PyCon 2009 Day 1

Way too much stuff going on to fully describe it. I should already be in bed, as tomorrow I want to be up early enough to see Jesse Noller's lightning talk: he had me do some graphics for him (so for Heaven's sake don't expect anything classy - we haz gimp but do not really know how to use it :)

Finally got to read Kirby Urner's instantaneous blog of my tutorial session yesterday. Great verisimilitude, lends an authentic flavor to his description.

PSF Members' meeting at lunchtime gave very good results: all members and sponsor members elected/ratified, board now expanded to 10, new bylaws adopted (thanks, Stephan Deibel) and motion to discard logo trademark protection defeated.

My presentation The State of the Python Community: Leading the Python Tribe took too long to present as I didn't have time to shorten the slide presentation, so I only had ten minutes to exchange ideas, but discussions afterwards made it obvious that some people with valuable information are intimidated by the level of research and/or determination it takes to get through to someone who can update the web site. Also there is a lot of enthusiasm to help the PSF. Apparently Jacob Kaplan-Moss is at least toying with the idea of stepping up to help the PSF volunteer web team. That would rock.

Brief hiatus followed by a short Board meeting. I am chairman for another year, and we decided on a couple of Python Community Awards. I was stunned (in the most pleasant way) to be able to view a recording of my session in the Green Room two hours after I had started presenting it! Way to go, audio-visual guys. When this stuff hits the met it will make tech news. They really *are* good.

On to dinner with my Board colleagues plus Allison Randal of the Parrot Foundation, Liew Beng Keat from the Singapore user group and Luciano Ramahlo of Brazil. The Board's only chance to socialize through the face, so an important occasion even if the table was a little long and narrow to allow round-table communication.

Then back to the hotel for a quick drink, a look at today's tweets and a bout of email responding before finally capsizing into bed after finishing this post. Always busy at PyCon. Time flies when you are enjoying yourself. More tomorrow ...