Well I have been rather busy post-PyCon, but its time to finally catch up with the year 2000 and get me one of these here blog thingies. It has been a crazy, manic and rewarding six months. I can’t think of a better way to start off my blog, than to go over this years PyCon. (Well that is a little disingenuous but, hey, it’s a blog, how would you know any different? wait…)
It was a rather large conference this year so I will cover it in multiple posts. There are many other topics I would like to cover in the next few weeks, and I fear having all the information on one page would cause any useful information to be lost in the deluge of words.
Leadup to the Conference
After PyCon 2006 this somehow evolved into taking over the PyCon-Tech initiative started by A.M. Kuchling. Like many others faced with a large number of applications to write and little time, I decided to start from scratch by myself with no idea of how the old software worked, and from an outdated spec. I have no clue what I was thinking besides “Boy this Django stuff is FUN!” I did have allot of help in 2005 from Martin Thomas, Brett Hoerner and others. People signed on early in 2006 to help me out, but between car accidents, illness, an elopement and a birth, I somehow ended up doing most of the coding myself; (this was all my fault as I never found time to get the code in a state I thought I could inflict it upon anyone else until February). It was a marathon run getting all the code changes and features implemented in time, but it seems to have come out. At some point I decided I would do some screencasts of the project and maybe even try to capture one of the tutorials as a screencast. The folks over as ShowMeDo were more than happy to help me out with that (more on this later). In the end I almost missed my flight out (I had been bumped to an earlier flight 3 hours before the new departure time), and had yet to do anything for the Python Lab: Solve This! which I was supposed to be coordinating.
Wednesday
Due to being bumped to a flight with a layover I arrived an hour later than expected and missed the people I was supposed to share a taxi with. I did meet up with some very interesting people whom I should remember, but unfortunately I do not. We shared a shuttle which managed to take two hours to go 15 miles. I finally got checked in and met up with the ‘crew’ just as the moving van arrived with the materials. I would mention names, but the list is massive, and would sound too much like name dropping. I will mention three names which I have not seen mentioned on other blogs and whom deserve medals. Marry Rush, Bonnie Allen, and Evelyn Mitchell. If not for these three women there would not have been a PyCon. Bonnie had been managing the swag shipments, opening the massive amounts of t-shirts and swag, labeling everything and having it all organized well before PyCon started. To be honest I don’t know who did what exactly as all three seemed to switch roles seamlessly and take over for the others when needed. If you had a problem, you went to the registration desk, and they solved it. They ran the swag stuffing, they ran the registration desk, the organized the organizers, and they kept their husbands sane.
Thursday
Thursday is the Tutorial day, and this year I decided not to attend any (Disclaimer: this is because I waited too long and they all filled up.) I tried to help with registration, but mostly got in the way. Ian Ozsvald of ShowMeDo put me in touch with Neil Clayton and they donated a license to the fantastic screencast software IShowU to Jacob-Kaplin Moss, so we could capture his tutorials in real time with the recorded audio and video. Unfortunately it kept crashing so we had to abandon it; I will fake it in post production with the slides. I spent most of the day coming up with the problems (and solutions and doc’s) for the Python Lab. Most of that day is a blur to me as I was just coding like a mad man. Wesley Chun had offered use of any of the problems from his fantastic book Core Python Programming, but to be honest I was having a hard time making good solutions! (I am no Wesley Chun, not that there was ever a question of this.)
The evening was a blast, starting with the extended swag stuffing (we only stuffed enough packs for the tutorial attendees Wend. evening), then on to the board game social. It was at this point that I met the folks from PyGame and got them hooked on a favorite game of mine, Ice Towers. Many other games were played, but Ice Towers seemed to strike a chord, and turned into one of the highlights of the conference for me (yes, more shameless foreshadowing). The evening ended sometime around 3am for me with the completion of the afore mention Lab problems.
In the end, the first day or so was a complete blur, but nothing compaired to the insanity that was Friday….
Aha! So you’re the perpetrator of Ice Towers. I noticed that game being played this year and last. It looked interesting, so I picked up some sets of IceHouse pieces and have been playing games with my kids (7 & 9; TreeHouse is good for them). It’s like open-source gaming: the hardware must be bought, but the games are freely shared and you’re free to invent & share your own.
I love all the Looney Labs games (check out Echo Fluxx with a Python!). They are one of the few remaining independent game companies left.
Your kids would get a kick out of Fluxx and Chrononauts which are some of the most origional card games out there. All the Looney Lab games require 3 or more players and are best played with 5-6. The Mad Lab Rabbits still put on Pop-Tart Cafe’s at the east coast conventions, and I recommend checking them out. There is nothing like playing Life Sized Ice Towers.
(note: need to blog about looney labs games)