[Baypiggies] Reminder: Early Bird Registration for PyCon Ending Soon

[wesley chun]

the co-chair of PyCon wishes to remind folks to register by the
deadline coming up this weekend.

hope to see you all there!
-wesley


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jeff Rush <jeff at taupro.com>
Date: Jan 11, 2007 5:41 AM

Greetings.  As co-chair for the upcoming volunteer-run conference in the
Dallas (Addison) area I would like to extend a *special* invitation to those
just getting started with Python.  PyCon is not just for the experts and this
year we are making a special effort to reach out to those new to or curious
about Python.

The event is the fifth international Python Conference, being held Feb 23-25,
2007 at the Marriott-Quorum in Addison, with early-bird registration ending
*Jan 15*.

The conference draws approximately 400-500 attendees from diverse backgrounds
such as scientists from national and medical labs, college/K-12 educators, web
engineers and the myriad of IT developers and programming hobbyists.

Those new to the Python language are welcome, and we're offering a half-day
"Python 101" tutorial in the morning as well as a "Code Like a Pythonista:
Idiomatic Python" tutorial in the afternoon, on the day before the conference,
Thursday Feb 22.  This pair of tutorials is designed to help you get up to
speed and better enjoy the rest of the conference.

Other talks that may be of special interest to new Python programmers are:

  - Iterators in Action
  - Good-bye Hello World, Rethinking Teaching with Python
  - Easy Creation of Interactive Tutorials
  - pyweek: make games in 7 days
  - Developing Python Applications in Komodo 4.0
  - Tutorial: How to Document a Python Open Source Project

Being run by the Python community as a non-profit event, the conference
strives to be inexpensive, with registration being only $260 (or $195 if you
register prior to Jan 15th), with a further discount for students.  On the day
before the conference we are running the full day of classroom tutorials
(extra charge per class) and then after the conference is a free four-days of
sprints, which are informal gatherings of programmers to work together in
coding on various projects.  Sprints are excellent opportunities to do agile
pair-programming side-by-side with experienced programmers and make new friends.

Other activities are lightning talks, which are 5-minute presentations to show
off a cool technology or spread the word about a project, open space talks,
which are spontaneous gatherings around a topic and, new this year, a Python
Lab where experienced and novice programmers will work together to solve
challenging problems and then present their solutions.

The conference is also running four keynote talks by leaders in the
programming field, with a special focus on education this year:

   "The Power of Dangerous Ideas: Python and One Laptop per Child"
      by Ivan Krstic, senior member of the One Laptop per Child project

   "Premise: eLearning does not Belong in Public Schools"
      by Adele Goldberg, of SmallTalk fame

   "Python 3000"
      by Guido van Rossum, creator of Python

   "The Importance of Programming Literacy"
      by Robert M. "r0ml" Lefkowitz, a frequent speaker at O'Reilly conferences

I believe you will find the conference educational and enjoyable. More
information about the conference along with the full schedule of presentations
with abstracts, is available online:

   http://us.pycon.org/

Thanks for any help you can give in spreading the word,

Jeff Rush
Co-Chair PyCon 2007

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Core Python Programming", Prentice Hall, (c)2007,2001
    http://corepython.com

wesley.j.chun :: wescpy-at-gmail.com
python training and technical consulting
cyberweb.consulting : silicon valley, ca
http://cyberwebconsulting.com