I just got back from PyConBrasil[3] (there's a post about it in the oven, should be ready soon) and have already received two invitations to speak at different conferences!

True, one of them was directed at several of pycon's speakers and the other had nothing to do with pycon at all. Still, nice to see the wheels spinning :)

As soon as I am confirmed on any of these, I'll post a note here.

As people who saw the banner that adorned the top of the my page (and, now, the bottom of this post) these last few weeks might have guessed, I was at Joinville from Wednesday (August 29) to Sunday (September 2) for PyConBrasil3. The conference was tons of fun and I got to meet some friends of old and new alike.

My original plan was to blog daily updates, but, well... I need to get myself a laptop :(.  Volunteers? :)

So I'll leave procrastination for later and get on with a short summary.

Update: Change of plans. The post was getting too big and it was taking me too long to publish anything, so I'll write one post per day (that I was there, not in real-time).

Update on the update: apparently I forgot to publish this post, so it won't help building much anticipation :P

Wednesday, August 29th 2007

Intermission:

Python won't let me cross the boundaries of the list, so let me make it clear that, even though the conference started on Thursday, I got there one day earlier for the first public assembly of the Brazilian Python Association (and thus I indexed Wednesday at 0 and Sunday (the day after the conference) as -1).

Danilo came to my place in the morning, we took the car fueling, washing and oil changing, and drove to Guarulhos airport to meet Nate Aune. I didn't know him, but it wasn't hard to spot the american-looking guy underneath a palm tree holding a video camera and staring at his MacBook Pro :)

We waited a few more hours for Leo to arrive (he was returning from a month in Argentina) as his plane was late (how come Leo always manages to be late, even when he has absolutely no say over it??), had a quick spot of lunch at the airport and , by the time we finally left to Joinville, Nate, having arrived at 7am and it being 1pm already, knew the airport staff by name and spoke only in the soft monotonous voice of flight announcements. 7 hours, incessant rain, very dense fog and loads of lorries later, we arrived just in time to... Get lost in Joinville! Some more driving around, we asked a few locals and eventually managed to arrive at Sociesc's campus, where the conference would be held - and the Association's assembly had started about one hour earlier.

We arrived after the voting for the board had already taken place, but there was only one candidate group, which was elected by acclamation - and was the one I would have voted for anyway, so no harm done. There was some interesting discussion afterwards that served mainly to gather points to be addressed in the future. We should make sure that they are. I'd particularly like to see some action in one specific shortcoming of the Python community: we really suck at marketing! I'll probably write more about this later, but I think we lack better-looking websites (including python.org), easier, shorter tutorials (I'm sure there are a few, but they should be featured prominently on python.org) and basically more "wow factor" for newcomers (I believe experienced Python programmers are already reasonably well-served).

Anyway, once all the formalities were over, we carried on with what we were all really there for: dissing Java!

And beer, and food. Of course :)

Speaking of PyConBrasil3, I've put up a bunch of pictures on flickr, using Aline's Pro account. Descriptions are in Portuguese, but, if anyone asks for it, I can translate them.

PS: Yes, my pyconbrasil[3] "list" has a pictures attribute. So it's not really a list, but it provides a list-like interface. That's dynamic languages for you! ;)

As I had mentioned earlier, I have been invited to speak at two different conferences. One of them has been postponed, but the other is confirmed!

And it's today :P

Ok, I should have given an earlier warning. But, as far as I know, everyone who reads this blog already knows about it, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem :)

The conference is a week-long IT even at Unicsul called WICA07 which is happening simultaneously at three locations. The one where my presentation will be is Sao Miguel.

My slot is from 21:20 to 22:40, and I'll talk about Python. It'll be introductory-level, since I don't think Unicsul teaches Python at all.

So, if you read this and want to show up, I'll do my best to keep you entertained! And let me know you read this blog, I'll be happy to hear about it ;)

BTW, I noticed Erico is speaking there tomorrow about Plone. Cool :)

Ooookay, the follow-up of my PyConBrasil[3] musings took longer than I expected :P

Anyway, after many hours of an exhausting drive, a nice get together in a local bar and, for at least two of us, an international travel, Danilo, Leo, Nate and I were all very tired. Besides, I forgot to mention on the previous post but, when we arrived at our hotel, we found out that they had cancelled our reservations without any warning! Luciano Ramalho managed to find a couple of rooms in the hotel where he was staying, we drove over and finally managed to sleep.

With all that, we were late for the first day of the conference and ended up missing Pedro Werneck's talk ("What Python Does When You're Not Looking", which was widely hailed and everyone agreed was a mistake to slot so early in the morning).

Actually, we got there just in time for Nate's "Multimedia and Podcasting with Plone" presentation (which was convenient, since he was in the car with us ;)). I only knew Plone4Artists by name and, being a frequent complainer about Plone's late adoption of "whistles and bells" (a complaint Plone3 also put to the ground), I was really impressed! I hope I get a chance to play around with it soon (and apparently I will! But more on that later). Nate also gave us a sneak preview of a website he and others at Jazkarta have been working on. But I won't name it or link to it here, because it only officially launches at PloneConf next week and I don't want to spoil the surprise :).

As usual, I skipped many of the presentations to talk to people outside the conference room, and the next one I watched was Dirceu Tiegs's "Introduction to Grok". Now, I've had a lot of interest in Grok lately and have been somewhat involved in Luciano's Kirbi project (though far less than I wanted to), so it was cool to see Grok in the spotlight (with at least two talks and a training session). I also got a chance to buy a Grok t-shirt (like the one Leo's wearing in this picture) :).

Leo, BTW, sensibly changed the topic of his presentation from "Security in Plone" (an interesting subject, but there were a lot of plone talks already) to Ipython (which most people at the conference didn't know about, or didn't use regularly). A very cool presentation, despite some difficulties getting the colour scheme right for projection.

I also particularly enjoyed Érico's "Why Python Matters" (and its point that "industry standards" are stuff to beware of) and Senra's "Pyrotechnical Show - Part II" (neat tricks, impress your friends at parties!).

Another one of notice to me was LZT's presentation of their gas station automation system (in Python, obviously): based on the screenshots they showed, the gas station where I usually refuel my car uses this system! I was so amused by this that I decided not to post here the picture of their jobs page written in php ;). That, and the picture came out too light :P.

There were a few more presentations, some more relevant than others, and then, of course, a large group of us went to a bar for the night :).