pyArkansas 2008 a huge success
I’m way behind on posting this, but here goes.
The first annual pyArkansas Python conference was held by pyar^2, the Python Artists of Arkansas , on October 4th on the campus of the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. We were very graciously hosted by the Department of Computer Science in their very fine facilities. To our surprise, 57 people attended. Honestly, when Greg Lindstrom and myself starting planning this conference earlier this year, I think we would’ve been shocked to have 25 attend. Our registration numbers actually went above 70 folks, but the weather turned bad that morning, so that might have held some people away. We had a nice mix of beginner and experienced Pythonistas. People came from Branson, MO, Dallas, TX, and all over the state of Arkansas.
In the morning, we had classes including introductory Python (taught by Dr. Chen of UCA ), intermediate Python (taught of Jeff Rush ), and Python for systems administration (taught by Noah Gift ). These classes were very well received. The afternoon consisted of talks on pyGame, text/file processing, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), Python eggs, the Python standard library, and Python with Eclipse. Elegant Stitches was on hand selling their great assortment of officially-licensed Python shirts and gear (thanks again for the shirt, Janet!). I highly recommend the Python logo long-sleeved easy-care oxford – go order one today.
We had great sponsorship for this event. Major monetary sponsors included the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce , Southwestern Energy Company , Novasys Health , and the Python Software Foundation . Wingware graciously provided THREE 3-OS Wingware IDE Professional seats for us to give as prizes – many thanks for those. O’Reilly publishing gave us a box of about 15 books to give away. Python Magazine and ESRI’s ArcUser both pitched in free issues of magazines for our swag bags.
We have received some pretty good press on the event as well. Overall, I’d have to say that for a first stab and for having 50 people, we pulled it off quite nicely. We are already planning next year’s conference, which will surely be bigger and better than this one was.
