We are now 75 days away from PyCon 2012 in Santa Clara — it's hard to think about how quickly time has flown since PyCon 2011! We've lined up some great keynote and plenary speakers, announced the tutorial and talk selections, opened ticket sales, and have expanded financial aid opportunities. The community and our amazing array of sponsors have helped us break several records already, so we hope you're as excited about PyCon 2012 as we are. The conference runs March 7-15 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
The keynote speakers include Y Combinator investor Paul Graham and Mozilla's Head of Developer Engagement, Stormy Peters. Both of them bring interesting experience to the table, and they're both captivating speakers. Speaking of captivating, Dave Beazley was announced on the plenary track, with more to be added in the coming weeks. Guido — our Benevolent Dictator For Life — will also be joining the line up!
With 483 tutorial, talk, and poster proposals submitted this year, the program committee had their hands full paring that list down to 95 talks, 32 tutorials, and 36 posters (which we're still accepting). In the little time since we made these announcements we've heard a lot of excitement. You can see the tutorial selections at https://us.pycon.org/2012/schedule/lists/tutorials/, with talks available at https://us.pycon.org/2012/schedule/lists/talks/.
Tickets are now available with early bird rates available until January 10, 2012 at https://us.pycon.org/2012/registration. Tutorial and admission prices continue unchanged; if you've been following along the last few years, these rates are the same as they have been for several years. Our team's dedication to keeping PyCon cost-effective, community driven, and grassroots continues thanks to the hard work and support of the team and sponsors (https://us.pycon.org/2012/sponsors/).
If financial assistance would make PyCon a possibility for you, we encourage you to apply to this year's expanded assistance program. With a deadline of January 7, 2012 (extended from January 2) and a new web-based application, the financial aid committee aims to make the trip, lodging, and a ticket a possibility for everyone. Thanks to a new partnership with the PyLadies organization, we're able to provide grants to women in the community who are interested in experiencing the conference. For full details see https://us.pycon.org/2012/assistance.
For more information about PyCon 2012, see our site at https://us.pycon.org/2012/. We also publish news on our blog: http://pycon.blogspot.com/.
Jesse Noller - Chairman jnoller@python.org
Brian Curtin - Publicity Coordinator brian@python.org