The PyCon US Blog

I recommend this article from the "My Bad Habits" blog: Good Conferencing Habits: Or, How I Learned to Have Fun and Still Get Some Sleep .

We are experiencing persistent problems with our credit card payment processor, a third-party. If you encounter a problem with credit card payment, don't panic . Please submit a change request and we'll respond as soon as possible. You will still be asked to pay the rate in effect at the time of your registration, not the time of your payment. The change request form is available via the My Registration page : click the link for your invoice, and you'll see links near the bottom of the page. Remember, we're volunteers, so PyCon problems usually aren't handled during our day jobs. Please be patient.

While the hotel is rapidly filling up, it is not yet full. If the online reservations system does not allow you to make a reservation, please call the housing bureau (the phone number is on the reservations site ).

The problem with credit card processing has been resolved. If you were affected, we'll send you email letting you know how to proceed with payment. Apologies for the inconvenience. Reminder: there's only one day left for early-bird registration.

We are currently experiencing problems with our payment processor, and are working with them to resolve the issue. Registrations and invoices that are submitted will be saved, and the early-bird price will be honored even if you end up completing the payment after the deadline. A PyCon representative will e-mail you as soon as the problem is resolved with instructions on completing the checkout process. We apologize for the inconvenience. UPDATE: The problem has been resolved. Register away!

The tutorials for PyCon 2008 are filling up quickly. We have ten rooms set aside for tutorials: five quite large (capacity 50), one medium-plus (capacity 24), two medium (capacity 20), and two small (capacity 14). We had no idea which tutorials would be the most popular, so we're using attendance numbers to assign the rooms. Greg Lindstrom (the tutorial coordinator) and I are watching the attendance numbers carefully. Yesterday we had to close the first tutorial as full: PM6, Faster Python Programs through Optimization and Extensions I , to be presented by Mike Müller. It's not the tutorial with the highest attendance, but we have no choice now but to put it in one of the medium-sized rooms, with a practical limit of about 20 people. There are six afternoon tutorials with larger attendance, which get the five large rooms and the one medium-plus room (and there's a battle going on there). These aren't full yet, but full enough to dictate the room assignment for PM6...

If you haven't registered for PyCon yet, now is the time! The early-bird registration deadline is February 20, one week away. After that, the price for registration will be going up. The deadline for hotel reservations at the conference rate is also February 20. Act now, because the regular rate is considerably higher! A reminder to tutorial and talk speakers: you are responsible for your own registration and hotel reservations. So don't delay!

Just a quick reminder -- applications for financial aid for PyCon 2008 are due on Monday, February 11th! Please see the PyCon website for application details.

There will be two pre-sprint sessions that will be run on Sunday afternoon, after the end of the conference talks. Intro to Sprinting (60 minutes, at 3:20 pm) This will be a plenary session, and will begin with a talk explaining what sprints are and how we do them at PyCon, followed by a panel discussion where the sprint leaders will answer questions. Sprint Tutorials (90 minutes to 3 hours, at 4:40 pm) After a break, participating sprint leaders will gather the sprinters of their projects, go to different rooms, and the project will be explained. Everything from code walkthroughs to granting repository access can be presented here. This way, you'll be able to start working on the sprints effectively on Monday morning, without a long setup delay. Happy coding!

We need you to let people know about PyCon! PyCon has always relied on the community to get the word out. This year, we've put together a "Publicizing PyCon" page under the "Helping Out" section of the PyCon website . It includes Blog badges Sample announcement emails A poster/flyer to print out A slide to drop into live presentations Now is the perfect time to spread the word - registration is open, and early-bird rates are available through Feb. 20. Thanks for your help!

The Python Software Foundation has allocated some funds to help people attend PyCon 2008. If you would like to come to PyCon but can't afford it, the PSF may be able to help you. The financial aid can cover some or all of the following: • Your registration for PyCon • Your hotel room at the conference hotel • Your flight or other transportation Please see http://us.pycon.org/2008/registration/financial-aid/ for details & instructions. The deadline for applications is February 11th.

I am pleased to announce that PyCon 2008 registration is now open! Early-bird registration is open until February 20, so there's one month to register at the low rates. Regular on-line registration will be available from February 21 through March 7. PyCon 2008 will be held from March 13 through 20 in Chicago: Tutorials: Thursday, March 13 Conference: Friday, March 14, through Sunday, March 16 Sprints: Monday, March 17 through Thursday, March 20 Register early, especially if you'd like to attend a tutorial or three, as tutorials fill up early. And yes, you heard that correctly -- this year, we have three tutorial sessions: morning, afternoon, and evening. There are 29 great tutorials to choose from. More about the tutorials soon, but for now, you can check out the descriptions yourself The talk schedule is also up (in a preliminary form), although some changes are expected. Hotel reservations are also open. The rate is $99/night plus tax ($112/night net), also until Febr...

I'd like to announce the tutorials sessions for PyCon 2008 (US). As you may know, this year PyCon is being held in Chicago, Illinois March 14-16 with the Thursday before (the 13th) being "Tutorial Thursday". We are expecting nearly 600 Python enthusiasts to meet up for the conference and have 29 tutorial sessions scheduled on Thursday in three sessions; morning, afternoon, and evening. There is an extra fee to attend a tutorial, but the sessions are 3 hours long (with a break) and are taught by some of the smartest cookies in the Python community. Pop on over to http://us.pycon.org/2008/about/ for more information Here's a list of the sessions currently offered (we may cancel a session if there are fewer than 10 people registered, but that doesn't happen very often). In particular, note that there are 4 different introduction to Python tutorials aimed at different audiences. Morning Session (9:00am-12:20pm) Eggs and Buildout Deployment in Python (Jeff Rush...

The Program Committee has selected 64 talks for PyCon 2008, from over 140 proposals received. List of accepted talks Thanks to Program Committee Chair Ivan Krstić and the Committee's members for their efforts reviewing all those proposals. Doug Napoleone, author of the reviewing application, discusses the process and shows an interesting graph of the proposal change histories. The talks haven't been arranged into a schedule yet; we're still working on that.

Python-related projects: join the PyCon Development Sprints! The development sprints are a key part of PyCon, a chance for the contributors to open-source projects to get together face-to-face for up to four days of intensive learning and development. Newbies sit at the same table as the gurus, go out for lunch and dinner together, and have a great time while advancing their project. At PyCon 2007 in Dallas we must have had 20 projects sprinting. If your project would like to sprint at PyCon, now is the time to let us know. We need to collect the info and publish it, so participants will have time to make plans. We need to get the word out early, because no matter what we do during the conference, most people who haven't already decided to sprint won't be able to stay, because they have a planes to catch and no hotel rooms. In the past, many people have been reluctant to commit to sprinting. Some may not know what sprinting is all about; others may think that they're no...

We've begun posting audio from last year's conference in podcast form . New recordings will be posted once or twice per week. The podcast is available in the iTunes Store podcast section , and you can also access the feed URLs directly. Three feeds are available: PyCon 2007 M4A feed -- smaller files; requires iTunes and/or an iPod. PyCon 2007 OGG feed -- mid-sized files; depends only on free software. PyCon 2007 MP3 feed -- larger files; compatible with most players.

We now present, for the enjoyment of any tech reporters you may know (or be), PyCon 2008's first official press release . This and future press releases will be posted under "Press" in the "About" portion of the PyCon website sidebar. If you'd like to announce PyCon on mailing lists, please use this shorter version instead: PyCon 2008 Chicago, IL March 14-16, 2008 http://us.pycon.org PyCon 2008, the sixth annual community conference for the Python programming language, will be held March 14-16 at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare Hotel. A rich schedule is being planned, including presentations, keynotes, Lightning Talks, an exhibition hall, and the hands-on Python Lab. Plentiful Open Space has been set aside for Birds-of-a-Feather sessions and other unscheduled "unconference"-style activity. Topics span the range of Python programming activity from introductory to advanced. Some topics are perennial; others focus on recent news, like Python 30...

As of the wee hours of this morning, the calls for proposals (for half-day tutorials, and for conference talks) are closed. What a result! Now that the dust has settled from the last-minute rush, it looks like we received about 40 tutorial proposals and over 140 conference talk proposals. That's far more than we can fit into the schedule. The program committee is now responsible for selecting a subset of these talks & tutorials for the conference. Over the next couple of weeks we will be examining the proposals, asking for clarifications, and voting. We'll be busy! Care to lend a hand? There's a lot more than proposal reviewing that needs doing. Please take a look at Helping Out at PyCon

Thanks to all the proposal authors so far, we have received lots of proposals for PyCon talks & tutorials. But we'd like to have even more. Alas, the proposal submission deadline should have been set after a weekend, not before. So we have decided to extend the proposal submission deadline to Monday, November 19 at midnight (end of Monday, Chicago time). This gives you a whole extra weekend to write up your talk and tutorial ideas! If you've been procrastinating, stop! Get started on a proposal instead! See the call for conference talk proposals and some topic ideas and more ideas from the PyCon 2007 feedback . See the call for tutorial proposals and topic ideas from the PyCon 2007 feedback . I hope to see (and hear) you at PyCon 2008 !

There is only one week left for PyCon tutorial & scheduled talk proposals. If you've been thinking about making a proposal, now's the time! Tutorial details and instructions here. Scheduled talk details and instructions here. The deadline is Friday, November 16. Don't put it off any longer! PyCon 2008