Bear's Log

Talk about total python immersion! Got back from the PyCon 2004 conference last night and my brain was numb. I don’t think I’ve ever been in the presence of so many bright people - some scary smart. To summarize: a total blast! It was great to meet Ted (aka sprout), Jeffrey (aka jeffrey) and Mitch from “OSAF":http://osafoundation.org, Brian Dorsey (a great guy with a very cool job who also speaks Japanese (not that I do)), Bob Kuehne, Nick Bastin, Michael Bernstein and a whole slew of others I will probably add as I remember /run-across their names in my notes. Another benefit of such gatherings is seeing how other people use technology and do their coding. A lot of variety and more business use of Python than I honestly expected. I knew that Python had made in-roads into corporate use but did not realize that it was being used as a primary language and such a big part of many companies tech use for the primary focus. One of the treats was taking part in the note taking effort that occurred during many of the talks using SubEthaEdit. Suffice it to say that it was amazing to see 4 or 5 and sometimes 10! people editing the same document. Using Rendevous you could see which talks had note takers and you could even monitor a talk that was happening in another room just by opening the proper file. Some of the note taking was more in line with word-for-word renditions of what the slides were but many times you would get the added bonus of “color commentary” from the other people – like what would happen in the Panda3 talk when the Disney person would say something not-quite-true about SIG :) Other examples include people adding notes or URL’s that they knew of and a couple times the jokesters would make an appearance with the occasional pun or other comments. Basically it added a whole new level of experiance to the event Even though my fingers were sore sometimes because they found out that I’m a touch typist and was able to transcribe the talk without too many typos or having to look down much – so I ended up being the raw text generator with others fliting about making corrections and such. The fastest note taking would happen when someone would start at the top, one at the bottom and if need be one in the middle with others bouncing around making fixes. Anywho, as you can tell just from the length of this post, the conference made a huge impression on me and also made me realize how much I miss the social aspect of such geek-togethers. So much so that I am now looking to see if there is a Philadelphia based Python group.