Getting back in the swing of things after conferencing for weeks can be pretty painful, thus the lateness of the post. However I think it’s important to go over some thoughts still lingering in my brain as a result.
First off, I have to say that for those of you who don’t know, PyCon is a community organized event, and amazingly well done. I was impressed by the design of the conference, the way they had four talks going on at once and they tried to keep them in a similar interest track. Every talk I attended was at least “good”, and many were “great”. You could really feel a community vibe, and for a conference that had 800+ attendees in the middle of a major recession they had every right to be excited.
There were two major themes content wise that really impressed me, the first was an amazing amount of web framework focus. Django obviously being the twinkle in the eye of the community, but there were smaller communities for each of the other projects, Pylons-Turbo Gears, web2py and lots of tools built on top of them. One that struck me with some major promise is the Pinax Project. Their goal is to make it so that I don’t ever have to deal with building user registration and in site messaging… and all the other features expected for any site that has social network functionality.
The other major theme was a mini testing conference going on within PyCon, that I was very comfortable hanging around with. We had a hugely successful Birds Of a Feather, as well as a surprisingly active Open Space talk for Windmill.
The “Using Windmill” talk turns out to be pretty successful in every aspect that I really care about. I do wish that I had been able to get a little more sleep the night before, and I have to admit the size of the venue was a bit overwhelming. I now realize watching the footage that I used the word “UM” way too much, and the demo videos must have been hard to watch from the very back of the room. But barring those two things, I am quite happy (I shall learn and practice for the next round of shameless PR at OSCON 2009).
The “Functional Testing Tools in Python” panel was very successful, and a lot of fun. I always enjoy the friendly banter between the different project owners. Everyone has a different opinion on what they care about, focus on and feel they do the best. Obviously since the only two projects represented that focused on Web Testing were Windmill and Selenium, we got a lot of attention.
Watching that panel footage I definitely think that the introductions were too long, but I still think our Journey themed – mind blowing – Windmill demo video was a great intro. At the very least, the audience had a little entertainment before the geek droning began 
Slide had an awesome presence this year, a fun booth, huge banners everywhere and 6 attendees. It was fun to see all of the great responses I received about Slide from people out there in Python land.
Here are links to the videos:
- Using Windmill: http://pycon.blip.tv/file/1947236/
- Functional Testing Tools in Python Panel: http://pycon.blip.tv/file/1947342/
And some pictures:
If you are interested in seeing the new and improved version of the “Using Windmill” talk, please make it out to OSCON 2009, “Scheduled for 16:30 on 22 Jul 2009.” in San Jose, CA.
We are waiting to hear back from both Open Source Bridge and the AJAX Experience as to whether we will be participating in those conferences (fingers crossed)!