The PyCon US Blog

Want to share your experience and expertise? PyCon 2009 is looking for proposals to fill the formal presentation tracks. The PyCon conference days will be March 27-29, 2009 in Chicago, Illinois, preceded by the tutorial days (March 25-26), and followed by four days of development sprints (March 30-April 2). Previous PyCon conferences have had a broad range of presentations, from reports on academic and commercial projects to tutorials and case studies. We hope to continue that tradition this year. Online proposal submission will open on September 29, 2008. Proposals will be accepted through November 03, with acceptance notifications coming out on December 15. For the full details, please see our detailed call for proposals . We look forward to seeing you in Chicago!

The period for submitting tutorial proposals for Pycon 2009 (US) is now open and will continue through Friday, October 31th. This year features two "pre-conference" days devoted to tutorials on Wednesday March 25 & Thursday March 26 in Chicago. This allows for more classes than ever. Tutorials are 3-hours long on a specific topic of your choice. Last year we featured classes on Learning Python, Web Development, Scientific Computing, and many more. Class size varied from 10 to over 60 students. The extended time spent in class allows teachers to cover a lot of material while allowing for interaction with students. The full Call for Tutorial Proposals , including submission details, an example proposal as well as a template, is available at: http://us.pycon.org/2009/tutorials/proposals/ . Tutorial selections will be announced in early December to give you time to prepare your class. PyCon will compensate instructors US$1,500 per tutorial. If you have any questions, please c...

PyCon UK Registration is Open. The conference takes place in Birmingham UK from 12th to 14th September 2008. A full programme includes a day of tutorials; bookings are being taken at http://www.pyconuk.org/booking.html . The early bird rate has been extended to 11th August. Plenary talks will be by Mark Shuttleworth, Ted Leung and Raymond Hettinger. There is a list of already accepted talks at: http://pyconuk.org/talk_abstracts.html A schedule for the tutorial day is at: http://pyconuk.org/timetable.html [text by Michael Foord]

Mark your calendars: Tutorial days : Wednesday March 25 & Thursday March 26, 2009. (Two days of tutorials next year instead of one!) Conference days : Friday March 27 through Sunday March 29, 2009. Development sprints : Monday March 30 through Thursday April 2, 2009. Venue Change PyCon 2008 was far more popular than we originally planned for, and we nearly filled the venue, the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare hotel. We had hoped to have more tables ("classroom" layout) in the ballrooms, but we had to cut back and use mostly chairs ("theater" layout) in order to fit everyone in. One of the compromises we had to make was in catering. With so many people, the hotel was unable to provide proper sit-down hot meals, simply because the space was't sufficient for everybody to sit banquet-style. Once the conference days were over, there was no problem seating the sprinters (on the first day of the sprints, there were more sprinters and hangers-on than anticipated...

(In case you didn't see it on the PSF Blog or on the python.org front page :) The second national Python Conference in France, PyCon FR 08, will be held at the Cité des sciences et de la Villette in Paris. The program has been posted (in French -- an English version is available as a blog post ).

PyOhio, the first annual Python programming miniconference for Ohio and surrounding areas, will take place Saturday, July 26, in Columbus, OH. The conference is free of charge. It will include scheduled talks, Lightning Talks, and unconference-style Open Spaces. To get more information or to volunteer, see http://pyohio.org . See http://wiki.python.org/moin/PyOhio/CallForProposals for information on proposing a talk.

I hope there are a few people still reading! There was a lot to talk about in an 8-day, 1000-plus-attendee, volunteer-run conference like PyCon 2008. Organizing a conference of this scale is a lot of work, much more than any one person could do. I didn't mention everyone who helped out... but you know who you are. To all the speakers, sprinters, attendees, sponsors, organizers, and volunteers: Thank you! I had a blast chairing this year's PyCon, and I hope that next year's conference is even better. To me, PyCon is no longer primarily about the talks, or the projects, or the code. (I hardly got to see any talks this year, my projects are on hold, and I haven't written much non-work code lately…) Don't get me wrong -- talks, projects, and code are important, especially to new attendees. These aspects used to be the most important parts of PyCon to me too. The talks and projects are what allow us to have a conference at all; they're the framework everything...

PyCon 2009 PyCon 2009 will take place in Chicago again. This year's venue was near capacity; we're currently exploring options that will allow PyCon 2009 to have more elbow room and even grow. Stay tuned for more. This report has discussed mistakes that were made this year, which we will not repeat next year. If you have ideas or opinions that haven't been covered, please reply in the comments, email me (goodger at python dot org), or better yet, join the mailing list! I will chair PyCon again in 2009. But while I intend to stay involved beyond that, I do not intend to chair PyCon 2010. Changes of leadership bring fresh ideas and perspectives, which is a good thing. We'll be looking for a "chairperson-in-training"; let me know if you're interested. PyCon 2010 Very shortly we'll be deciding the venue for PyCon 2010: the deadline for bids is May 1, 2008. An earlier blog entry describes the process , which is much simpler than in previous years. We ...

PyCon has shown impressive growth. As PyCon continues to grow, we'll continue to outgrow venues. At some point growth will plateau, and eventually we may even see declines, but for the near future growth seems to be on the menu. (I'm not expecting PyCon 2009 to grow another 77%; but who knows?) Keeping the community/volunteer nature of PyCon as it grows will be a challenge. We have to decide which direction to take. I see several options: Cap attendance. We had about 1040 people at PyCon 2008, and the venue has a hard limit of about 1200 people. Hopefully we won't need to take this drastic a measure. We'll do everything we can to avoid it. Raise rates to limit attendance. This would mostly affect the attendance of hobbyists, independent consultants, developers at startups & small businesses, and students. One way to counter that would be to offer discounts or financial aid, but that entails a lot of additional work (I know, having handled financial aid last...

PyCon is organized and run by volunteers. How? The PyCon organizers are a self-selecting group. You can't make people volunteer, or make them do things they don't want to do once they have volunteered. All you can do is ask for help, and encourage people to take full ownership of their area. As the "leader" of the PyCon organizers, I was less a manager and more a cheerleader and a watcher of the "big picture". The people who helped to organize and run PyCon were doing what they chose to do, what they wanted to do. That alone provides plenty of motivation. Boiled down to the essence, the PyCon organizers all wanted a great conference, and they did whatever needed to be done to achieve that. However, we all have day jobs and lives, and some things fell through the cracks. PyCon 2008 was very ambitious, and many people put in enormous efforts. We didn't really have backups or deputies for most areas, but that's something we should consider for...

The website software and the registration system saw a complete overhaul this year, mostly implemented by Doug Napoleone. It was absolutely necessary, as we were unable to collect the data we needed previously. However, the registration system and the rest of the Django-based PyCon-Tech project is very ambitious and there's a lot left to do, and some rough edges. Brantley Harris did an initial site design. And then, when we didn't have the volunteer capacity for some much-needed further work, we bought some discounted development from Imaginary Landscape (also a PyCon sponsor). PyCon-Tech is an open-source project based on Django, and other conferences are looking into using it. Hopefully they'll contribute to it too! Of course, there's a PyCon-Tech mailing list where you can help out!

PyCon is a community conference run by volunteers, and is underwritten by the Python Software Foundation (a non-profit public charity). The PSF wants PyCon to be an accessible, affordable conference. To that end, every year PyCon is budgeted to operate at a (small) loss. But (almost) every year we have had more attendees and more sponsorship than the year before, and PyCon has always come out in the black. We're still receiving invoices and paying bills for PyCon 2008, and won't know the final results for a while yet. Any proceeds go into the PSF's general funds and are used for the good of the community. For example, in recent years, the PSF has sponsored other conferences and events: EuroPython, PyCon UK, PyCon Italia, Jornada Python en Santa Fe (Argentina), and more. Corporate Rate PyCon introduced a new, higher "corporate" registration rate (the old "regular" rate was renamed to "hobbyist"), and I was pleasantly surprised by how many at...

This year for the first time, PyCon is working with professional meeting planners. Working with Conference Technology Enhancements (CTE) has helped a lot, and I wouldn't want to go back to the old way. Without CTE's help, either PyCon would not have been able to take place in anything near its present form, or I would have lost my job and gone insane. Possibly all of the above. CTE handled the negotiations with the venue: room rates, catering, A/V, and more. Volunteers did this in the past (Jeff Rush in Dallas, Steve Holden in DC), and perhaps they enjoyed it (although I doubt it), but I wanted to have as little to do with negotiation as possible. Also, CTE continues to offer us a wealth of experience and ideas. For example, CTE originated the idea of significantly increasing the sponsorship levels while increasing our investment (in the Expo Hall, etc.), in order to properly value the conference. I couldn't imagine a conference of this size and complexity without t...

This year as in years past (especially, I think, last year), the grass-roots blogging and word of mouth served to get the PyCon word out. This year we also tried something different: professional PR. Last August Van Lindberg got in touch with Page One Public Relations , a PR firm specializing in open source companies. Page One offered their services to PyCon at a discount, and we took them up on the offer as an experiment, to promote PyCon and Python. Catherine Devlin and Van coordinated efforts with Daniel Schneider of Page One PR. Daniel wrote and distributed four press releases , but much more importantly he arranged for multiple telephone, email, and in-person interviews with reporters, resulting in at least 25 articles, podcasts, professional blog posts, and event listings (listed below). I personally took part in several telephone interviews (5 or 6), some for podcasts, others for press. We don't know how many articles may have originated with the press releases. When I ...

The budget for PyCon 2008's financial aid was several times that of 2007, and we were able to help more people come to PyCon than ever before. Over 40 people received financial aid of some form. This is a trend I'd like to see continue. Almost everyone who asked was granted aid. Only a few were turned down, either because their application was incomplete (after multiple requests for clarification) or because they requested an excessively large amount. As I stated in my opening remarks, I believe I was the recipient of the first PyCon financial aid back in 2004, PyCon's second year. I hope that this year's aid recipients were able to get a fraction as much out of PyCon as I have, and I hope they give back to the community in turn. Ted Pollari was in charge of financial aid this year. Thanks Ted! Ted could use some help next year...

We had some great conference swag this year. When the Python xkcd strip came out, the Python blogosphere exploded. It didn't take long before the idea arose -- from several people simultaneously -- to use it for the conference shirt . Ted Pollari was particularly enthusiastic and tracked down the artist to secure his permission. ( And Randall Munroe has done it again, this time in a more philosophical way. ) We decided to upgrade the conference bag this year -- it's really sharp. In addition to being attractive, it's durable, and a useful size too. I can't wait to see one in the wild, and I fully expect to. Use your bags! It's great advertizing for Python. The good people at Python Magazine worked with Van Lindberg to produce PyCon's first program guide . And is it ever slick! 60 full-color pages, a real collector's item. A special PyCon edition of the March 2008 Python Magazine was also part of the swag. And stickers! We had thousands of Pytho...

Businesses are a big part of the Python community, and sponsorship is a major way for companies to show their support and enable us to keep PyCon affordable. Sponsorship allows companies to interact with individuals, raise awareness, recruit, and even sell some product. We increased the sponsorship rates significantly this year, to bring PyCon more in line with other conferences of our size, and the sponsors responded generously and in great number. Sponsorship was at an all-time high: three times the budgeted amount. Among other effects, the exceptional response from sponsors enabled us to offer catered lunches on all four sprint days, and allowed us to record all of the scheduled talks. The results are beginning to be seen in videos published on the web. Interesting aside: the lanyard sponsorship was a very popular option; several sponsors asked about it. Next year we'll have to add a significant fee on top of the simple production costs. There was a mix-up in the timing of ...

After the lightning talks session on the afternoon of Sunday March 16 (by all accounts the best one, natch), we had an "Intro to Sprinting" talk & panel led by Brett Cannon. The talk was one of the few I actually saw (much of), and it should become an instant classic once it hits the web. This was followed by sprint tutorials, where each sprinting project went off and did introductions of various lengths. The sprint tutorials seem to have been quite successful, and were a good way to segue between the conference and the sprints (a transition which felt a bit jarring in the past). Many new sprinters learned what they needed to be productive during the sprints themselves, and many people who couldn't stay this year may have been convinced to extend their stays next year. There were over 20 projects sprinting. On the first sprint day (Monday March 17), there were over 250 people participating. There were 263 people at lunch, and I know of several who ate elsewhere; ...

Open space was under-utilized at the beginning of PyCon. It was slow on Friday, and it only really kicked into high gear on Saturday evening. I don't think it was used much at all during the day, opposite talks. The open space rooms should have been used for more follow-up sessions after talks. Next year perhaps we'll offer the scheduling of open space as a service to speakers; a debate is going on now . We had a split upstairs/downstairs venue this year, with talks in the ballrooms upstairs, and open space rooms downstairs. There wasn't an ideal place to put the open space schedule board. Upstairs it would have caused terrible bottlenecks, but downstairs (where we did put it) it wasn't "in your face" enough. In the future, no matter what the physical layout of PyCon, we need signs directing people to the different areas. It seems that another reason for the slow start may have been because many attendees didn't know exactly what open space was, or ...

(Here's the part many of you have been waiting for! ;-) We had more time for lightning talks this year than ever before: 5 hours total. I'm looking forward to seeing many of them when they show up on the web (the disadvantage of chairing PyCon is that I didn't actually get to see much). Last year we invited sponsors to give lightning talks during a special lunchtime "sponsor lightning talks" session. This year's sponsor package repeated the offer of sponsor lightning talks. We didn't have any sessions at lunch time though, because that scheduling decision had mixed reviews. Many sponsors took us up on the offer this year -- too many perhaps. It seems that 2007 was a sweet spot, with few enough sponsors that sponsor lightning talks were feasible. 2008 saw too many sponsor lightning talks, and they crowded out the attendee talks. It seems that the nature of the talks was not communicated as well as it could have been, leading to some confusion. There...