Report from PyCon India 2010
So I am back from PyCon India 2010. I missed last year, so was waiting for this year's event. Met many faces after very long time and to be in a place with so many other python lovers is always a nice experience. The total attendance was around 700 but the venue was too big for that number , so except the lunch time, corridors had lesser number of people discussing. The selection of the talks were also matching the environment as they came from different directions. We saw talks with hardware accessibility to web development to GUI application toolkits, network programming, scientific computing, terminal based works etc.
Day 1 started a bit late, David Goodger gave the keynote, it was fun. Next talk I liked was from Dhananjay Nene on "Functional Programming with Python", he managed to show many things within the short time.
I stood in the queue for lunch as soon as possible, it was late, too much crowd at the same time, but the taste of the food was delicious. During and after the lunch I was discussing with Jace about Wing IDE, I had a thought of buying that previously also but the price is high for me. Wait, not anymore, they gave a 90% discount for the PyCon India :) Started using it right away with vi mode and it works like a charm.
After lunch, thought of going in Mahendra M's Twisted programming talk, but the room was full, no place for standing also. So hoped over to the auditorium for Vijay Kumar B.'s Device Interfacing with Python and ZIO , it was one of the best talk I ever attended.
Met DP and Jacob after long time :)
This was first time my laptop's X crashed while trying to use the projector, so after few tries I started my talk with the black terminal on the big screen :) newt widgets looked great on that screen though :)
Day 2: I came a bit late as I had to meet few seniors from my college in the city (event was in a far corner of the city), I spent the day mostly in the corridors talking with people. I met so many Pune based python lovers there :) Strangely enough few speakers were absconding from the talks, so the organizers had to innovate to fill in.
At the very end we had first AGM of Indian Python Software Society, too much fun in that :p. I applied for membership, I still need two votes. I also resumed my work on "Python for you and me" 2nd edition. You can also read ml-IN or zh-CN translation of the book.
Any python lover from the country should attend this event, next year it will be in Chennai. Photos will come later this week.