The Mouse Vs. The Python

My first tutorial of the day was Advanced Python I with Raymond Hettinger. He is very knowledgeable, but I got stuck in the very back of the room and had a terrible time following him. The speaker went over a bunch of basics of IDLE with Python 3.2. He covered how to open a module and use IDLE’s builtin Class Browser to browse the code quickly.

He then moved on to optimization using itertools (which he wrote?) and functools through a vectorization process. He would show some bad code with lots of function or method calls and then he’d fix the code using part of itertools, functools or both. I think I know a little more about optimization, but I wasn’t up for the second part of the class. Note that this was considered an “Experienced” level tutorial. I guess I’m not quite experienced enough yet, but I hope I will be by next year.

A couple months ago, I told my readership that my organization wasn’t going to pay my way to PyCon and wondered if they would help me. I got mixed results and dropped that idea. Then my boss said he was going to try to make it so I could go and he did. So I made it to PyCon after all. I got in yesterday afternoon, after much confusion with the strange Atlanta shuttle service who put me in multiple vans before finally bringing me to the hotel.

So far, I’ve met a few people and seen some acquaintances. I also did some volunteer work last night. Today I went to my first tutorial of the day, but I’ll write about both of those activities in separate posts. For this short one, I wanted to get feedback and ideas. Let me know what you want to see and if I can fit it into my schedule, I’ll check it out and write about it. Check out the PyCon schedule to get some ideas. Thanks!

The PyCon USA 2011 site has finally gotten its schedule up this week and in the last couple of days, they have added the ability to sign up to be a Session Chair or Session Runner. These are fairly important roles that need to be filled to make the conference flow smoothly.

Basically, a Session Chair will chair a block of talks. What that means is he or she will introduce the speakers and help to stay on time. They can also help organize an open space, although I don’t think that’s mentioned in the job description this year. Finally, they help take questions from the audience.

The Session Runner will help the speaker get from the green room to the appropriate stage. They help in any way needed to make the session run smoothly. In other words, they assist the Session Chair.

You can meet fun people and make new friends by signing up for one or both of these positions. Just go to the schedule page and click on the “S” symbol next to a talk to sign up. Just remember that you’re signing up for a 2 or 3 talk session in one room. Be sure to check in at the green room to get your gear probably 15-30 minutes before the first talk in your session.

Update: Another way to view which sessions have Chairs / Runners has been posted to the PyCon website