The PyCon US Blog

South Africa’s second PyConZA kicks-off in just three days time in Cape Town! Opening the speaking is Simon Ratcliffe from the Square Kilometre Array talking about constructing a completely Pythonic high-performance data processing chain for the world’s largest radio telescope whose construction is scheduled to start in 2016. The program continues with notable speakers such as Larry Hastings (speaking on Python’s bytecode), Armin Rigo (giving an introduction to STM), Stefan van der Walt (introducing image processing with scikit-image) and Stefano Rivera (explaining how to package Python applications for Debian and Ubuntu). We’re very please this year to have more speakers from elsewhere in Africa including Kisitu Augustine (from Uganda) and Goddy Akpojotor (from Nigeria). Of course a PyCon wouldn’t be a PyCon without lightning talks and open spaces . Lightning talks are happening on Thursday while this year open spaces are running in their own parallel track on b...

The PyCon 2014 organizers are thrilled to announce the opening of registration for the April 9-17 conference, taking place at the Palais des congrès de Montréal in Montréal, Quebec, Canada. This event represents the first of two annual PyCons to take place in Montréal, following a hugely successful two-year run in Santa Clara, California. As with years past, ticket prices remain unchanged, and value is ever increasing. At the close of talk and tutorial proposals last week, a record 565 talks were submitted -- over 100 more than for PyCon 2013. Reviewers have been hard at work to begin shaping the 2014 schedule, which is expected in December. Quantity-based early bird rates are back for 2014, with the cap set at the first 800 tickets receiving the discounted rates. Total sales are initially being kept to 2,000 tickets. For an individual buyer, the regular $350 USD rate is cut 15% for during the early bird period to $300 USD. The $600 USD corporate rate is dropped to $450 USD during...

As the September 15 deadline for talk and tutorial proposals approached, the Python community contributed yet another record setting group of submissions. Going from PyCon 2012 to 2013, we saw an increase of 80 submissions, bringing 458 proposals through the review system. It made for a lot of work by our volunteer program committee last year, but they did a great job in putting together a fantastic schedule, and our speakers did an amazing job on stage to make the best PyCon yet. For PyCon 2014, you, the community, topped last year by 107, bringing us to a total of 565 talk proposals ! This is simply incredible, especially as we've seen proposals from a wider range of people than ever. We've gotten a lot of proposals from first-timers, including more students than past years. Several user groups got together over the last few months to run brainstorming sessions, and they've produced some excellent proposals. The outreach groups in our community have done the same, and...

The deadline for PyCon 2014 talk and tutorial proposals is only four days away, with submissions being accepted through Sunday September 15. Once the submission window closes, our volunteer-staffed program committee will begin the process of reviewing each and every proposal, building another great schedule for our April 9-17 conference in Montréal. Check out our Call for Proposals for the full details on our process. We've also put together a section on proposal resources , and our program committee has come up with a few pieces of  advice that could be helpful when writing up your proposal. Help us create the best PyCon yet by submitting a proposal! To get started, create an account and head to your dashboard , then fill out a speaker bio , then submit your proposal ! Talks and tutorials are due September 15, lightning talks are due October 15, and posters are due November 1.