From paul at boddie.org.uk Wed Apr 9 01:36:34 2008 From: paul at boddie.org.uk (Paul Boddie) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 01:36:34 +0200 Subject: [EuroPython-announce] EuroPython 2008: Call for Participation Message-ID: <200804090136.34690.paul@boddie.org.uk> Book Monday 7th July to Wednesday 9th July 2008 in your calendar! EuroPython 2008, the European conference for the communities around Python, including the Zope and Plone communities, will be held in Vilnius, Lithuania. Last year's conference was a great success, featuring a variety of talks, entertaining lightning talks and inspiring keynotes. With your participation, we want to make EuroPython 2008, the seventh EuroPython, even more successful than the previous six. Talks and Themes ---------------- Do you have something you wish to present at EuroPython? Perhaps you have a new application, framework or package to show off. Or perhaps you want to show people how to solve a particular kind of problem, or to describe your experiences working with different Python-oriented solutions. Previous conferences have featured a wide range of talks covering all of this, from the unveiling of software projects to coverage of relevant techniques for developing software in Python. Once again EuroPython will feature conference themes (rather than tracks, traditionally used at conferences), and these themes should help speakers to target their talks and presentations at areas of special interest to the Python community. We will then arrange them into related groups and schedule them in the space available. Here are the chosen themes for EuroPython 2008: Python Language (featuring Python 3000, Python implementations and Python packaging) Python in Action (Python projects and deployments in government, industry and beyond) Mobile Computing (Python in mobile and embedded devices) Large Scale Python (Python in research, distributed computing, scientific computing) Web Programming (Python on the Web: Zope 3, Django and everything else) Database Programming (object-relational mappers and data management techniques) User Interfaces (across or beyond the Web, the desktop and the device) Games (featuring pygame, pyglet and other game-making technologies) The deadline for talk proposals is Thursday 22nd May at midnight (24:00 CEST, Central European Summer Time, UTC+2). To propose a talk, go to... http://www.europython.org/community/Talk_Submissions ...and follow the instructions. Other Talks, Activities and Events ---------------------------------- Conferences like EuroPython don't stand still: we would like to expand the range of events featured at the conference. If you have an idea for a different kind of event than a conventional talk or presentation, we would like to hear it. Some anticipated activities of this nature include the following: * Tutorials - where you teach others about your area of expertise * Panel discussions - where you and others discuss a subject and inform the audience * Teach the presenter - where you learn from an audience of experts (and perhaps a few other beginners, too) And if your company is considering sponsoring EuroPython, why not consider proposing a sponsored event? See the sponsorship page for details: http://www.europython.org/community/Sponsorship Other Ways to Participate ------------------------- Apart from giving talks, there are plenty of other ways to participate in the conference. Just attending and talking to people you find here can be satisfying enough, but there are three other kinds of activity you may wish to plan for: Lightning Talks, Open Space and Sprints. Lightning Talks are very short talks that give you just enough time to introduce a topic or project, Open Space is an area reserved for informal discussions, and Sprints are focused gatherings for developers interested in particular projects. For more information please see the following pages: * Lightning Talks: http://www.europython.org/community/Lightning_Talks * Open Space: http://www.europython.org/community/Open_Space * Sprints: http://www.europython.org/community/Sprints Sprints will take place from Thursday 8th July until (and including) Saturday 12th July. Talk Recordings and Interviews ------------------------------ One area where EuroPython has not traditionally been strong is in the area of providing audio and video from the conference. This year, we would like to encourage volunteers to come forward and help us offer recordings of talks so that those not able to come to Vilnius might still have the chance of hearing and seeing the talks after the event. In addition, it would also be very interesting to conduct interviews of members of the Python community, allowing them to offer their insights into the conference and other related topics. For more information please see this page: http://www.europython.org/community/Audio_and_Video We intend to record talks and to make them available under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ Further Information ------------------- For more general information on the conference, please visit... http://www.europython.org/ Looking forward to seeing what you fine folk have been up to, The EuroPython Team P.S. You can help with conference publicity by publishing this announcement in your own corner of the community. Co-ordinate with the organisers here: http://www.europython.org/community/Planning/Publicity