Dear Python User: You have probably been wondering why you haven't yet heard that PyCon has opened its doors for registration. Well, we are a volunteer organization, and it often takes more time than anticipated to put things together. Welcome to the world of open source :-) I am happy to be able to tell you that thanks to sterling work by Trevor Toenjes we are now in a position to accept your registrations. All you need to do is navigate to http://dc2004reg.pycon.org/ and make the appropriate entries. This year we all have the opportunity to add a PSF donation to the registration fee, and I hope many of you will follow my example and donate a little extra to assist the Foundation in its goals. There is still lots to be done -- for example, we are *also* late with the system to accept submissions, so the original December 1 deadline will be extended by at least a month to ensure that everyone gets plenty of chance to submit papers telling us what they've been up to with Python. We are also encouraging students to attend the conference by giving them a significant reduction from the standard fee, and we hope that this will result in even wider participation by the educational community. Last year was an exciting departure from the traditional "professional" conference format, and I hope that we will be able to improve on it next time. I look forward to seeing you there! Sincerely Steve Holden Chairman PyCon DC 2004