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 ...

PyCon is organized and run by volunteers from the Python community. This year we're looking for over  200 on-site volunteer hours  to help make sure everything runs smoothly. Everyone who is attending PyCon is welcome to volunteer, and all help is very  much appreciated . Thank you! Pro Tip:  Sign-up to be a Session Chair or Session Runner – it's a great opportunity to meet your Python heros! Questions?  PyCon Organizers:  pycon-organizers@python.org Volunteer Sign-up When Session Staff click  S  on the  schedule Fri - Sun Registration Desk Registration sign-up Tues - Sun Handout Swag Bags Swag handout sign-up Fri - Sat Swag Bag Stuffing Just Show Up! Thur (4 - 8pm) Stuff 10 bags! Tutorial Support Tutorial support sign-up Wed - Thurs Miscellaneous Help Miscellaneous help sign-up Tues - Sun Session Staff Volunteer:  To sign-up to be a session chair/runner: click  S  on the  schedule Session Cha...

You may have heard the news that conference tickets have sold out , but you know what’s not sold out? Tutorial tickets ! These three-hour courses are taught by Python experts and cost only $150. Take for example the “ IPython in depth: high productivity interactive and parallel python ” tutorial. Fernando Perez, creator of IPython and recipient the Free Software Foundation’s 2012 Award for the Advancement of Free Software , will walk you through the many uses of the great IPython project. IPython’s use as a shell has recently been shown off in the recently redesigned python.org , which includes an embedded version of the shell. The tutorial goes far beyond the shell’s capabilities. The graphical console goes a step beyond, offering features such as inline images, such as those generated by matplotlib. One of the most popular features of late is the notebook , providing a document-like view, combining code with results, all displayed in a browser. The high-performance features of...

Software Carpentry at PyCon On April 14 - 15, with the support of  PyCon  and  Enthought , Mozilla Science Lab will be holding our largest  Software Carpentry  workshop ever alongside PyCon at the Palais des Congrès de Montréal.  These workshops are open to everyone, not just PyCon attendees, so please let your friends and colleagues know. Software Carpentry's mission is to teach researchers in science, engineering, medicine, and other fields the concepts and skills they need to get more done with computers in less time with less pain. Our two-day workshops teach how to manage files and data better, how to automate repetitive tasks, and how to track and share work. Participants also learn how to grow a program from a few lines to a few dozen lines (or more) in a way that ensures they always know what their code is doing -- and that it's doing what they mean it to! Software Skills for Scientists and Engineers: $20 This  two-day  worksh...

After very sucessful events in Seattle and San Francisco, Startup Row we are bringing startup row to more cities for evenings of excitement and live pitching competions. Here are our next few stops: Chicago – Feb. 25th at Braintree HQ Vancouver – Feb. 26th at Facebook Montréal – March 4th at Café République Startup row is our celebration of Python entrepreneurship. Twelve selected young companies will be given both space where they will enjoy exposure and visibility on par with the other leaders of the industry. Stay tuned for more cities and remember that you can always apply online .

While attendees at PyCon have traditionally been adults, Python's use had long spread to more than adults in the workforce. Colleges have been teaching Python for years, high school students have been using Python for projects, and programming books for kids have become quite popular. In 2012 we cut the student rate in half, bringing the ticket cost down to $100 for a three-day conference. We figured this would reach out to those college students, particularly local ones, and it worked. However, we still had another group to reach: the kids. In 2013 we introduced a tutorial session for kids 12 and over called, " The Young Coder: Let's Learn Python ," taught by Barbara Shaurette and Katie Cunningham. It was an absolute hit. Barbara and Katie loved it.  The kids (and parents!) loved it . The sponsors loved it . It was so well received that the material has now been taught at other conferences, including PyOhio last summer, and this weekend at PyTennessee . If ...

Startup Row heads to San Francisco! After a very entertaining event in Seattle where 300 attendees joined us, Startup Row is heading south to San Francisco. The next Startup Row pitching contest will take place this Wednesday at Twitter headquarters. Robert Scoble is going to start off the evening with a fireside chat with David Glickman, founder of Lively. Robert and David will discuss the age of contextual computing. Lively improves the connectedness of independent living seniors with the placement of discrete sensors that share a senior's activity data with extended and distributed family members. Expect the conversation of Lively's product to veer into topics touching on Robert Scoble's most recent book the Age of Context. Then startups using Python will give pitches, competing for a booth at PyCon held this year in beautiful Montréal. In the interest of PyCon to give a chance to startups outside of the San Francisco and Silicon Valley orbit, Startup Row invi...

Although conference tickets are sold out, tutorial tickets are not. Whether you got a conference ticket or not, you’ll want to check out our tutorials, as our tutorials are perhaps one of the best values that PyCon offers. Some of the tutorial instructors are full-time educators, and some are the creators of the software they’re teaching. In any case, you’re getting expert instruction by some of the best in the community. Tutorials cost $150 each, which gets you three hours of classroom instruction, and includes a coffee break. Both Wednesday April 9 and Thursday April 10 have two sets of tutorials: a morning session and an afternoon session, split by a provided lunch. For Django Beginners Kick off Wednesday morning with Kenneth Love’s “ Getting Started with Django, a crash course .” Kenneth created a popular series of the same name, available at http://gettingstartedwithdjango.com/ , featuring video tutorials to walk you through building websites with Django. At PyCon, h...

New This Year - PyCon Dinners! Join us  Friday April 11th  at  6pm  after the first day of talks for great food, great company, and great speakers! If you're new to PyCon, this is an opportunity to make new friends early on in the conference. Both dinners have an audience participation aspect designed to get people talking; especially those new to PyCon (which was 60% of attendees last year based on the post-conference survey). And if PyCon is an annual event for you, then you already know that the conference continues with great conversations long after the talks end for the day, so pull up a chair! Note: Advance registration is required (see registration information below). PyCon Dinner Speakers Brandon Rhodes The first dinner, at the Place d'Armes Hotel, will feature Python trivia emceed by the fantastic  Brandon Rhodes . He's well-loved in the Python community for his depth of Python knowledge and sense of humor, and we're very excited to ...

PyCon 2014 is sold out! Following two sold out events in Santa Clara, CA, we're so happy to make it a third in Montréal. The talk schedule is amazing, tutorials are better than ever, posters are looking great, and all together it's shaping up to be an incredible conference. We're bringing back the 5K Charity Fun Run , Young Coder workshop, and have more events to announce. If you weren't able to get a ticket, we hope you'll explore other conference opportunities. The Python community has been growing a ton lately, and conferences are popping up all the time. Next weekend is PyData London , PyCon Philippines , and PyTennessee . DjangoCon Europe and PyCon APAC are in May. PyCon Singapore is in June. SciPy , EuroPython , and PyOhio are in July. Follow @pythonevents on twitter for an event feed, or check out a calendar on the Python wiki . Please note that there is no waiting list, and registration is closed to new registrations. If you were granted a ti...

Python Education Summit  at   PyCon 2014 The Python Education Summit is gathering of teachers and educators focused on bringing coding literacy, through Python, to as broad a group of audiences, as possible. We invite educators from all venues to consider joining the discussion, share insights, learn new techniques and tools and generally share their passion for education. We are looking for educators from many venues: authors; schools, colleges, universities; community-based workshops; online programs; and government. If you are interested in attending this summit, presenting or have questions, please contact  Naomi Ceder ,  Chalmer Lowe  or  Jessica Nickel . More information :  https://us.pycon.org/2014/events/edusummit/ Python  Education Summit -  Call for Papers Do you have a story to share on education and Python? We are actively looking for presenters for the Python Education Summit and have extended the submission deadline...

The Seattle Tech Meetup is Seattle's largest monthly technology event, and tonight it'll be a Python heavy event, thanks to the organizers turning the meetup over to PyCon Startup Row organizers Yannick Gingras and Don Sheu. Several Seattle-based startups will be presenting, including Rover.com , Big Door , EnergySavvy , Logos , and Offerup . Come learn how these companies have quickly gained traction and how Python helped them do it. Please RSVP now before space runs out: http://www.meetup.com/SeattleTechMeetup/events/159531072/

Post by: Andreas Jung We are pleased to announce that the EuroPython 2014 ticket sale will start next Wednesday, 05/02/2014 with the Early Bird ticket phase. There is a contingent of 300 tickets that will be sold to a reduced price in three categories: Business Personal Student If you are a student and want to get the student discount, please email a copy of your student identity card to  helpdesk@europython.eu  once the sale has started. An email prior the to sale start will not be considered. The requests will be processed in the order they are received.

Seattle Tech Meetup Goes Python for PyCon Startup Row As you probably recall from the original announcement , Startup Row row is our invitation to give fresh young companies the same exposure that is enjoyed by established players out there. Except startups using Python get an opportunity for booth space at PyCon's Expo Hall for free. We understand that sometimes it's hard to explain why your company is awesome when you are limited to answering questions in a web form. This is why we decided to offer some of you the opportunity to earn your way onto PyCon Startup Row with a live event! Now you'll be able to tell an audience of hundreds which problems you're solving with Python and how you're serving customers. What a great opportunity to spread the word about your startup! On February 11th, we'll be running our first startup event in Seattle thanks to the generous invitation from organizers of the Seattle Tech Meetup Brett Greene and Red Russak. Brett a...

At PyCon US 2013, it was brought to our attention by an attendee that we scheduled PyCon US in conflict with Passover in both 2014 and 2015. Obviously, this kind of scheduling error is a major failure on our part, but our response to the incident was mishandled, and we'd like to fix that now, in full view of our community. Here's what happened: Planning an event as large as PyCon requires a lot of lead time. In 2012, Python Montréal (in conjunction with Tourisme-Montréal) proposed a series of dates that were available for the conference in 2014 and 15. Nobody involved in the planning phase was mindful of the major Jewish holidays. We failed to note the conflict, and proceeded to sign multiple binding contracts for those dates, each specifying stiff financial penalties for moving or breaking the engagement. When the date conflict was brought to our attention, we frantically reached out to our contacts to see if there was any way to move the conference dates. There were n...