[Edu-sig] Reminder: Early Bird Registration for PyCon Ending Soon

[ajsiegel at optonline.net]

From: Andre Roberge

> Arthur,
>
> You made some good points in this post and the previous one. Playing
> the devil's advocate to your position: can you think of any potential
> _keynote_ speaker that would have the education expertise and python
> knowledge to fit the bill and be interesting to a general audience?
> I can not think of any myself - granted, I haven't been around for
> that long.

I think we have been hearing inordinately from a community outside of the Python 
community in recent get-to-togethers - so I am not sure why python knowledge is 
considered to be a requirement.

I do think that hearing from the chief architect of the OLPC, presumably with deep 
Python knowledge  and *on the subject of the architecture of OLPC* - is great. 
The issue being the *implementation of an architecture* - which is what progammers do.
And there is good reason to presume this implementation presented some interesting
challenges - dealing with resources limitations, for one. And how those challenges are
being addressed should, presumably, be of general interest to a programming 
audience.
 
So what (truly) surprises me most from Jeff's announcement is the title of that architect's talk.  It sounds like an cool-aid invitation, not the technical talk I would have  expected.

As to "eLearning" I am 100% for it, or 100% against it - depending on how we are
defining it.

I am 100% against keeping that defintion vague.  And tired of the tolerance for
this vagueness.  The whole story *is* this vagueness - ii.e. at least
from one person's persective.   That would be me.  First generate support, and *then*
define what we are supporting.  Damn ass backwards.

What I presonally would find more interesting and to the point, is something from the
Scheme's community leadership.  They have experience to draw upon of the kind that
I think would be quite relevant to those in the Python education community. 

But presumably they are not enough of the moment....for a programming audience.

Which of course ties back to why programmers' take on education might not be a particular
interest - to a general audience.

That would be me, again.

Art