Blog entries

An update about accommodation. The Burlington Hotel has no rooms that weekend. There are also other hotels nearby, see accommodation section, it's not an extensive list. If you find a hotel that has a good price, please comment in disqus.

We would like to welcome first confirmed keynote speaker, Lynn Root, who is a software engineer for Red Hat, founder of the San Francisco Chapter of PyLadies, board member of the Python Software Foundation.

We are proud to announce PyCon Ireland 2013 will be held on Sat 12th - Sun 13th October at The Burlington Hotel. Tickets will be announced shortly.

A two-day sprints will be held on Mon 14th - Tuesday 15th October at College of Computer Training. The sprints are a free event open to all (18+), registration will be required . More details to be announced soon.

Call for Sponsors

Sponsorship Brochure: http://bit.ly/PyConIEBrochure2013
Submission form: http://bit.ly/sponsorpyconie

Call for Speakers

Submission form: http://bit.ly/speakerpyconie

As co-Chair, I would likes to welcome the new PyCon Ireland 2013 Committee.

• Diarmuid Bourke (Chair) / Vicky Twomey-Lee (co-Chair)
• Rodrigue Alcazar
• Jakub Jarosz
• Daniel Kersten
• Kevin O'Brien
• Nic Roland
• Rigel Di Scala
• Michael Twomey
• Vishal Vatsa

Also, buckle your belts and keep the 2nd weekend of October free for PyCon Ireland 2013. We'll announce the date officially once we sort out some details. So watch this space or Twitter or Facebook.

Congratulations to Diarmuid, our new Chair. I don't envy his position, and I'm happy to hand over the baton to him. And also welcome to our new officers, Jakub, Rodrigue and Vish.

Here's the new committee members for 2013:-

• Chair: Diarmuid Bourke
• Secretary: Michael Twomey
• Treasurer: Vicky Twomey-Lee
• Officers:
  • Brian Brazil
  • Jakub Jarosz
  • Nic Roland
  • Rodrigue Alcazar
  • Tendayi Mawushe
  • Vishal Vatsa

Rory Geoghegan has been kind enough to give us a talk on Projecteuler.net problems in python.

Michael Twomey will be standing in for Paul Barry to give YAPY3T.

Thank you both for jumping in last minute to help us.

Speakers and most of the Talks announced. Tutorials and workshops will be announced soon.

We are also proud to announce Alex Bradbury as our keynote speaker representing Raspberry Pi. Talk title TBC.

Put your thinking hats on for lightning talks, sprints as well.

If you want to help out, please comment below with your name and what you can help us out with either on the run up and/or on the day.

Students, if you want to win a Raspberry Pi, come along and register for PyCon Ireland 2012. This prize is sponsored by one of our own Python Ireland members, Vishal Vatsa. So a big thanks on behalf of everyone for a generous donation.

Since I'm bribing people anyway. @All: Put your thinking caps on for lightning talks, each lightning talk will earn you a free drink (worth €5).

Mick and I met up with HK Python User Group (HKPUG) at Oursky’s office located at the awesome Hong Kong Science and Technology Park on Thursday, January 5th, 2012.

I gave a talk about Python Ireland and how we got to where we are today, followed by lots of food courtesy of Ourky’s followed by Mick’s talk about how he set up the backend of python.ie and why he did it that way and also how he handled printing PyCon Ireland’s conference booklet.

Everyone was friendly and everyone spoke in English, which was a relief to me as I was wondering how will I understand tech talk in Cantonese.

And here’s some proof that we were there (I should really get more photos of our Python Ireland meetups, people are so camera shy):

• http://blog.oursky.com/post/15342228314/hong-kong-python-user-group-having-a-sharing-with
• https://twitter.com/#!/PythonIreland/statuses/154944320787591170
• https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10100597718409320&set=o.296752710359762&type=1&theater

Here's the presentation I gave that evening: Python Ireland - Who, what, how

• Introduction to Python and Advanced Unit Testing
• Introduction to Pyramid
• Vim & Python
• Making Reusable Django Apps

Of course, one of our most successful events this year was PyCon Ireland in October, it was completely sold out. With the support of our sponsors and the community, we were able to host a bigger conference in a fantastic venue, The Radisson Blu Royal Hotel. Not forgetting PSF for sponsoring us the grant of US$1500 enabling us to invite Raymond Hettinger over as one of our keynote speakers. Again, a big thank you to everyone who were involved and came along to the conference. We will have another PyCon Ireland, it will be in the same venue on the weekend of 13th & 14th October 2012, so mark your calendar and watch out for our announcements via the mailing list, tweets, etc. We are open to sponsors interested in sponsoring PyCon Ireland.

Alongside our regular meetups, to integrate with other user groups, there were other events like Code Retreat, the entertaining Battle of the Backends (thanks, Alan, for representing us) at GTUG and the most fun-filled table quiz that was Quite interesting jolly guessing game for code monkeys like you . The government's Open Data Initiative and Hack the City for Dublin City of Science 2012 are still ongoing, and I will still pass on any information to the group for anyone who wishes to participate.

With 2011 coming to an end, the Python Committee 2011 was dissolved recently and a new committee has been formed recently. I present to you the 2012 Python Ireland Committee:-

• Chair - Vicky Lee
• Secretary - Secretary
• Treasurer - Diarmuid Bourke
• Officiers - Brian Brazil, Sean O'Donnell, Nic Roland

With 2012 just around the corner, if you haven't made a resolution yet, maybe you might like to give a talk some eventing, or you might like to help out with the organisation of Python Ireland events, let me know, I'll be glad of a helping hand (or two).

On behalf of Python Ireland, I would like to wish one and all an eventful, adventurous, funfilled 2012.

Larry Hastings has another podcast which includes an interview with Raymond Hettinger at PyCon Ireland 2011. You can listen to it here.

Our own resident penguin or Declan Mc Grath also has a podcast interviewing people including Raymond Hettinger at the conference. You can listen to it here. (BTW, small update to podcast, we had ~160 delegates instead if over 180 mentioned in the podcast. :-))

Thanks to Larry and Declan for sharing their podcasts with us. Enjoy!

• Videos are going up at Vimeo.
• You can find the photos at our PyCon Ireland's Flickr group, feel free to add your own photos to the group as well.
• Presentation slides are here, not all the slides are there, we are still trying to get them all.