[EuroPython] Talk submission for EuroPython

[Lucio Torre]

Hi, we have prepared a talk on pygame that we have already given at
pycon2007 and we were about to submit it to europython2007.

We had a small time zone miscalculation, which led us to being a few
minutes late to submit it via the website. (It's still May 18 here in
Buenos Aires!).
We are attaching the talk anyway, just in case it can be submitted
some other way.

We have also sent this mail to Laura Creighton, since she was the one
that requested talks for europython in the pygame mailing list, but we
are sending it to this address for completeness.

Sorry for the inconvenience. We have been planing this presentation
for some time and didn't want to miss this opportunity.

Thank you very much.

Regards from Argentina,
Lucio Torre and Alejandro Cura.

--------

Title
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"Pyweek: making games in 7 days"

Summary
-------
The objective of this talk is to encourage people to participate in
pyweek. We explain what the contest is, when it takes place, who can
and does participate and why everybody should. A quick review of the
most unique games is given, plus an account of the fun experience we
had developing our entries. We also talk about how python is the
perfect match for this kind of tight schedules, and about what the
contest brings back into the python community.

Description
-----------
* 150 new games made with python, in only 2 years
* a very busy week, twice a year
* our first pyweek: STIM
* the challengers
* peer review and voting
* the winners
* lessons learned
* the pyweek.draw 64k challenge
* pyweek again: making Typus Pocus
 * strategies
 * splitting the tasks
 * iterating over features
* the challengers
* the winners
* wrapping up
 * original games
 * tools, libraries: new and improved
 * more people learning python and how to make games with python
  * improve coding, teamwork & nunchaku skills
* the next one is very soon!

About the speakers
------------------
Alejandro J. Cura and Lucio Torre are active members of PyAr, the
Python Users Group from Argentina. Both are part of an Argentinian
team that has made four games for the PyWeek game competition, the
latest two were awarded first and second place. They have recently
given a talk called "pyweek: making games in 7 days" during PyCon 2007
in Dallas, USA.

alecu, born Alejandro J. Cura has been using python since 1996. Right
now he works in a high profile bank in Buenos Aires, where he has
achieved sneaking jython past management's java monoculture. Since
joining PyAr, alecu has been encouraging people in most of Argentina
to make up teams to participate in pyweek. His talk on pygame and
pyweek has been presented in "PythonDay Córdoba" in August 2006 and in
"CafeConf Buenos Aires" in November 2006.

Lucio Torre is a programmer and entrepreneur who has been using python
for a long time. He is one of the first members of PyAr, the
Argentinian python users group. He has used python for many types of
applications in many industries. He has given many talks in various
places, including many local universities, MIT and Harvard Club and
technology related conferences. This last years he has been promoting
python, giving talks and tutorials in three provinces. Some time ago,
he also made a simple port of the CPython interpreter for PalmOS.

Grant Request
-------------------

For this presentation we are asking for a grant to support our travel
and lodging expenses. For the last pycon we've offered ourselves for
helping with the setup and giving a tutorial to help pay for the
expenses. We also plan for this conference to have an open space
showing the games that were made during all of the pyweeks
competitions and trying to get more people to participate.

Our main goals for this trip are (besides personal enlightenment)  fostering
communications between the global python communities and the very active
python Argentina and promoting pyweek. Working this way we have been
very successful in developing the spirit of community among python
programmers in all the regions of our country.

Last pyweek, participation was up from 30 to 53 finished games. Even 3
teams from Argentina competed. We expect to continue helping this
event by promoting the challenge and showing some of the results that
came from it.