The SciPy09 conference will provide such a great opportunity to bring users and scientists from varying disciplines. I am curious to know whether there is a planned session for a discussion of philosophical outcomes of using an open-source programming language and various other open scientific tools for ones scientific data analysis, visualization, and publishing needs rather than the practical aspects of the subject. Although not a direct Python specific discussion issue, topics such as: - How computational sciences are evolving by the growing open-source communities? - The role of open languages and tools for the science education - Reproducibility, open information, data etc.. (not to mention Popper) You might consider seeing the following resources to get more in-depth information on some of the aforementioned subjects: http://www.openscience.org/blog/?p=269 (The OpenScience Project » What, exactly, is Open Science?) http://hyfen.net/out/writing/2009-07/michael-nielsen-at-science20/ (Doing it in the open: Michael Nielsen at Science 2.0) http://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/32332-open-source-open-resea... http://www.stanford.edu/~vcs/ (Victoria Stodden's Webpage - various talks and papers related to the subject) I still think that these could be an interesting lunch or dinner time talk if not a panel discussion. Gökhan