The PyCon US Blog

While the cost of PyCon includes breakfast and lunch as well as coffee and snacks, dinner is on your own, and for good reason. It's Montréal! Get out and enjoy the city, find some good food and drink, and hang out with new groups of people. To make it even easier, this year we've organized another series of PyCon Dinners , one led by Jessica McKellar and one by Brandon Rhodes. These events are a great way to wrap up the first day of PyCon, taking place Friday April 10 at 6 PM, with a great three course meal with new and old friends. As 60% of attendees surveyed last year stated it was their first PyCon, these dinners are a great way to kick off the weekend and make new connections and setup plans for more dinners or other late night festivities. Jessica is a director of the Python Software Foundation and has been instrumental in outreach efforts around the Python community, especially when it comes to PyCon. She's also a contributor to Twisted and has worked a lot with ...

We are pleased to announce the speakers/talks for the   2015 Python Education Summit , held during   PyCon  on Thursday   April 9th, 2015 , is a 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. Talk Schedule Please take a look at the full list of talks .   If you are interested in joining us please visit our  registration page . We hope to see you there! Note:   All Scheduled Speakers are eligible for 'Early Bird pricing' for attendance at PyCon.  Two Rounds of Lightning Talks In addition to the scheduled talks, we will have two ...

Never tried sprinting at PyCon? Try it this year! As long as there has a been a PyCon, the sprints have been part of it. This year the grand tradition of sprinting will continue with an ever growing list of projects taking advantage of the venue and the right-after-PyCon timing to come together and write some serious code. Sprints have always welcomed newcomers, because both sides benefit - the projects gain from fresh eyes and brains, and the new sprinters usually find that they gain enormous insights into a particular problem or library, into Python, and even into coding in general. While sprinting has always been a great thing to try, this year we're adding some features to make it an even better experience for first time sprinters. First of all, we'll be holding an "Intro to Sprinting" workshop on Sunday night before the sprints start. Presented by the folks from Open Hatch, this session will help bring you up to speed on what to expect while sprint...

We're once again excited to offer our free tutorials for kids! Called " The Young Coder: Let's Learn Python ", we invite kids 12 and over to join us for a day of learning how to program using Python.  We first offered the Young Coders tutorial at PyCon 2013 in Santa Clara and it was an immediate hit. The followup blog post from that event is the most popular post in our blog's history. Kids came from all over to attend it. One flew from South Africa and helped teach other kids. I gave my laptop to a girl who took the tutorial and wanted to attend Richard Jones' PyGame tutorial the next day. Overall, it was so awesome to see kids so excited about learning, about computers, and about Python. Last year, our second year offering the tutorial and our first year in Montréal, the tutorial was offered both in French and English. We're going to be offering the same this year: a French version of the tutorial will take place on Saturday April 11 , and an Englis...

A guest post by  Geek Girls Carrots . Django Carrots – PyCon Edition  is a one-day, intensive, free programming workshop for anyone who wants to learn how to code. When:  Monday April 13th , at  PyCon 2015 Where:  Palais de Congres  in Montreal More information:  Workshop description Cost: Free! Organized by  Geek Girls Carrots  (GGC), the Django Carrots curriculum emphasizes individual contact between the student and mentor (before, during and after the workshop), a horizontal structure (students learn from mentors but also from each other), and sharing general knowledge about communities, organization and internet resources to help our participants after the workshop. How can I sign up? ​Please fill out this  registration form .  Registration is open from February 2nd to March 1st . Everyone who registered should get a response before March 5th. You do not need a ticket for PyCon to attend the Django Carrots wo...

Each July, the launch of the upcoming year's conference website is a huge moment for the PyCon team and community. It's a beacon to everyone that another PyCon is on the way, and a sign that the various teams that shape the event are already hard at work to prepare for it. For yet another year, we have a beautiful site in front of us: https://us.pycon.org/2015 , designed and implemented by long time sponsor Caktus Group . As with years past, the site is built on Django and Symposion, a conference management framework in use by several conferences in the Python community and otherwise. Caktus' prior involvement with that combination of technologies meant "we were able to concentrate on bug fixes and small features that make a big difference to the conference organizers," according to Rebecca Muraya, Caktus' lead developer on the PyCon 2015 site. Having been around the block with that stack has resulted in a higher quality site, and left more time to spend on ...

A guest post by  Django Girls . Django Girls  is a non-profit organization that organizes free, one-day workshops to teach women who have never programmed before how to build their first web application using Python, Django, HTML and CSS. You are invited to the  PyCon 2015 Django Girls Workshop  on  April 9th , just before  PyCon 2015  starts, at the  Palais de Congres  in Montreal. As a Django Girls workshop attendee, you will be provided a free ticket to PyCon which takes place from  April 10th to  April 12th , so you can dive deeper into the wonderful world of programming and get to know our amazing community. You don’t need to have any programming experience - All you need to do is bring your laptop and your motivation to learn. You will work at your own pace in groups of 4 (3 attendees and one coach) Your coach will walk you through the Django Girls tutorial ( http://tutorial.djangogirls.org ) If you would like ...

The wait is over: PyCon 2015's schedule is available! The tutorial schedule has been available for several weeks now, and we made poster selections a while back as well, but we've completed the biggest part: scheduling 95 talks across three days in five rooms. https://us.pycon.org/2015/schedule/ It takes a lot of people to come up with this schedule, starting with those of you who submitted the 542 talk proposals we received. PyCon has always been a "what you make of it" sort of event, with so many people to talk to and things to do that it'd be hard to replicate the same experience twice, and that starts with these proposals. Thank you to everyone who submitted proposals this year. Another huge year for submissions means another great crew of volunteers gave a lot of their time to evaluate them. As with all things PyCon, a mixture of returning veterans worked with a set of first-timers, giving a lot of different viewpoints to bring us to this schedule. L...

A guest post by Stephen Jacobs . How many of you would be interested in a Friday night Passover Seder at PyCon? PyCon  overlaps this year with an eight day-long Jewish holiday ( Passover ) that commemorates the Biblical exodus of Egypt. For those of you who’ve never been to one, a  Seder  is a table-side, family run service with a period of story and prayer, a big meal and a shorter wrap up section interspersed with song and wine. The Seder is a teaching service, so you don’t need to know what to do before you get there. Non-Jews welcome :-) If we went forward with this, we’d try to hold it at the Hyatt (walking distance from the  Palais Du Congress ). It would be more expensive than the other  PyCon Dinners  (Kosher food and wine for the Seder raises the price considerably). A similar one held in San Francisco a few years ago ran about $80 a head, and that had sponsors defraying the costs. We can’t set it up, or cost it out, until we know how ma...

While PyCon has some of the more affordable ticket prices around, at rates that haven't changed in a million years, a lot of other expenses go into conferences. For a lot of our attendees, travel and hotel costs add up. For that reason, we offer financial aid! When we include all types of attendees - tutorial, conference, and expo - there were 2660 people registered for something at PyCon 2014. Around 715 of them registered at the hobbyist rate and 185 at student rate, together comprising a third of our delegation as people paying their own way. Even some at our corporate rate end up footing the bill beyond their entry ticket. While some of them may be local, a significant majority of our attendees have to travel and stay in a hotel. When you look at where everyone's coming from, 10% of our attendees are from one of 50 countries outside of the US and Canada. Last year, 14 people came from literally the other side of the world: Australia. That's not a cheap flight. If...

The Third Annual  Python Education Summit , held during  PyCon  on Thursday  April 9th 2015 , is coming together. We are gathering some excellent talk ideas (click here to see some of the proposed talks). Thanks to those who have summited talks so far. As with any event, the Education Summit can't be pulled off alone, so we are asking for volunteers. Some of the roles that you can help with include: Keynote Speaker Team : help us identify and invite Keynote speakers(s) Call for Proposal Manager : help us support the call for proposal process (answer questions, process submissions, etc) Emcee : help emcee for our second track in the afternoon Publicity Rep(s) : support us in advertising via the twitters/facebooks/etc Ushers/go-fers : help ensure that the actual event runs smoothly If you would like to help,  please contact  Chalmer Lowe  or  Jessica Nickel .  NOTE : Even if your schedule doesn't allow you to support through volu...

Tutorials Schedule After a busy few months of competitive reviews, the tutorials team within our program committee has completed their process and have come up with an awesome schedule… ta da!  https://us.pycon.org/2015/schedule/tutorials/ Led by Stuart Williams and Ruben Orduz, a fantastic team came together to shape this schedule, including Carol Willing, Ian Cordasco, Harry Percival, Allen Downey, Richard Jones, and Kenneth Love. Thanks to everyone for their efforts, both in reviewing and in submitting! Register for Tutorials On April 8 & 9, the two days preceding the conference talk dates, attendees have an opportunity to attend up to four different tutorials. Each day offers both a morning and afternoon session, each providing three hours of learning split by a snack break, with lunch in between the sessions. Our instructors come from a variety of backgrounds, including full time educators or trainers, authors, domain experts, and in a lot of cases, they've cre...

A guest post by  Chalmer Lowe . PyCon 2015 Education Summit The  Python Education Summit , held during  PyCon  on Thursday  April 9th 2015 , 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  Chalmer Lowe  or  Jessica Nickel . Invitations are subject to availability. Education Summit - Call for Proposals Do you have a story to share on education and Python? We are actively looking for presenters for the Python Education Summit and have extend...

We are now down to the final 50 discounted tickets, and we expect them to sell pretty quickly! If you buy now, you can save up to 25% on corporate tickets or 15% on individual tickets. Student tickets are $25 off if you buy early, coming in at just $100. After these 800 early bird tickets are sold we'll be onto the regular rates, and we're expecting our fourth consecutive sell out. Don't wait too long or you may miss out. See  https://us.pycon.org/2015/registration/ for all of our registration details and buy your tickets today! Our program committee is wrapping up the talk and tutorial selections, which we're hoping to have available soon, with the schedule to follow.

Some people love the stuff that goes on before PyCon, and with good reason. The tutorials are probably the best tech training value around, the language summit and education summit (my baby!) are amazing chances to connect with the movers and shakers, and the young coder sessions are exploding with energy and learning. So if you find yourself showing up at PyCon earlier and earlier each year, who could blame you? But as cool as the pre-conference stuff is, we all know the main conference is even better. So many quality talks that everyone wants to be in at least two places at once the entire time, the keynotes, the lightning talks, the expo hall, the posters, not to mention the open spaces, hallway track, parties, dinners, and lunches. It just goes on and on. So it's no wonder that by the time Sunday afternoon rolls around everyone is a bit overloaded. People start filtering out, to catch planes, drive home, etc., and by Sunday evening things are definitely much sparser, and on M...

We're coming up on the end of our call for poster proposals! After the sugar rush of Halloween on October 31 (you all eat the candy right away, right?), poster proposals are due as long as it's November 1 somewhere in the world. Since their start in Atlanta, the poster session has grown to be a key part of the conference, and we look forward to another successful run in 2015. If you ask me, the poster session is one of the best parts of PyCon. I presented a poster on two PSF initiatives (sprints and outreach) back in 2012 and had a great time sharing those committees, talking with people about what they were doing, how they could get involved, and a lot more. It was a great medium to make that presentation because it took attendees from being passive participants to active in the direction of what we talked about every few minutes. For more information on the poster session, see our Call for Proposals ! Registration Early bird ticket sales are just over 50% sold out! If...

Last week we wrapped up another great call for talks and tutorials , leading to a ton of excellent proposals for our Program Committee to work through in order to shape the PyCon 2015 schedule. I can already tell that it's going to be a great one; another one of those years where we could make several full conference schedules out of this body of proposals. Tutorials Tutorials saw a 40% increase in proposals, up to 99 submissions. This is the biggest jump I've seen, as tutorial proposal numbers have been relatively steady over the years, with small rises or falls here or there. This shouldn't come as a surprise given the growth of Python's use in education, both institutionally and otherwise. We've always gotten a bunch of full-time educators interested in sharing their knowledge with the Python community, and we're getting more. The majority of instructors, however, come from outside of academia, with everything from book authors to project creators being ...

Today is the day! As long as a clock tells you it's Monday September 15 somewhere on earth, submissions for PyCon 2015 talks and tutorials will be accepted. If you're submitting a poster, that deadline is November 1. CFP details:  https://us.pycon.org/2015/speaking/cfp/ Dashboard (where you submit):  https://us.pycon.org/2015/dashboard/ CFP announcement post:  http://pycon.blogspot.com/2014/08/pycon-2015-call-for-proposals-is-open.html Go for it!

Last chance! This weekend is your last chance to submit a  talk  or  tutorial  proposal for  PyCon 2015 ! The deadline is end of day  September 15, 2014 . To submit a proposal,  create an account , head to your  PyCon dashboard , fill out a  speaker bio , and then  submit your proposal . We've put together  proposal resources ,  advice , and a  sample proposal  to help answer some common topics surrounding our  call for proposals . Submit a Proposal  Financial Aid PyCon gives out over $100,000 in  financial aid  each year, with preference given to those speaking at PyCon, so please don't let money stop you from submitting a proposal! Apply for Financial Aid  Childcare PyCon is also proud to be offering subsidized  childcare  for the second year in the row! High staff ratios have been arranged so that all children will get exceptional personalized care. ...