The PyCon Blog

Although conference tickets are sold out, tutorial tickets are not. Whether you got a conference ticket or not, you’ll want to check out our tutorials, as our tutorials are perhaps one of the best values that PyCon offers. Some of the tutorial instructors are full-time educators, and some are the creators of the software they’re teaching. In any case, you’re getting expert instruction by some of the best in the community.
Tutorials cost $150 each, which gets you three hours of classroom instruction, and includes a coffee break. Both Wednesday April 9 and Thursday April 10 have two sets of tutorials: a morning session and an afternoon session, split by a provided lunch.
For Django Beginners
Kick off Wednesday morning with Kenneth Love’s “Getting Started with Django, a crash course.” Kenneth created a popular series of the same name, available at http://gettingstartedwithdjango.com/, featuring video tutorials to walk you through building websites with Django. At PyCon, he’ll take his exten…

PyCon 2014 is sold out!

Following two sold out events in Santa Clara, CA, we're so happy to make it a third in Montréal. The talk schedule is amazing, tutorials are better than ever, posters are looking great, and all together it's shaping up to be an incredible conference. We're bringing back the 5K Charity Fun Run, Young Coder workshop, and have more events to announce.

If you weren't able to get a ticket, we hope you'll explore other conference opportunities. The Python community has been growing a ton lately, and conferences are popping up all the time. Next weekend is PyData London, PyCon Philippines, and PyTennessee. DjangoCon Europe and PyCon APAC are in May. PyCon Singapore is in June. SciPy, EuroPython, and PyOhio are in July. Follow @pythonevents on twitter for an event feed, or check out a calendar on the Python wiki.

Please note that there is no waiting list, and registration is closed to new registrations. If you were granted a ticket by financial aid or …

At PyCon US 2013, it was brought to our attention by an attendee that we scheduled PyCon US in conflict with Passover in both 2014 and 2015.

Obviously, this kind of scheduling error is a major failure on our part, but our response to the incident was mishandled, and we'd like to fix that now, in full view of our community.

Here's what happened:

Planning an event as large as PyCon requires a lot of lead time. In 2012, Python Montréal (in conjunction with Tourisme-Montréal) proposed a series of dates that were available for the conference in 2014 and 15. Nobody involved in the planning phase was mindful of the major Jewish holidays. We failed to note the conflict, and proceeded to sign multiple binding contracts for those dates, each specifying stiff financial penalties for moving or breaking the engagement.

When the date conflict was brought to our attention, we frantically reached out to our contacts to see if there was any way to move the conference dates. There were no free …

If you’re coming to PyCon, which takes place in Montréal, Quebec, Canada from April 9 through 17, you need a passport if you are a US citizen. If you’re coming to PyCon from any other country, you already needed a passport, but you probably already knew that :)
This wasn’t always the case, as Americans and Canadians used to cross the border with ease. I once had delicious ice cream at Twist o’ the Mist in Niagara Falls, NY after a day on the Canadian side, and it was delicious, and I didn’t have a passport. However, on June 1, 2009, the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was enacted, making it a requirement that a passport must be shown to enter the United States, which in turn made it a requirement to have a passport to enter Canada.
If you are traveling by air between the US and Canada: you need a passport book.If you are traveling by land between the US and Canada: you can have a passport book or a passport card.If you are traveling by sea between the US and Canada: you can have a …

PyCon 2014has released the schedule oftalks,tutorials, andpostersfor the April conference in Montréal, Quebec, Canada. The conference begins with two days of tutorials on Wednesday April 9 and 10, followed by three days of talks from Friday April 11 through 13, and ending with four days of sprints through April 17. The event will mark the first time the Python community's main conference travels outside of the US, following two sold-out events in 2012 and 2013 in Santa Clara, California. The tutorial schedule this year came from yet another large pool of submissions, with proposals covering a broad range of subjects. The selections represent an effort to offer both a mix of subjects covering a wide scope of expertise. Once again there are offerings for beginners through experts, including a tutorial for those with no Python knowledge whatsoever. With a group of presenters including several full-time educators, experienced trainers, and community leaders, the $150 cost per four-hour…

Registration for our tutorials is open and ready for signups! If you're ready to sign up, head to https://us.pycon.org/2014/registration/ and get started.

The tutorials take place April 9 and 10, the two days preceding the conference, with four opportunities to learn from some of the Python community's best teachers. Each day has two sessions; a morning and an afternoon offering, split by lunch, with each of the sessions having a short snack break. The cost is $150 per session, which is a steal when you look at who is teaching these classes.

This year we have a good mix of full time trainers, experienced presenters, and a couple of first time tutorial givers. The amount of experience we have on stage teaching these classes all in one space is hard to top. All together, it makes for a wide selection of topics that we hope the community finds beneficial.

If you're interested in learning about popular web frameworks, we have tutorials on Django, Pyramid, web2py, and Flask. If da…

We're bringing the 5K Charity Fun Run back! Last year we had 200 people join us to raise nearly $5,200, split between the American Cancer Society and NumFOCUS, on behalf of the late John Hunter. This year's first beneficiary is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF. John Perry Barlow, one of the EFF's co-founders, will be delivering a keynote during the conference!

The run happens Saturday April 12 at 7 AM, beginning near the Montreal Science Center. The event is open to people of all abilities. We've had people come out for a morning stroll, people who train for ultra marathons, and several people have used the event as a way to get back in shape via the Couch to 5K program.

The run is being sponsored by Lapio, who run the signups and time tracking for the event. Check out https://app.lap.io/event/2014-pycon-5k-charity-fun-run and get signed up today!

Just a quick reminder: Applications for our Financial Aid program are due on January 1, 2014. As long as it's the first of the year somewhere in the world, we'll be accepting applications!

Check out our previous post about how the application works and what financial aid is for. We're looking forward to evaluating all of the applications and notifying recipients by January 15, 2014.

Happy New Year from the PyCon organizers!

The wait is over: selections for PyCon 2014's talks, tutorials, and posters are now available! It took a lot of effort from a lot of people to review another record breaking year of submissions, but once again, the result is a stunning set of presentations.


Both the tutorial list and schedule are now available, with tutorial registration expected to be available later this week (we'll post/tweet when it's up). The 36 slots available on the schedule were filled from 71 proposals, making up yet another set of courses to get beginners started, and to help each type of Python user level up their skill set. The tutorials take place Wednesday April 9 through 10, and the schedule is comprised of morning and afternoon sessions over those two days. Each tutorial costs $150 and gets you three-hours of teaching and includes a 20 minute snack break.

The list of accepted posters is also available. Taking place on Sunday April 13, the poster session is a great event for both presenters an…

On Monday, we announced the first two keynote speakers for PyCon 2014: Python's creator Guido van Rossum and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, John Perry Barlow. We're happy to announce that Van Lindberg, Jessica McKellar, and Fernando Perez will be joining them in the morning keynote slots!

Van Lindberg
Van brings a unique background to the keynote stage, being both a technologist and a lawyer. He currently serves as the Python Software Foundation's chairman, and he's Vice President of Intellectual Property at Rackspace. In 2008 he authored Intellectual Property and Open Source: A Practical Guide to Protecting Code, and in 2010-11 he served as the chairman of the Atlanta PyCons. He'll be giving the chairman's address, talking about the Python Software Foundation and Python community as a whole.
Jessica McKellar
Jessica serves on the PSF's board of directors with Van, is an entrepreneur and open source developer, and leads the hugely successful …