BOFs (Birds-Of-a-Feather) sessions at the Monterey Python conference

[David Ascher]

From: David Ascher <da at ski.org>

As you may know, O'Reilly & Associates is organizing a Python Conference
as part of its Open Source Convention in Monterey in August.  (For more
information, see http://conferences.oreilly.com).  Early word from
O'Reilly is that the Python conference is getting quite a few
early registrants eager to get the discount & free t-shirts!

In addition to the tutorials, talks and panels, there will be informal
"Birds-Of-a-Feather" sessions in the tradition of Usenix BOFs.  These meet
at "off" times:  Saturday and Sunday from 7pm to 10pm, and Monday from 8pm
to 10pm -- meeting spaces will be made available by ORA.  The format for
these is deliberately left up to the birds -- however, one or more
organizers are expected to show up and help lead discussions.

I'd like to solicit discussion on what BOFs would be good to organize, and
find some organizers.  Topics that come to mind include field-specific
BOFs such as a Zope BOF, an image-processing BOF, a database BOF, etc.,
tool-BOFs (Tkinter, wxPython, ...) or "market segment" BOFs such as
"Python in Education", "Selling Python programs", etc.  Other ideas are
welcome.  Anyone can register a BOF through ORA's website at
http://conferences.oreilly.com/bof/, but it might make sense to talk about
it on the mailing list first to minimize overlaps and work out scheduling.

If a BOF is scheduled by July 15, it will be included in the conference
program given to attendees.  BOFs can be scheduled later, and will be
available on the conference website (as well as onsite, I imagine).

Looking forward to seeing many of you there,

--David Ascher & the rest of the Python Conference Organizing Committee

PS: If you have any questions about the Python conference, you can contact
    the conference staff at oscon at oreilly.com or you can contact me at
    da at python.net.  In addition, the folks at oscon at oreilly.com can mail
    you a nifty glossy printed brochure showing the entire schedule of the
    convention, all the talk descriptions, etc.