[python-uk] Come to PyCon UK - September 8th & 9th ! Speak! Learn! Enjoy!

[Michael Sparks]

Hi,


<spiel>
PYCON UK 2007 - FIRST PYTHON COMMUNITY CONFERENCE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

The first UK community conference for Python will be held in Birmingham on 
Saturday 8th & Sunday 9th of September 2007.

PyCon UK is the young upstart counterpart to PyCon in the US. There will be 
talks, lightning talks, tutorials, sprints and social get-togethers.

The conference is aimed at all members of the Python community, whether you're 
just starting or you dream in bytecode.

Please visit <http://www.pyconuk.org> for more information. The Booking Form 
and Talk submissions system are available now.

PyCon UK is being organised by the PyCon UK Society and Python West Midlands < 
http://www.pywm.eu >.

You can contact the PyCon UK Society at < news at pyconuk.org >.

Want to share your expertise?

PyConUK 2007 is looking for proposals to fill the formal presentation tracks. 
We will accept a broad range of presentations, from reports on academic and 
commercial projects to tutorials and case studies. As long as the 
presentation is interesting and potentially useful to the Python community, 
it will be considered for inclusion in the program. Can you show the 
conference-goers something new and useful? Can you show attendees how to: use 
a module? explore a Python language feature? package an application? Most 
talks will be within 30-60 minutes. There will also be a dedicated Lightning 
Talk session for talks no longer than five minutes.

I have never done programming before?

Do not worry, just come anyway, we are having special sessions/tutorials for 
beginners, so it is the perfect time for you to get your feet wet. Python is 
one of the easiest languages to learn, and unlike most other very high-level 
languages, you are not painting yourself into a corner, you can create web 
applications, desktop applications and bash scripts.

How expensive is this conference?

Cheap. We have made it as cheap as we can so hobbyists and students can afford 
to come. PyconUK is going to be a not for profit community conference, early 
bird rates are heavily subsidised at just £50 for the two days, and that 
includes all the extras (conference dinner, T-shirt, goodie bag and so on). 
The main cost of going to a conference is accommodation, and we have a really 
good value hotels in Birmingham, the official conference hotel is just £35 a 
night for room sleeping 3. More expensive options are available, most of the 
major hotels are within walking distance from the conference. The conference 
is slap bang in the middle of Birmingham, you just have to get to New Street 
station.
</spiel>

On a more personal note though - on behalf of the PyCon UK Society I'd like to 
properly announce the UK Python Conference. This is an affordable community 
conference taking place on 8th/9th September. The conference is fantastic 
value, especially if you take advantage of the extra early bird booking 
offer. Both new and experienced Python programmers will benefit from the 
varied programme.

Why am I posting about this? I'd personally like to invite UK pythonistas to 
come, share their knowledge with others, learn new things and hang out. It's 
a community conference, which means it has the following characteristics:

    * You can help make it amazing, by participating & speaking, by helping,
      by attending!
    * It is cheap
    * It will be fun, and accessible. We (I'm helping organise this :) )
      really want the conference to be accessible to all, from those who have
      no idea of what python is, let alone coded in it, through to those who
      are working on their upteenth bytecode hack/compiler.

Seriously though , I'm really posting about this because despite being a 
language pragmatist - ie I'll use any language that gets the job done - I'm 
largely finding that I'll use python for almost everything these days.

Community conferences are a real opportunity to dive in and help and learn and 
share. Like python itself, the conference is also platform agnostic, so 
you're welcome if you use Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, FreeBSD, or even the 
same OS as me - Linux :) .

Have fun:-)


Michael