PyCon 2004: Community-oriented Conference for Python Developers

PyCon 2004 is a community-oriented conference for developers interested in Python, an open source programming language. The conference provides opportunities to learn about significant advances in the Python development community and meet fellow developers from around the world. PyCon 2004 will be held at George Washington University's Cafritz Conference Center in Washington DC on March 24-26, 2004. Mitchell Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the Open Source Applications Foundation, will be the keynote speaker. The conference program includes peer-reviewed presentations, the annual Python state of the union address, and open space for informal talks and meetings.

PyCon is organized by members of the Python community and made possible by the Python Software Foundation and the conference sponsors Hostway, ActiveState, White Oak Technologies Inc, Tummy.com, ZeOmega, and Wing IDE for Python. Early bird conference registration costs $175 US ($125 for students) through February 15th. Regular per-registration after that date will cost $250 ($175 for students), and $300 ($225 for students) at the conference. The conference will be preceded by 4 days of coding sprints, March 20-23, which offers developers an XP-style environment to advance the Python code base and popular Python-based modules such as the Zope application server, Plone content management system, Twisted framework for asynchronous programming, Docutils structured text processing system, and the Chandler personal information manager.

Participation in sprints is free of charge and open to all. Python is a powerful object-oriented programming language that is developed and maintained by a global community of open source developers, under the oversight of the Python Software Foundation. It is very easy to learn for programmers of other languages such as C, C++, Java, and Visual Basic, and can significantly increase programmer productivity. It is often characterized as an agile language that promotes speedy development and includes a unit-testing framework for building more robust applications. Python is often used in large system development to decrease software costs, mitigate risk, and meet aggressive schedules.

The language is the basis of applications used by tens of thousands of companies and organizations worldwide, and its user base is growing rapidly. The Python Software Foundation (PSF) is a non-profit organization devoted to advancing Open Source technology related to the Python programming language. The PSF holds the intellectual property rights to Python and plans to fund portions of future development of the language. Additional information on the PSF is available at http://www.python.org/psf. To make a tax-deductible donation, please visit http://www.python.org/psf/donations.html. Company sponsorships are also being accepted.