The PyCon US Blog

A community conference like PyCon is run by volunteers. There are many ways to get involved if you are interested in serving the community as part of the team who makes the conference possible. Here is what the volunteer calendar looks like for PyCon 2016: The two major opportunities to volunteer  before the conference  are happening right now — we need volunteers for the two program committees who work to put together PyCon’s schedule! The  Talks Program Committee  votes on which talk proposals get to become part of the conference schedule. They are currently working on the 300 talk proposals that have already been received, and will probably have several hundred more to evaluate by the time the Call For Proposals ends on Sunday January 3! If you have watched PyCon talks before and you are planning on attending PyCon 2016, then the program committee would love your help.  Volunteers get to use the cool new voting app  that the committee chair has wr...

We know that many of you will want to see more of Portland than just a conference center and the inside of a hotel room. You will walk downtown and visit Powell’s . You will hike mountains and canyons . You will find a cozy bed & breakfast in the Oregon wine country . You will visit the Pacific coast and watch the gray whales swim past on their way back north to Alaska from their breeding grounds off the Baja peninsula. And some of you are looking forward to the marijuana. Following the 2014 legalization of recreational marijuana in Oregon, and of direct sales from dispensaries in 2015, Portland has become a popular destination for those who wish to partake. So let’s be specific about what this means for the conference: You can’t consume at PyCon.  Don’t show up at PyCon high, just like you wouldn’t show up drunk.  Simple enough. You might expect me, at this point, to quote the Code of Conduct. Or to talk about my own deep pride in the fact that we run a...