|
[DPRG] Announcement: Python Conference Coming to Dallas Soon
Subject: [DPRG] Announcement: Python Conference Coming to Dallas Soon
From: Jeff Rush
jeff at taupro.com
Date: Fri Jan 12 07:01:34 CST 2007
Greetings. As the co-chair for an upcoming volunteer-run conference in the
Dallas (Addison) area, I would like to extend an invitation for you to attend.
I know some of you may be wondering, "what is Python and what does it have
to do with robotics?" Please let me explain.
Python is a open source programming language, of the dynamic,
bytecode-compiled interpretive flavor, used for many kinds of software
development, including the higher-level control portions of robotics. While
you wouldn't use it for timing-critical signal processing or inside a simple
single-chip line-following robot, Python is an excellent glue language for
providing a scripting layer over the lower-level interfaces of your robots.
Even better, Python has an interactive prompt where you can enter expressions,
sequentially invoke your functions and generally test or explore the behavior
of your robot.
Python is a member in good standing in the robotics community. You can read
about Pyro, the Python Robotics environment at http://pyrorobotics.org or just
google for "python robotics" to see several interesting blogs and papers about
Pyro. And M.I.T. is reworking their premier freshman course that teaches EE
and CS using mobile robotics, switching to Python as the teaching language.
You can read about it at http://www-tech.mit.edu/V125/N65/coursevi.html.
The event is the fifth international Python Conference, being held Feb 23-25,
2007 at the Marriott-Quorum in Addison, with early-bird registration ending
*Jan 15*.
The conference draws approximately 400-500 attendees from diverse backgrounds
such as scientists from national and medical labs, college/K-12 educators, web
engineers and the myriad of IT developers and programming hobbyists. Those
new to the Python language are welcome, and we're offering a half-day "Python
101" tutorial on the day before the conference, Thursday Feb 22 to help you
get up to speed and better enjoy the rest of the conference.
Being run by the Python community as a non-profit event, the conference
strives to be inexpensive, with registration being only $260 (or $195 if you
register prior to Jan 15th), with a further discount for students. On the day
before the conference we are running a full day of classroom tutorials (extra
charge per class) and then after the conference is a free four-days of
sprints, which are informal gatherings of programmers to work together in
coding on various projects. Sprints are excellent opportunities to do agile
pair-programming side-by-side with experienced programmers and make new
friends. In fact, you are welcome to bring and show off your robots -- we
would love to see this.
Other activities are lightning talks, which are 5-minute presentations to show
off a cool technology or spread the word about a project, open space talks,
which are spontaneous gatherings around a topic and, new this year, a Python
Lab where experienced and novice programmers will work together to solve
challenging problems and then present their solutions.
The conference is also running four keynote talks by leaders in the
programming field, with a special focus on education this year:
"The Power of Dangerous Ideas: Python and One Laptop per Child"
by Ivan Krstic, senior member of the One Laptop per Child project
"Premise: eLearning does not Belong in Public Schools"
by Adele Goldberg, of SmallTalk fame
"Python 3000"
by Guido van Rossum, creator of Python
"The Importance of Programming Literacy"
by Robert M. "r0ml" Lefkowitz, a frequent speaker at O'Reilly conferences
I believe you will find the conference educational and enjoyable. More
information about the conference along with the full schedule of presentations
with abstracts, is available online:
http://us.pycon.org/
Thanks for any help you can give in spreading the word,
Jeff Rush
Co-Chair PyCon 2007
More information about the DPRG mailing list
|
