As folks may be aware, I am moderating a panel called "Directions in Packaging" on the Saturday afternoon at PyCon US. Before that though, I am also organising what I am calling a "Packaging & Distribution Mini-Summit" as an open space on the Friday night (we have one of the larger open space rooms reserved, so we should have a fair bit of space if a decent crowd turns up). An overview of what I'm hoping we can achieve at the session is at https://us.pycon.org/2013/community/openspaces/packaginganddistributionminis... (that page should be editable by anyone that has registered for PyCon US). We're certainly not going to resolve all our disagreements and come up with a grand plan to "fix Python packaging" in a couple of hours on a Friday night. My hopes are far more modest: that we can get an idea of the different things people are worried about and trying to resolve, and start pondering ways we can work towards an cooperative ecosystem of interoperable tools, rather than the "one tool to rule them all" model of distutils. I fully expect that discussions on the Friday night will continue as hallway track discussions during the conference, development efforts at the sprints, and, of course, requests for feedback on the mailing lists (since there will likely be quite a few interested people that won't be present at PyCon US). This is not a new conversation - it is one that has been going on for years, and while some improvements have been made, we still have a long way to go. For those that are able to make it, I look forward to meeting you in person in March :) Regards, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia