The PyCon US Blog

Hi everyone, I'm happy to announce that on the 26th and 27th of June we are running PyCon Australia in Sydney!   http:// pycon -au.org/ We are looking for proposals for Talks on all aspects of Python programming from novice to advanced levels; applications and frameworks, or how you have been involved in introducing Python into your organisation. We welcome first-time speakers; we are a community conference and we are eager to hear about your experience. If you have friends or colleagues who have something valuable to contribute, twist their arms to tell us about it! Please also forward this Call for Proposals to anyone that you feel may be interested. To find out more go to the official Call for Proposals page here:   http:// pycon -au.org/2010/ conference/proposals/ The deadline for proposal submission is the 29th of April. Proposal acceptance will be announced on the 12th of May. See you in Sydney in June! Richard Jones PyCon AU Program Chair...

Early Bird Registration and Tutorial Registration is open for PyCon APAC 2010, happening at Singapore . The Early Bird Registration will end by April 2010. Don't miss this opportunity to meet some of the wonderful Pythonistas coming from all around the world. Sincerely, Liew Beng Keat, Maurice Ling and  PyCon APAC Organizing Committee

PyOhio's Call for Proposals has been released! PyOhio , the third annual Python conference for Ohio and surrounding regions, takes place July 31 - August 1, 2010 in Columbus, OH. Proposal submissions are due May 10. See you in Columbus!

PyCon 2010 had a poster session for the first time ever. Out of 19 original submissions, 17 actually presented posters, covering topics from testing and clouds to Unicode and robotics. The poster session was a plenary session, running from 10:05 to 11:55 am on Sunday morning in the expo hall. Snack service was also in the expo hall at the same time. The cost of doing the poster session was relatively low. We used eleven poster boards at $70 each, so the total outlay was under $800. Overall, it went well. The room was very full and active for most of the time, with things only tailing off the last 15-20 minutes. I chatted with all but one of the presenters, and they all felt it was very successful. Some liked the ability to reach more people than a regular talk might have, and others were happy to have a way to present at PyCon without the public speaking pressure of a regular talk. From my conversations with the attendees, many enjoyed the chance to circulate through a diverse set of t...

We are about 16 hours away from the official beginning of PyCon 2010 in Atlanta, and there are already news to talk about. First, this from Alex Gaynor: I'm very pleased to announce The Ultimate PyCon Live stream: http://pycon.djangodose.com/ . Eric Florenzano, Brian Rosner, Greg Newman, and I have been working on putting together the best possible feed of everything that happens at PyCon, throughout the conference we'll be aggregating and streaming all the news about PyCon on Twitter, photos on Flickr, upcoming talks and uploaded slides, commits on BitBucket and GitHub (on specified repositories), and announcements via IRC. We hope you enjoy it! ...I will be talking all about the building of this in my talk, and we're looking forward to open sourcing it. Next, we have (on request) a PyCon mailing list for "the non-twittering classes." The mailing list at pycon@python.org will be dedicated to attendees for exchanging tips, opinions, open space announcments, meet...

If you have been looking over the PyCon schedule while packing your bags this weekend, you might have noticed that — besides flat-out offering more talks than any PyCon in world history — this year's schedule has a really interesting feature: the start of lunch time is “staggered”, with some talks ending just after noon at 12:15, and others ending fifteen minutes later at 12:30. The talks that start right after lunch are similarly staggered across fifteen minutes, starting either at 1:20 or 1:35. Just take a look at the schedule and search for the word “lunch”: http://us.pycon.org/2010/conference/schedule/ If you have ever been at a conference where you had to stand in an enormous line as everyone at the conference tried to get lunch simultaneously, then you probably have an idea about why we are excited about this change! With this staggered arrangement, there should be a shorter line for lunch, since the conference-goers will arrive in two waves. But the real win is that, for ...

With approximately 18 hours to go before the end of pre-conference registration, PyCon officially has 1000 registrants. Pre-conference rates are still good while it is Feb. 10th somewhere in the world, so REGISTER NOW! Even if you have already registered, we have been able to get bigger rooms for three of our most popular tutorials: Python 102: Intermediate Python Python 301: The Meaty Parts of Python , and the Django Deployment Workshop If you were not able to get into these tutorials, we have a few more slots open. Finally for those who are currently digging out from under yet another snowstorm, I also point out that PyCon 2010 will be in Atlanta, making it an ideal location for those looking for a way to escape the late winter blizzards in the northeastern United States.

The Long Count calendar developed by ancient Mayan astronomers predicts that the end of PyCon 2010 Online Registration falls on February 10, 2010 - this very day! Although experts differ on what will happen next, many warn of catastrophic results for those who fail to register for PyCon immediately, such as the expense and hassle of registering onsite. In other words, this is the day . If you are still waiting for employer approval to attend the world's biggest Python event, it may be time to invoke this important principle of dynamic language programming: EAFP Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. This common Python coding style assumes the existence of valid keys or attributes and catches exceptions if the assumption proves false. This clean and fast style is characterized by the presence of many try and except statements. The technique contrasts with the LBYL style common to many other languages such as C.

Incredible though it seems, PyCon tutorials start a week tomorrow! If you are planning to attend and want to register at pre-conference prices you have just over 24 hours to do so! PyCon is the place to learn about new and existing Python features and meet Python personalities. Register now while you still have chance to save money!

We are just a couple weeks away from PyCon 2010. We are making final preparations, and getting ready to travel and setup what will be an exciting conference. We have a few notices, and some exciting news. For those who are looking for a job, we have a bunch of sponsors who will be recruiting at PyCon this year. We will be sending out a pre-conference email soon with more details. However, start polishing off your resume for PyCon. As a reminder, the last day for pre-conference registration rates is this coming Wednesday, February 10th (actually, 6AM Thursday, US - EST. That is the last time when it is February 10th somewhere in the world).To lock in your conference rates before they go to the on-site rate level, make sure you visit the registrations page at https://us.pycon.org/2010/register/ before then. The on-line hotel registrations are closed, but you can still make hotel reservations at the conference rate by calling the housing bureau at +1-847-759-4277, or emailing pyco...

Every year it takes an army of volunteers to help out at the conference to make everything happen smoothly. Many hands make light work (and all that.) This year we have expanded the program to have 5 tracks. This means we are desperate for Session Staff . The Session Staff are a group of volunteers whom work with the presenters to make sure the talks run smoothly. The work is not hard, and it is a fantastic opportunity to meet with amazing people. We have Session Chairs and Session Runners . Chairs sit in the conference room and make sure nothing blows up, and the runners run around pretending that nothing has blown up; acting as the legs for the chairs. Everyone has two-way radios . (What geek can resist that!?!?!?! What IS the air speed of an unladen swallow presenter? A session runner knows the answer, and is more than willing to share...) Volunteering is easy and there are a ton of open spots on the schedule . Just look for talks which do not yet have both the little clip board...

Startup Riot is a one-day conference taking place in Atlanta on Feb. 17. If you have an interest in business startups - and can pull yourself away from PyCon's first tutorial day - it might be a perfect opportunity to make a trip to Atlanta do double-duty. Startup Riot takes place at the Fabulous Fox Theatre, just down the street from PyCon. View Larger Map

Thanks to Doug Napoleone, PyCon's online schedule application is now online. Picking among all the amazing possibilities at PyCon is incredibly hard, but the online scheduler at least helps you keep track of what you've decided. If you get confused, scheduler help is here . You can (and should) also use the scheduler to volunteer as session staff ! Session staffing is an easy but important job that helps the conference runs smoothly, lets you meet the speakers you're most interested in, and gives you that open-sourcey pride of ownership in your PyCon.

As has been mentioned before , this year we're adding a poster session to PyCon. For 90 minutes on Sunday, Feb 21, 18 presenters will be answering questions and receiving input from PyCon attendees on posters covering a wide range of topics. Posters are suited to interactively presenting new ideas and more specialized projects, allowing people a chance to browse the whole range and to stop and spend more time on the ones they find interesting. If you want to start thinking about which posters you definitely don't want to miss, visit http://us.pycon.org/2010/conference/posters/accepted/ and start making your picks. As for me, my "don't miss" list is here , and covers Unicode, DVCS in the classroom, robots and more. Which ones will be on your "don't miss" list?

The END is NEAR!* (*the end of early bird registration for PyCon 2010.) Register now! Registration at the early bird rate is still good as long as it is January 6 somewhere in the world.

Early-bird registration discounts end TOMORROW (Wednesday, Jan. 6). Register now .

The early bird deadline for PyCon 2010 is January 6th. Have you registered yet? There are only a couple more days!

PyCon has arranged a special incentive for .NET programmers registering for PyCon. (Of course, all attendees are eligible for the promotion - but it will have a special interest for those in the .NET world.) Please pass the notice on to .NET programmers you know. We'd like to see new legions of .NET users introduced to the joys of IronPython! * * * * * .NET's Dynamic Language Runtime has brought new prominence to the role of .NET dynamic languages like IronPython, and many .NET programmers are looking for ways to get up-to-date on this growing aspect of the .NET environment. PyCon, the world's largest conference of Python and IronPython programmers, is an unparalleled learning opportunity. For $450 or less, attendees can spend an entire week learning from and working with Python and IronPython programmers from raw beginners to the creators of Python and IronPython themselves. This year, PyCon offers a bonus to .NET programmers - a free one-year subscription to CODE mag...

It seems that I missed Jesse Noller's contribution: jessenoller.com: PyCon 2010: Talks I want to see; Keynotes, registration open: I thought I’d share the talks I’m pretty jazzed about, as well as some other bits of PyCon-related news. First up – early bird registration is open – early bird reg nets you a decent discount on registration fees for PyCon, and will run until January 6th. Next – for those of you who didn’t see the news, Mark Shuttleworth will also be doing a Keynote at PyCon – this is awesome news. I think both keynotes, his and Antonio Rodriguez’ will be great. I don’t want to speak as to the content just yet – but with two high caliber entrepreneurs/founders, I’m dead sure it will be awesome. As for the talks I want to see – well, this is criminally difficult. I pretty much want to see almost every single invited talk we have (I’m especially excited about Alex’s, Jack’s, Joe’s and Ned’s talks. I think our invited speakers this year will be very, very popular. ...

The deadline for getting early-bird pricing at PyCon is coming up ( register by January 6! ), and people are starting to see just how great the schedule is for this year's PyCon. From around the web: PyOraGeek: PyCon pre-favorites : When I look over the PyCon 2010 talk list , I'd like to be at about half of them (a physical impossibility, until I master self-multiplexing). Still, these are the ones that I'll move heaven and earth to be at. What about you - what are your favorites? Click through for the whole list, but Catherine highlights (among others) Extending Java Applications with Jython ... IronPython Tooling ... Python in the Browser .... and others, and then ends with the magnificent: An Underwater Python: Tortuga the Python Powered Robot because, deep down inside, people everywhere are the same; we all want to be loved, and Python-powered robot submarines . Carl Trachte then weighs in: pyright: PyCon pre-favorites, the Carl T. edition : These are my picks (not ...