[EuroPython-announce] EuroPython 2008: Call for Participation

[Paul Boddie]

Book Monday 7th July to Wednesday 9th July 2008 in your calendar! EuroPython 
2008, the European conference for the communities around Python, including 
the Zope and Plone communities, will be held in Vilnius, Lithuania. Last 
year's conference was a great success, featuring a variety of talks, 
entertaining lightning talks and inspiring keynotes. With your participation, 
we want to make EuroPython 2008, the seventh EuroPython, even more successful 
than the previous six.

Talks and Themes
----------------

Do you have something you wish to present at EuroPython? Perhaps you have a 
new application, framework or package to show off. Or perhaps you want to 
show people how to solve a particular kind of problem, or to describe your 
experiences working with different Python-oriented solutions. Previous 
conferences have featured a wide range of talks covering all of this, from 
the unveiling of software projects to coverage of relevant techniques for 
developing software in Python.

Once again EuroPython will feature conference themes (rather than tracks, 
traditionally used at conferences), and these themes should help speakers to 
target their talks and presentations at areas of special interest to the 
Python community. We will then arrange them into related groups and schedule 
them in the space available. Here are the chosen themes for EuroPython 2008:

  Python Language
  (featuring Python 3000, Python implementations and Python packaging)

  Python in Action
  (Python projects and deployments in government, industry and beyond)

  Mobile Computing
  (Python in mobile and embedded devices)

  Large Scale Python
  (Python in research, distributed computing, scientific computing)

  Web Programming
  (Python on the Web: Zope 3, Django and everything else)

  Database Programming
  (object-relational mappers and data management techniques)

  User Interfaces
  (across or beyond the Web, the desktop and the device)

  Games
  (featuring pygame, pyglet and other game-making technologies)

The deadline for talk proposals is Thursday 22nd May at midnight (24:00 CEST, 
Central European Summer Time, UTC+2).

To propose a talk, go to...

  http://www.europython.org/community/Talk_Submissions

...and follow the instructions.

Other Talks, Activities and Events
----------------------------------

Conferences like EuroPython don't stand still: we would like to expand the 
range of events featured at the conference. If you have an idea for a 
different kind of event than a conventional talk or presentation, we would 
like to hear it. Some anticipated activities of this nature include the 
following:

 * Tutorials - where you teach others about your area of expertise
 * Panel discussions - where you and others discuss a subject and
   inform the audience
 * Teach the presenter - where you learn from an audience of experts
   (and perhaps a few other beginners, too)

And if your company is considering sponsoring EuroPython, why not consider 
proposing a sponsored event? See the sponsorship page for details:

  http://www.europython.org/community/Sponsorship

Other Ways to Participate
-------------------------

Apart from giving talks, there are plenty of other ways to participate in the 
conference.  Just attending and talking to people you find here can be 
satisfying enough, but there are three other kinds of activity you may wish 
to plan for: Lightning Talks, Open Space and Sprints. Lightning Talks are 
very short talks that give you just enough time to introduce a topic or 
project, Open Space is an area reserved for informal discussions, and Sprints 
are focused gatherings for developers interested in particular projects. For 
more information please see the following pages:

 * Lightning Talks: http://www.europython.org/community/Lightning_Talks
 * Open Space: http://www.europython.org/community/Open_Space
 * Sprints: http://www.europython.org/community/Sprints

Sprints will take place from Thursday 8th July until (and including) Saturday 
12th July.

Talk Recordings and Interviews
------------------------------

One area where EuroPython has not traditionally been strong is in the area of 
providing audio and video from the conference. This year, we would like to 
encourage volunteers to come forward and help us offer recordings of talks so 
that those not able to come to Vilnius might still have the chance of hearing 
and seeing the talks after the event. In addition, it would also be very 
interesting to conduct interviews of members of the Python community, 
allowing them to offer their insights into the conference and other related 
topics. For more information please see this page:

  http://www.europython.org/community/Audio_and_Video

We intend to record talks and to make them available under the Creative 
Commons BY-NC-SA licence:

  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

Further Information
-------------------

For more general information on the conference, please visit...

  http://www.europython.org/

Looking forward to seeing what you fine folk have been up to,

The EuroPython Team

P.S. You can help with conference publicity by publishing this announcement in 
your own corner of the community. Co-ordinate with the organisers here:

  http://www.europython.org/community/Planning/Publicity