[Texas] pyTexas still viable? (YES!)

[Brad Allen]

Status update:

pyTexas is a 'go' but the beginner track will be eliminated due to
lack of newbies. Instead we'll focus on making it a fun and
interesting conference for the people who will be there, who for the
most part are intermediate to advanced Python programmers.

Announcements have gone out to the Houston and Austin groups, and we
are in the process of following up with some of the DFW area locals to
see if they will attend. If you are considering attending, please do
make sure your name has been added to the wiki registration page (no
password required!). There is now a section for 'tentative' attendees;
we would also like to know if you *might* attend.

We need to know how many will attend in order to obtain wireless
accounts for each from the university.

Soon we'll have an updated schedule showing the planned talks
scheduled for both rooms. In the meantime here is a short list of
speakers to whet your appetite:

* Our opening act will be 'Python for Mad Scientists' by Walker Hale.
Walker also has a talk on game programming in Python prepared for
intermediate/beginning Python developers,
* Jeff Rush has a talk planned called "Interfaces, Adapters, and
Factories", and may do an encore of his popular PyCon 2009 talk
"Namespaces and Code Objects"
<http://us.pycon.org/2009/conference/schedule/event/7/>.
*Jason Baker has volunteer to do talk about "Refactoring and Code
Smells"; maybe we can also talk him into doing an Open Space talk
about the 'pysistence' library he recently uploaded PyPi.
* David Pennington has offered to do a 30 minute talk on pexpect.
* Jason Galyon will be up for show and tell about his recent work with pyglet
* Other potential talks are in the offing but not yet confirmed

Both Walker and Jeff also agreed to act as puzzlemasters for
PythonLabs; each is preparing to provide Python programming challenges
for Sunday.

If Python beginners do show up, they still may find some of the
planned talks interesting, and we can always adjust open space talks
to accomodate beginners.