[Pycon-interest] Schedule data now available

[A.M. Kuchling]

(This is also an entry in my weblog, at
<http://www.amk.ca/diary/2006/01/pycon_schedule_data_now_availa_1>.)

One complaint at the last PyCon was that it was difficult to find out
what was going on in the Open Space sessions. The board for writing up
sessions was pretty small, so it became a traffic jam. It didn't help
that I added some of the sessions, and my handwriting is bad.

For this year, I want to do better.

The idea is to store the schedule in the Python wiki, and have a
script that parses the wiki source for this page to produce the HTML
schedule. During the conference, attendees can modify the page to
record their Open Space events. Every morning, I'll run the script to
generate an updated version of the schedule and print out a few copies
to be posted at the registration desk and elsewhere.

A bonus feature is that this will make it easy to support other
calendar formats, or to build some application on top of the schedule
data.

The master data for the schedule is on the PyCon2006/FinalSchedule
wiki page. The data is simple, a 4-column table of (room, start time,
duration, description):

|| Room || Time || Duration (min) || Content ||
|| ---|| 8:00 || 30 || Registration opens ||
|| --- || 9:00 || 90 || Plenary: GvR keynote ||
|| --- || 10:30 || 20 || Break ||

|| Ballroom A-E || 10:50 || 45 || #73 ||
|| Ballroom F-J || 10:50 || 45 || #23 ||
|| Preston Trail || 10:50 || 45 || #45 ||
|| Bent Tree || 10:50 || 45 || Open ||

The parsing script is in the Python SVN repository, in the
sandbox/pycon directory. Instructions for using the script, and links
to the ViewCVS version of the repository, are on the
PyCon2006/ScheduleData wiki page. It can output the data as HTML or as
a Python data structure.

Any volunteers to implement iCal, RDF, or XML output?

--amk