(This is also an entry in my weblog, at http://www.amk.ca/diary/2006/01/pycon_schedule_data_now_availa_1.) One complaint at the last PyCon was that it was difficult to find out what was going on in the Open Space sessions. The board for writing up sessions was pretty small, so it became a traffic jam. It didn't help that I added some of the sessions, and my handwriting is bad. For this year, I want to do better. The idea is to store the schedule in the Python wiki, and have a script that parses the wiki source for this page to produce the HTML schedule. During the conference, attendees can modify the page to record their Open Space events. Every morning, I'll run the script to generate an updated version of the schedule and print out a few copies to be posted at the registration desk and elsewhere. A bonus feature is that this will make it easy to support other calendar formats, or to build some application on top of the schedule data. The master data for the schedule is on the PyCon2006/FinalSchedule wiki page. The data is simple, a 4-column table of (room, start time, duration, description): || Room || Time || Duration (min) || Content || || ---|| 8:00 || 30 || Registration opens || || --- || 9:00 || 90 || Plenary: GvR keynote || || --- || 10:30 || 20 || Break || || Ballroom A-E || 10:50 || 45 || #73 || || Ballroom F-J || 10:50 || 45 || #23 || || Preston Trail || 10:50 || 45 || #45 || || Bent Tree || 10:50 || 45 || Open || The parsing script is in the Python SVN repository, in the sandbox/pycon directory. Instructions for using the script, and links to the ViewCVS version of the repository, are on the PyCon2006/ScheduleData wiki page. It can output the data as HTML or as a Python data structure. Any volunteers to implement iCal, RDF, or XML output? --amk