PyCon Australia 2015 News

Farewell from Brisbane

Mon, 17 Aug 2015 22:29:38 +1000

It's time to say goodbye from Brisbane!

Thank you to everyone who helped make this conference happen, the team, the volunteers, the sponsors, the speakers, the papers team, our Miniconf organisers, our partners and of course our attendees.

Almost all of our videos have been uploaded and linked to the schedule (a couple of videos need some manual handling).

We hope that you've enjoyed yourself, learnt a lot, and made new friends: welcome to the community. You don't have to wait till the next conference to have that feeling again, if there isn't a user group in your home town, consider starting your own.

Roll on PyCon Australia 2016 in Melbourne!

Teacher assistance program

Fri, 24 Jul 2015 17:42:15 +1000

As part of Carrie Anne Philbin’s keynote announcement last week, we also announced the availability of financial assistance grants for qualified primary and secondary teachers wishing to attend the Python in Education Miniconf on July 31st.

Teachers that are interested in attending the Python in Education Miniconf, but face financial barriers to doing so, are strongly encouraged to apply for financial assistance.

These grants are made possible by the generous contributions of the Python Software Foundation and Code Club Australia, and are designed to make it easier for teachers to justify attending an education focused event hosted by a software development conference. As such, teachers may apply not only for assistance with registration, travel, and accommodation costs as described for the regular financial assistance program, but also a contribution of up to $360 towards the costs of hiring a substitute teacher for the day.

Keynote Speaker: Carrie Anne Philbin

Mon, 13 Jul 2015 16:17:55 +1000

Following on from 2014's inspirational keynote advocating Python for Every Child in Australia as part of the rollout of the Australian Digital Curriculum, this year sees PyCon Australia playing host to its first ever Python in Education miniconf. As part of that event, we are thrilled to announce our second PyCon Australia 2015 keynote speaker: Carrie Anne Philbin, Education Pioneer at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, chair of the UK's Computing at School's #include initiative, author of "Adventures in Raspberry Pi", and a member of the Board of Directors for the Python Software Foundation.

As an award winning secondary Computing & ICT teacher, Carrie Anne is a vocal advocate for the merits of Python as an educational tool, and brings to PyCon Australia a wealth of experience with the UK's search for a suitable text based programming language to serve as a follow on from self-contained visual programming environments like Scratch.

However, while Python is already a good tool for educational use, it's far from perfect. During the main conference, Carrie Anne will discuss existing barriers to Python becoming the premier language of choice for teaching computer science, and some of the possible ways those barriers could be lowered through improved tooling and further support from the Python developer community.

In addition to her keynote presentation, as part of the Python in Education miniconf, Carrie Anne will be reviewing the Raspberry Pi Foundation's experiences in creating and delivering the Picademy continuing professional development workshops for teachers in the UK, as well as facilitating small group “birds of a feather” sessions where teachers and interested developers can explore ways to collaborate more effectively on both formal and informal educational efforts.

Carrie Anne has a blended and open approach to teaching as can be seen by her website ICT with Miss P that students use to access their weekly lessons. She uses innovative web tools to help support and extend the learning in her 21st century classroom which resulted in becoming a Skype Moment Maker and ambassador for technology in 2014. Carrie Anne often speaks at conferences like BETT, Raspberry Jamboree, YRS and PyconUK, and is the creator of a YouTube video series for teenage girls called The Geek Gurl Diaries, which has won a Talk Talk Digital Hero Award. The episodes include interviews with women working in technology and hands on computer science based tutorials.

It's genuinely exciting to offer such a practical follow-up to 2014's Python for Every Child in Australia as we help forge stronger connections between Australia's open source and educational communities.

PyCon Australia has endeavoured to keep tickets as affordable as possible. We are able to do so, thanks to our Sponsors and Contributors. Registrations for PyCon Australia 2015 are now open, with prices starting at AU$50 for students, and tickets for the general public starting at AU$240 for the entire conference, or $100 specifically to attend the Friday miniconfs. All prices include GST, and more information can be found at http://2015.pycon-au.org/register/prices

Thanks to the generous contributions of the Python Software Foundation and Code Club Australia, targeted financial assistance is available for qualified teachers wishing to attend PyCon Australia for either the entire conference or specifically for the Python in Education miniconf. Teachers wishing to take advantage of this offer should apply through the conference's financial assistance program and mention in their application that they're a qualified teacher.

Keynote: Carina C. Zona

Sun, 28 Jun 2015 21:08:25 +1000

Last week, we revealed the programme schedule for Pycon Australia 2015 (2015.pycon-au.org/programme/about). This week, it's our pleasure to announce the first of our keynote speakers for 2015, Carina C. Zona, the founder of @CallbackWomen, an initiative that aims to reduce the well-documented gender disparity in speaker line-ups at programming conferences.

For some time now, through Schemas for the Real World Carina has been advocating for developers to address the ways that seemingly incidental details of how we structure our data models can have real and lasting impacts on the way people experience the software-mediated world around them.

This year, she is taking on a new challenge, and asking us to reflect seriously on the "Consequences of an Insightful Algorithm". In this era of large data sets, and rich analytical tools, we’re able to extract remarkably precise intuitions about individuals from seemingly innocuous information. But do we have a right to know details that users didn’t consent to share, even when they willingly shared the data that leads us to a particular conclusion?

What are our obligations to people who did not expect themselves to be so intimately known without sharing directly? How do we mitigate against unintended outcomes, as when a major social network inadvertently triggered painful memories for grieving families who’d recently experienced the death of their child or other loved ones?

As Carina puts it, "We design software for humans. Balancing human needs and business specs can be tough. It’s crucial that we learn how to build in systematic empathy."

Carina is a developer, community manager, advocate, certified sex educator, and whimsical gluten-free baker. She has been an organizer & instructor for many tech women’s organizations, including formerly serving on Railsbridge’s core team, and has given talks at more than 20 technical conferences among the Python, Ruby, JavaScript, and PHP communities.

She spends a lot of time thinking about the unexpected cultural effects of our decisions as programmers.

We can't wait to hear Carina's keynote and we are sure you will enjoy it as well.

PyCon Australia has endeavoured to keep tickets as affordable as possible. We are able to do so, thanks to our Sponsors and Contributors. Registrations for PyCon Australia 2015 are now open, with prices starting at AU$50 for students, and tickets for the general public starting at AU$240. All prices include GST, and more information can be found at http://2015.pycon-au.org/register/prices

Programme Released

Wed, 24 Jun 2015 10:59:02 +1000

PyCon Australia is proud to release our programme for 2015, spread over the weekend of August 1st and 2nd, following our Miniconfs on Friday 31 July.

Following our largest ever response to our Call for Proposals, we are able to present two keynotes, forty eight talks and two tutorials. The conference will feature four full tracks of presentations, covering all aspects of the Python ecosystem, presented by experts and core developers of key Python technology. Our presenters cover a broad range of backgrounds, including industry, research, government and academia.

We are still finalising our Miniconf timetable, but we expect another thirty talks for Friday. We'd like to highlight the inaugural running of the Education Miniconf whose primary aim is to bring educators and the Python community closer together.

The full schedule for PyCon Australia 2015 can be found at http://2015.pycon-au.org/programme/about

PyCon Australia has endeavoured to keep tickets as affordable as possible. We are able to do so, thanks to our Sponsors and Contributors. Registrations for PyCon Australia 2015 are now open, with prices starting at AU$50 for students, and tickets for the general public starting at AU$240. All prices include GST, and more information can be found at http://2015.pycon-au.org/register/prices

We have also worked out favourable deals with accommodation providers for PyCon delegates. Find out more about the options at http://2015.pycon-au.org/register/accommodation

To begin the registration process, and find out more about each level of ticket, visit http://2015.pycon-au.org/register/prices

Important Dates to Help You Plan

June 29: Financial Assistance program closes.
July 8: Last day to Order PyCon Australia 2015 T-shirts
July 19: Last day to Advise Special Dietary Requirements
July 31 : PyCon Australia 2015 Begins

About PyCon Australia

PyCon Australia is the national conference for the Python Programming Community. The sixth PyCon Australia will be held on July 31 through August 4th, 2015 in Brisbane, bringing together professional, student and enthusiast developers with a love for developing with Python. PyCon Australia informs the country’s Python developers with presentations, tutorials and panel sessions by experts and core developers of Python, as well as the libraries and frameworks that they rely on.

To find out more about PyCon Australia 2015, visit our website at http://pycon-au.org or e-mail us at contact@pycon-au.org.

PyCon Australia is presented by Linux Australia (www.linux.org.au) and acknowledges the support of our Platinum Sponsors, Red Hat Asia-Pacific, and Netbox Blue; and our Gold sponsors, The Australian Signals Directorate and Google Australia. For full details of our sponsors, see our website.

Python in Education Miniconf

Sun, 21 Jun 2015 21:45:47 +1000

On Friday July 31st, the inaugural PyCon Australia Python in Education miniconf will be held at the main conference venue. This event aims to bring together Python developers interested in educational initiatives, community workshop organisers, professional Python instructors and professional educators across primary, secondary and tertiary levels to share their experiences and requirements, and identify areas of potential collaboration with each other and with the broader Python community.

This full day event will open with Peter Whitehouse, author of IPT - a virtual approach (online since 1992) and a longstanding board member of the Queensland Society for Information Technology in Education, providing personal insight into some of the challenges and opportunities of integrating Python and other open source software into Australian Digital Technologies education.

Thea Koutsoukis will then take event participants through her experiences using PyCharm Educational Edition to instruct school students in the 10-14 age range, followed by Brad Nielsen discussing his use of the PythonAnywhere online service and the Flask web framework in classes instructing year 12 information technology students.

Closing out the morning session will be Katie Bell, recounting how the National Computer Science School summer school program manages to take teams of high school students through the task of developing and deploying a fully functional social networking site in just 3 days.

Caleb Hattingh will start the afternoon session by exploring some of the challenges faced in making the transition from graphical programming environments like Scratch to text based programming in Python in the context of the Brisbane City Council’s CoderDojo program.

Changing pace from direct instruction focused material, Brendan Scott will present the details of the process by which his Python 4 Kids project-based educational blogging initiative went on to become a published book, while John Zornig and Andrew Dekker of the University of Queensland will provide an overview of the university’s involvement in the Django-based Open EdX project that powers a number of open online course programs around the world, including UQx.

Finally, Carrie Anne Philbin, author of "Adventures in Raspberry Pi", Education Pioneer at the Raspberry Pi Foundation and a Director of the Python Software Foundation, will be speaking on the Foundation's experience in integrating Python into the UK’s digital curriculum, with a particular focus on the Foundation’s professional development program for primary and secondary teachers, Picademy.

In addition to the structured program, this event will also provide opportunities for educators and software developers to collaborate on ideas for improving open source educational tools.

The option of attending the Education miniconf is included in the Contributor and Professional conference registration levels, and may be added to an Enthusiast or Student registration for an additional $50. Complimentary registrations, including single day registrations specifically to attend the Education miniconf, may be requested through the conference’s financial assistance program.

Early Bird Registrations Now Open!

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 21:30:21 +1000

We are delighted to announce that online registration is now open for PyCon Australia 2015. The sixth PyCon Australia is being held in Brisbane, Queensland from July 31st – 4th August at the Pullman Brisbane and is expected to draw hundreds of Python developers, enthusiasts and students from Australasia and afar.

Starting today, early bird offers are up for grabs. To take advantage of these discounted ticket rates, be among the first 100 to register. Early bird registration starts from $50 for full-time students, $180 for enthusiasts and $460 for professionals. Offers this good won’t last long, so head straight to http://2015.pycon-au.org and register right away.

PyCon Australia has endeavoured to keep tickets as affordable as possible. We are able to do so, thanks to our Sponsors and Contributors.

We have also worked out favourable deals with accommodation providers for PyCon delegates. Find out more about the options at http://2015.pycon-au.org/register/accommodation

To begin the registration process, and find out more about each level of ticket, visit http://2015.pycon-au.org/register/prices

Important Dates to Help You Plan

June 8: Early Bird Registration Opens -- open to the first 100 tickets
June 29: Financial Assistance program closes.
July 8: Last day to Order PyCon Australia 2015 T-shirts
July 19: Last day to Advise Special Dietary Requirements
July 31 : PyCon Australia 2015 Begins

About PyCon Australia

To find out more about PyCon Australia 2015, visit our website at http://pycon-au.org or e-mail us at contact@pycon-au.org.

Financial assistance now available!

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 08:26:11 +1000

PyCon Australia 2015's financial assistance programme has opened! Financial assistance is the cornerstone of the conference's outreach programme -- the programme helps us to fund registration, travel, and accommodation expenses for deserving applicants. In doing so, we're helping to put PyCon Australia within reach of everyone who wants to attend.

If you'd enjoy PyCon Australia, or the Australian Python community would benefit from you coming to the conference, we'd love you to come along. You can find out more about the specifics of the programme on our site at http://2015.pycon-au.org/grants

PyCon Australia strongly encourages people to apply for financial assistance -- even if we can’t cover all of your expenses, we will give you free admission based on need. The application process is simple, and straightforward. It’s also very liberal -- the only caveat is that speakers at the conference "get bumped to the top" of the applications so that we don’t lose a good talk because of financial need. We also don’t ban anyone from applying.

Anyone interested in attending PyCon Australia is eligible to apply for financial assistance. Grants are allocated on the basis of need, and applications will be assessed by our financial assistance panel. In short, anyone whose attendance at PyCon Australia will help improve the Python community in Australia, or around the world, is invited to apply.

To apply for financial aid, fill out our application form, which you can find at http://2015.pycon-au.org/grants. The first round of applications will be considered after Friday 12 June 2015; the second round of applications will be considered after Friday 26 June, 2015.

One Week Left for Proposals!

Sat, 02 May 2015 16:38:54 +1000

Under a week to go - closes Friday 8th May

With just under a week to go until the PyCon Australia 2015 Call for Proposals closes, we thought it would be a good idea to give everyone an update and a reminder. We’re very happy with the proposals we’ve already received, but we’re eager to receive more! We hope our proposal writing working bees in Brisbane have been of help, and hope to roll them out to more cities next year. If you’ve got any questions please get in touch (numerous contact details are up on pycon-au.org). We would like to give a special shout out for the Education MiniConf, which is new this year: if you know people teaching and using computing in the education realm, please forward this CFP on.

The deadline for proposal submission is Friday 8th May, 2015.

Conference

The conference this year will be held on Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd August 2015 in Brisbane. PyCon Australia attracts professional developers from all walks of life, including industry, government, and science, as well as enthusiast and student developers. We’re looking for proposals for presentations and tutorials on any aspect of Python programming, at all skill levels from novice to advanced. Presentation subjects may range from reports on open source, academic or commercial projects; or even tutorials and case studies. If a presentation is interesting and useful to the Python community, it will be considered for inclusion in the program. We're especially interested in short presentations that will teach conference-goers something new and useful. Can you show attendees how to use a module? Explore a Python language feature? Package an application?

Miniconfs

Four Miniconfs will be held on Friday 31st July, as a prelude to the main conference. Miniconfs are run by community members and are separate to the main conference. If you are a first time speaker, or your talk is targeted to a particular field, the Miniconfs might be a better fit than the main part of the conference. If your proposal is not selected for the main part of the conference, it may be selected for one of our Miniconfs:
DjangoCon AU is the annual conference of Django users in the Southern Hemisphere. It covers all aspects of web software development, from design to deployment - and, of course, the use of the Django framework itself. It provides an excellent opportunity to discuss the state of the art of web software development with other developers and designers.
The Python in Education Miniconf aims to bring together community workshop organisers, professional Python instructors and professional educators across primary, secondary and tertiary levels to share their experiences and requirements, and identify areas of potential collaboration with each other and also with the broader Python community.
The Science and Data Miniconf is a forum for people using Python to tackle problems in science and data analysis. It aims to cover commercial and research interests in applications of science, engineering, mathematics, finance, and data analysis using Python, including AI and 'big data' topics.
The OpenStack Miniconf is dedicated to talks related to the OpenStack project and we welcome proposals of all kinds: technical, community, infrastructure or code talks/discussions; academic or commercial applications; or even tutorials and case studies. If a presentation is interesting and useful to the OpenStack community, it will be considered for inclusion. We also welcome talks that have been given previously in different events.

First Time Speakers

We welcome first-time speakers; we are a community conference and we are eager to hear about your experience. If you have friends or colleagues who have something valuable to contribute, twist their arms to tell us about it! Please also forward this Call for Proposals to anyone that you feel may be interested.

The most recent call for proposals information can always be found at: pycon-au.org/cfp See you in Brisbane in July!

Important Dates

Call for Proposals opens: Friday 27th March, 2015
Proposal submission deadline: Friday 8th May, 2015
Proposal acceptance: Monday 25 May, 2015

Call for Proposals is Open!

Mon, 23 Mar 2015 20:57:49 +1000

PyCon Australia 2015 is pleased to announce that its Call for Proposals is now open! The conference this year will be held on Saturday 1 and Sunday 2 August 2014 in Brisbane. We'll also be featuring a day of miniconfs on Friday 31st August. The deadline for proposal submission is Friday April 25, 2014, and more information can be found at http://pycon-au.org/cfp