I just got off the phone with someone at O'Reilly, who is starting to plan the next O'Reilly Open Source Convention. I've agreed to be the chair of the Python conference, just so that there are no delays in getting the conference organized. If someone feels that I should not be chair, speak now and we can figure out who takes the 'job'. There are short-term and long-term issues to discuss: Short term: - We need a program committee -- If you're interested in being on said committee or know someone who should be, let me know. I'd like to get representatives from various subconstituencies on there (web types, zope types, business types, scientist types, linux types, hackers, etc.) - The call for papers is going on the O'Reilly website soon. I will try and get them to pass things by me first, but if we want to emphasize specific kinds of paper submissions, we need to decide that soon. - Greg or Barry, is it possible for one of you to setup a mailman mailing list which will be used by the program committee? eGroups is easy for me to setup, but lots of people hated it last year. I don't want to pollute python-dev with conference discussions. Longer term: - The schedule for the conference is (supposedly) going to be the same as last year. conference-wide keynotes at the beginning of both days, and 4x90minute segments. - We have two parallel tracks - We have 4 half-day tutorial slots - All of the paper materials have to be 'in' by March 1. We need to decide how much time we need to go through the review/revision process ourselves. In other words, the deadline for submissions is up to us, but we don't have that much time. --david ascher