It’s that time again! Planning for PyCon 2014 is well underway, and we’re currently preparing for the launch of our new site. With the launch comes a unique opportunity: Is your organization interested in being a launch day sponsor?

PyCon 2013 launched on July 9, 2012 with 21 sponsors pledging support, leading the charge that drew over 150 organizations to pitch in to the biggest and best Python conference yet. We’re planning a similar go-live date for the 2014 site, and we’re building up our cadre of supporters for the April 9-17 conference taking place in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Your organization’s support enables PyCon to do the awesome things. 2013 introduced a number of new events suggested by the community, so we’d like to keep doing those things and more. For example, the inaugural Young Coders tutorial was such a hit that there are already plans around the world for user groups to replicate it, and we’re looking forward to doing a PyCon 2014 rendition. Programs like Financial Aid, which saw its budget increased and then quickly doubled to reach $100,000 USD, are greatly enhanced by the giving of sponsors.

Along with benefiting the community, sponsorship of PyCon brings many benefits to its supporters. We hear it year after year that there is no better place to hire Python developers than at PyCon. We offer sponsors a place on our site to promote available positions, and we run a job fair on-site that has been a huge success. The Expo Hall is a great place to market your latest projects and to network with 2,000 eager Python developers. The value is unparalleled in the conference scene, especially after considering our flexibility to work with each and every organization. We even offer a 50% discount to organizations under 25 people. See https://us.pycon.org/2013/sponsors/whysponsor/ for more thoughts.

While we’re still finalizing the sponsorship prospectus, it will be very similar to the one we used in 2013 at https://us.pycon.org/2013/sponsors/prospectus/. We’ll share the details as soon as we complete them, and any questions can be forwarded to our Sponsorship Chair, Jesse Noller.

For 2014, PyCon will have a maximum capacity of 2,000 attendees. We’ve sold out the last two conferences and we’re expecting a third, so mark your calendars for April 9-17, 2014. Other dates to remember are our Call for Proposals in July, and we’re looking forward to opening registration in September. We’re planning for the conference schedule to be laid out in December, just in time for the holidays.

If you don’t have a passport, don’t forget that entering Canada requires one. US residents should see http://travel.state.gov/passport/ for details.

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The Montreal Python team would like to invite you to two very special events regarding OpenStreetMap, the mapping project based on open data that anyone can edit.

First, on Wednesday May 22nd at 7:00pm, there will be a workshop on editing OpenStreetMap. This workshop will be held at Caravan Coop, located at 5334 rue de Gaspé. For more information and to register to the event, please visit http://www.eventbrite.ca/event/6553739411

Second, on Sunday June 2nd at 1:00pm, we invite you to an onsite mapping experience. The goal of this “mapping party” is to ensure the quality of the map in the neighbourhood of the Palais des congrès de Montréal. For more information and to register to the event: http://www.eventbrite.ca/event/6554826663

Why map the neighbourhood of the Palais des congrès?

You most certainly know that Montreal will be the host of the next PyCon in 2014, and that the Montreal Python’s team plays a central role in the event organization. About 2500 people are expected at the Palais des congrès in April 2014, and we would like to welcome them with due honor. To that effect, we wish to provide attendees an in-depth map of the surroundings of the Palais, to inform them of the various restaurants and shops to visit.

On a different matter, but still regarding PyCon 2014, we have begun an Insider’s Guide for the attendees: https://github.com/PyCon/2014/wiki/Insider’s-guide. We would like to have your feedback. If you know good restaurants or fun activities to do in Montreal, please write us at pycon-montreal@googlegroups.com.

So, what do you think? Ready for the adventure?

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Last year, PyCon Canada was sold out. It was an amazing edition and we can predict without any doubt that the same thing will happen probably this time. Make sure to reserve your place for this event which will be held on August 9 to 13 in downtown Toronto

It will be an amazing opportunity for the Canadian Python community to get together and to prepare itself for PyCon in Montréal in 2014.

We’ll see you in Toronto this summer!

PyCon Canada 2013 August 9-13 at Chestnut Conference, Downtown Toronto

If you want to propose a talk, click here:

“http://2013.pycon.ca/en/speak/”http://2013.pycon.ca/en/speak/

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We just received the room number for Montréal-Python 37 : SH-2620. Same address as usual, UQÀM – 200 Sherbrooke West.

[En français ci-bas]

As announced by Fabian we are launching the Debian Québec group this saturday, with a release party at UQAM. I may not be present as I was planning to go camping this weekend, but since the weather forecast is rainy so far, I may cancel.

Tel qu'annoncé par Fabian, nous lançons le groupe Debian Québec ce samedi, avec un "release party". Je vais *peut-être être absent vu que je prévoyais sortir en camping, mais vu qu'ils prévoient de la pluie pour 4 jours, je vais peut-être m'abstenir...

Good news from the free open source software community :

• Debian 7 “Wheezy” has been released
• Debian Québec is born
• Montréal-Python is going to celebrate this!

Ever dreamed of a fully functional and performant Python development workstation? Wanted to become a hacker so you attend Montréal-Python workshop but find yourself spending your time configuring your computer?
That’s history!

Come to the Debian release party this Saturday, May 11th at UQAM, starting at 12:30.
You’ll treat yourself to the brand new Debian and we’ll set up a Python development environment together, 100% free open source software based, using Debian’s packages.

Official announcement of release party organized by Debian Québec (in French) :

• http://wiki.debian.org/DebianQuebec/ReleasePartyWheezy/Invitation
• http://agendadulibre.qc.ca/event/563/

The complete address is :
UQAM, Complexe des sciences Pierre-Dansereau, Cœur des Sciences (a.k.a “La Chaufferie”), 175, avenue du Président-Kennedy (COR-700)

• OpenStreetMap: http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=coeur+des+sciences
• Google Maps: http://goo.gl/maps/cDnce

The Montréal-Python icing on the cake: package installation for…

• famous interactive interpreter IPython
• preferred text editor
• source versioning
• virtual environments
• scientific Python
• Python for web development (frameworks, database drivers)

Fresh air that will dilate your bronchi for sure!
Be there.

Presentation material here : http://nbviewer.ipython.org/5556234

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So while I haven't work exceptionally hard to help with the Debian Wheezy release (I merely help with a few RC bugs and organised a bug squashing party), I still have a few significant contributions to the release. So here's my claim to fame to the #newinwheezy game:

• Charybdis - a popular and solid IRC server which is the base of the software behind the Freenode network (amongst others)
• Kedpm - a Figaro compatible password manager, one of the few out there which supports both a console and graphical UI
• tty-clock - a simple console clock
• Drush 5 - probably the best Drush release so far, and although Wheezy doesn't feature the latest release, as soon as wheezy is released, I'll backport the latest (5.9)
• Gameclock 4 - a great clock engine for timing chess games and other board games - unfortunately, version 5, which has support for go timers, wasn't ready in time for Wheezy, but will be backported

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Pythonistas,

The whole Montréal-Python team wishes to invite you to Montréal-Python 37: Universal Usufruct on Monday, the 13th of May, 2013 at UQÀM.

Here is the lineup:

• Two Special Head-to-head presentations:
  • Greg Ward with “Why You Should Use Mercurial Instead of Git”
  • Rory Geoghegan with “Why You Should Use Git Instead of Mercurial”
• Josef Perktold with “Introduction to statsmodels”statsmodels http://statsmodels.sourceforge.net/devel/ is now the main general purpose statistics and econometrics package in Python.
• Michaël Ricart with “Domogik, un logiciel de domotique”
• Mathieu Martin with “Cloudflare: World-class security and performance tools for your web app”Cloudflare is a SaaS tool that offers CDN, WAF (web application firewall), downtime mitigation and more, to help make your web app more awesome. Their free tier is great for blogs and personal projects (do you have a CDN for your blog?). The paid plans are powerful and flexible enough to be a great asset for a lot of companies with a presence on the web. I will summarize what Cloudflare can do for you, how to use it (with live demos) and discuss a few caveats.
• Luis de Bethencourt with “from GStreamer import Multimedia.Unlimited_Potential”Will show by example how to use GStreamer in Python. Starting with a very easy way to write an mp3 player, then will use that as a base and by slowly adding changes have more in depth playback control, music streaming, music mixing, then to video, video filtering, and even simple video editing if time allows it. All with self-contained Python examples, 100 lines of code in each step and thorough explanation of what at each line from a bird view.

Along with our beloved regular features: Module of the Month: difflib, given by Mathieu Leduc-Hamel, and a very special double-sized Person of the Month: Fernando Pérez and John Hunter given by Éric Araujo..

Location: UQÀM Pavillon Sherbrooke, 200 Sherbrooke West, Room SH-2620.

http://www.uqam.ca/campus/pavillons/sh.htm http://goo.gl/maps/76IKD

(Please stay tuned to the blog for the room)

Schedule:

• 6:00pm — Doors open
• 6:30pm — Presentations start
• 7:30pm — Break
• 7:45pm — Second round of presentations
• 8:30pm — One free beer offered at Bénélux just across the street

We’d like to thank our sponsors for their continued support:

• UQÀM
• Bénélux
• Outbox
• Ludia
• Savoir-Faire Linux
• Caravan
• iWeb
• Shopify

See you on the 13th for a great evening!

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