[AstroPy] Astronomy & Astrophysics Mini-Symposium at SciPy2013

[Tom Aldcroft]

Dear colleagues,

We are planning to have an Astronomy & Astrophysics Mini-Symposium at
the SciPy2013 conference in Austin, TX in June 2013 [1].  The use of
Python for astronomy research is growing rapidly, and we have seen the
emergence of large and well-organized community efforts to develop
analysis packages for astronomy.

I'm excited to have the opportunity to organize and chair this
mini-symposium.  This is timely moment for the astronomy Python
community to get together and present what's new and exciting, as well
as to discuss and define future priorities.  This will be an evening
session taking 1.5 hours and consisting of 4 - 6 talks and some form
of open discussion.

I'd like to encourage everybody to attend SciPy2013 this year and
participate in the overall discussion.  We need viewpoints not only
from people deeply involved in development, but also newcomers and
those who are just trying to get their research done.  I also want to
specifically invite people to submit a talk or poster abstract so we
can make the mini-symposium interesting.  The abstract deadline is
March 20.

If you have questions or suggestions please contact me or post to this
list as appropriate.  Please forward this message to your colleagues
who may not be on this list.  I'm interested in ideas for discussion
topics that would be productive.  One possibility is examining some of
the large community efforts (e.g. yt, SunPy, Astropy, etc) to look for
opportunities for cross-project coordination.

Best regards,
Tom Aldcroft

[1] http://conference.scipy.org/scipy2013/