The PyCon US Blog

This is a guest post by Software Carpentry , one of our Open Source & Community sponsors. Programming is not just fun, it's a fantastic tool for getting things done, making things go, and participating in the world of technology and the Internet. We all know this, and that's why a lot of us spend a lot of time teaching others how to program. But do you ever wonder if you're actually teaching effectively? If the techniques you're using actually work, or if there's something you could do better? Educational theorists have been working on the problem of how to transfer knowledge for decades (centuries, even) and there are actually answers to these questions! If you don't have decades to study education theory, come to the Software Carpentry workshop on How to Teach Programming on April 14. At Software Carpentry we've been teaching busy and reluctant people how (and why) to program for over a decade. Greg Wilson, the leader of this workshop, has create

Last week we put together information on local mobile voice and data plans. A lot of people had been asking phone questions on twitter, so a bunch of people came together and outlined a lot of the options to share with everyone. In addition to that, Similicious , a Toronto-based startup, has offered our attendees a 10% discount code! Similicious offers various configurations of voice, text, and data plans, and will deliver the SIM card direct to your hotel via registered mail. If you place your order by Thursday April 3, delivery is guaranteed by April 9 - the first day of tutorials. Take a look at their site and use the code pycon2014 when checking out! Note: if you are staying at any of the official conference hotels, their addresses are listed on the venue page .

Did you know PyCon is in two weeks? Did you know we're kicking off the weekend with a an opening reception ? Did you know it's all going to be awesome? Thursday April 10 from 6 PM to 8 PM in hall 220DE at the Palais de Congrès (the convention center), we're going to have an opening reception, and all attendees are invited. There will be appetizers available, and each attendee will receive a drink ticket. For those of age, there will be a cash bar, as well as a selection of beer from Montréal's own Dieu du Ciel brewery. The reception is sponsored by iWeb , provider of dedicated, colocated, and cloud hosting, located right in Montréal. iWeb uses Python for many of their products and services, including their groundbreaking iWeb Cloud, released in 2013. There'll be a DJ and a photo booth, so come out and have fun with your friends and start off PyCon 2014!

We're happy to announce the Sponsor Workshop series , taking place on Wednesday April 9 and Thursday April 10, the two days leading up to the conference. In a similar fashion to our tutorials, our sponsors are leading 90 minute sessions on a variety of topics. Oh, and they're free ! If you'd like to come to any of the workshops, it would be helpful if you RSVP'ed here . It's not required, but it helps us estimate how much food and drinks we should have for those times.  Wednesday - 9:00 AM John Wetherill of ActiveState will be introducing Platform-as-a-Service and container technologies, along with how to design and architect applications to take advantage of them. He also covers topics like deployment and migration, and gives examples of monitoring, logging, and debugging cloud-based applications. Wednesday - 3:30 PM Jacob Kaplan-Moss introduces Heroku by guiding attendees through the process of deploying and managing applications on the platform. With

In addition to the on-site job fair that we'll be running on Sunday April 13, our sponsors have listed a bunch of jobs on our website  that are open and available right now. The range of positions listed there cover front end to back end, junior to senior, development, QA, management, and just about everything in between. The companies are listed all across the world, with many of them hiring for remote positions. With Python in high demand, and awesome companies like our sponsors looking to hire some of this community's great developers, it's a great time to see what's out there. For those who will be at PyCon, the on-site job fair companies are listed on the right of of this page , so bring your resume and sharpen your skills. Many of these companies are running interviews right there in the booth! If you're a sponsor who would like to list a posting on that page, you can do so via your dashboard.

PyCon Australia 2014 is pleased to announce that its Call for Proposals is now open! The conference this year will be held on Saturday 2 and Sunday 3 August 2014 in Brisbane . We'll also be featuring a day of miniconfs on Friday 1 August. The deadline for proposal submission is Friday April 25, 2014 , and more information can be found at pycon-au.org/cfp PyCon Australia attracts professional developers from all walks of life, including industry, government, and science, as well as enthusiast and student developers. We’re looking for proposals for presentations and tutorials on any aspect of Python programming, at all skill levels from novice to advanced. Presentation subjects may range from reports on open source, academic or commercial projects; or even tutorials and case studies. If a presentation is interesting and useful to the Python community, it will be considered for inclusion in the program. We're especially interested in short presentations that will teach