Village Gamer

On the heels of yet another sold out success in PyCon 2013, the conference organizers are happy to announce the new website and Call for Proposals for PyCon 2014. The new site is now live and accepting talk, tutorial, and poster proposals for the April 9-17 2014 conference taking place in Montréal. The first time north of the border brings a change to the call: lightning talk proposals are now being accepted in advance. PyCon’s first trip into Canada, not to be confused with PyCon Canada, ventures into Quebec for a great week at the Palais des congrès de Montréal, in the Old Montréal area. Unlike years past, the conference center isn’t tied to a specific hotel, so the organizers have currently worked out group rates with the Hyatt Regency and Westin hotels in Montréal.

Attendance for 2014 will be limited to 2000 attendees, and the organizers look forward to opening ticket sales in September. A returning feature of 2013 will be that early bird tickets will be quantity-based, rather than the date-based system in place for prior years. Last year’s early bird tickets sold out in around two-and-a-half months, so interested attendees are urged to begin plans as soon as possible.

Once again, the Python community came together for PyCon 2013 to offer the best batch of submissions the Program Committee has seen, coming up with 458 talk proposals, 129 tutorial proposals, and more poster proposals than ever, for records all across the board. The competition will again be fierce, especially with the addition of lightning talk proposals.

PyCon’s success depends on the community’s involvement, and without a well rounded contingent, the conference can’t reach it’s intended target: everyone. It takes just as many first-timers to put together a schedule as it does experienced speakers, so the committee is looking forward to receiving a wealth of topics from a wide range of contributors. They invite everyone to submit their talk proposals for consideration, as early as possible to allow for the longest period of feedback from the reviewers.

The organizers would especially like to thank all of the launch day sponsors who show amazing dedication to PyCon, including: Heroku, Caktus, Facebook, Walt Disney Animation Studios, edX, Basho Technologies, Stratasan, Python Anywhere, Lex Machina, AWeber, Found Elastisearch, GetSentry.com, and Safari Books Online.

Without them, PyCon would be but a fraction of what it is. Many of these organizations have been pledging support year after year, giving this conference life and the ability to continue to do great things.