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

[Jeff Rush]

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