world over 10 years ago, building most of their products using the Nagare framework they created in 2008. They use Python to enable their creation of highly scalable, robust applications, and offer Python training to business in France. When asked about the importance of Python at net-ng, Jean-Luc Carre said, “Python is important for us because it provides multiple benefits such as a great community, strong performances and maintainability.” Jean-Luc went on to praise Python’s ease of use for the beginners to his team. Their history with PyCon goes back to 2001 in Long Beach, CA, when PyCon was but a fraction of what it is today. Net-ng’s excitement over Python’s growth in popularity not only in business and i...

  The long awaited PyCon 2013 schedule is now available! https://us.pycon.org/2013/schedule/ The tutorials had already been scheduled to allow for registration, but the talk schedule was the harder part to complete. We’ve now added another track, making for six of them, which raises the total talk count to 114 over the three days. It was a challenge to put all of the pieces together in logical groupings, to accommodate speaker availability, and to balance the 30 and 45 minute slot availability (a lot of people ask for 45, but as you can see, those are limited). Our Program Committee put in a lot of time and effort to make this happen, and the entire group of PyCon organizers thanks them. The schedule includes one problem we’re really happy to have to have again: you’re going to have to choose wisely where you go because, as always, all of these talks are excellent. Thankfully we have a really good video crew, so you won’t actually miss anything. Just check out the video arch...

You better get to work on your poster submission for PyCon. Like, now. That's right, you better get it submitted soon, because the PyCon 2013 Poster Session Call for Proposals closes on January 16th, which is just one week away. Remember, the PyCon poster session is a great way to not only present an idea, project, or cool Python feature to the community, but for those that have never participated as a presenter at a conference before, it's a great way to introduce yourself to the community as well. We welcome poster submissions on anything Python-related: projects, libraries, ideas, education, community; you get the idea. Want to be able to actually show off your topic? Great, bring your laptop and give demos to those interested. The poster session is a fun two-hour window that will allow you, the presenter, to interact directly with those people interested in your topic. So like I said, get to work and let's see those submissions! To submit a poster proposal, ...

PyCon Australia is the national conference for users of the Python Programming Language. On  5–7  July 2013, we're returning to Hobart, Tasmania, bringing together students, enthusiasts, and professionals with a love of Python from around Australia, and from all over the World. Once again, we'll have a weekend packed full of amazing content on all aspects of the Python ecosystem, presented by experts and core developers of the tools and frameworks you use every day. We're excited about the return of Friday Night CodeWars, and of course, we've got the usual conference dinner, as well as two days of developer sprints following the conference proceedings. We can't wait to share more about the conference in the coming months. Until then, subscribe to our  announcement list ,  follow us on twitter , or  add yourself to our Lanyrd page . Now with three days of talks! In 2013, before the main event kicks off, we're welcoming two new mini-conferences on the Friday ...

You should present a poster at PyCon. Why? Why not is more like it! I presented a poster at PyCon for the first time last year, and it was a fantastic experience. Let me tell you why. I have presented posters many times in the past at several conferences. Those poster sessions are usually the same ole' same ole'; you hang up your poster, maybe you are required to be there during a certain time period, maybe not. If you are required to be there at the poster, you might have a few people stop by and chat you up. You take down the poster, that's it. Not a whole lot to be gained, really. Well, PyCon is much, much different. Sure, you put up the poster, are required to be there for an hour and a half, and you take down the poster. What's different is what actually happens during that hour and a half you are at your poster. You actually talk to people, probably a lot of people. I'd say I probably personally talked to a couple dozen people last year during the poste...