PyCamp-PythonRegionalUnconferences
a free participant-driven face-to-face gathering of Python aficionados

Evening Social

Perhaps the night before the conference have a social/dinner/tasty beverages for those who will be in town?? Just an idea -- chad

Schedule (proposed)

Scheduled Classes (subject to change, but we're pretty sure)

Python 101

New to programming or want to learn Python from scratch? This is the class for you. Dr. Bernard Chen (incoming UCA Faculty) will teach a portion of the class he has taught at Georgia State University to non Computer Science students. Come use the computers at UCA and find out what all of the excitement is all about.

Python 201 - A Tour of Python Concepts (talk outline) (slides/handouts)

Jeff Rush is the National Advocacy Chair for Python and is coming to us from the Dallas Python Users Group. This class is a tour of concepts woven throughout the Python language; types orientation, namespaces, closures, code objects, callability and iterators.

Python 202 - A Survey of Useful Python Technologies (talk outline) (slides/handouts)

A survey of five useful Python technologies; the enhanced Python shell "IPython", a Pythonic way of templating XHTML (Stan/Nevow), the many places that ReStructuredText is used, accessing relational databases with DB-API and the power of object-oriented databases (ZODB/Durus). Wrapping it up is coverage of the many resources in the Python community, lists, blogs, registries, etc.

Python for Unix/Linux System Administration

We are excited to offer this class taught by Noah Gift of the Atlanta Python Users Group. Noah has teamed up with Jeremy Jones to author an O'Reilly title of the same name (http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596515829/). This is an advanced class. Noah is brought to us through the O'Reilly Speakers Program.

Scheduled Talks (also subject to change) !!

Talks will run for 50 minutes and are not intended to be as in depth as the morning classes. All talks will be interactive with lots of opportunity for asking questions.

pyGame

Pygame is a set of Python modules designed for writing games. Pygame adds functionality on top of the excellent SDL library. This allows you to create fully featured games and multimedia programs in the python language. Pygame is highly portable and runs on nearly every platform and operating system. Pygame itself has been downloaded millions of times, and has had millions of visits to its website.

Python Standard Library

Python is said to come with "batteries included" because of the extensive standard library. Noah Gift will walk you through some of the more important modules and show you how to find and use library modules.

An Introduction to Python Eggs (talk outline) (slides/handouts)

"Eggs are to Pythons as Jars are to Java..." Python eggs are a way of bundling additional information with a Python project, that allows the project's dependencies to be checked and satisfied at runtime, as well as allowing projects to provide plugins for other projects. There are several binary formats that embody eggs, but the most common is '.egg' zipfile format, because it's a convenient one for distributing projects. All of the formats support including package-specific data, project-wide metadata, C extensions, and Python code.

Text/File Processing

A look at common techniques to read from and write to files as well as processing text once you get it. Python comes with many built-in methods to make manipulating text and files easy.

Eclipse and Python

Eclipse is a powerful text editor and much more. This talk will show you how to use Python extensions with Eclipse to help you write, debug and test your code from the editor.

One Laptop per Child

The OLPC initiative is an exciting effort to get inexpensive, nearly indestructible computers into the hands of children in developing countries. The OLPC computer uses Python extensively. Chad Files was one of the first people in Arkansas to purchase two of these (one for him, one to give to a child in Africa) and will show off this remarkable computer.