The EuroPython Society (EPS), who is organizing the EuroPython conference, last year extended it’s mission to also provide help for the Python community in Europe in general.

As part of this, we would like to get to know, and help create closer ties between organizers of other European Python events.

Organizers’ Lunch

We would like to invite representatives of all European Python conference to EuroPython 2018 to join us for an organizers’ lunch. We’re planing the lunch for Friday, July 27, in the organizer’s room (Soutra Suite).

Our aim is to get to know each other, exchange experience in organizing events and to find out how we, as EPS, can most effectively help other conferences going forward.

Free Tickets

To support and facilitate this, we are giving out one free conference ticket per conference team, so that each team can send a representative to the organizers’ lunch.

If your team wants to send someone to join, please write to board@europython.eu, mentioning the conference you’re organizing and some background on your team.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython Society
https://ep2018.europython.eu/  
https://www.europython-society.org/

Maybe you’ve come to EuroPython as a programmer from another language.

Or perhaps you have other tech skills or you really want to understand what it’s like to program in Python.

Then come to our Beginners’ Day at EuroPython.

What is Beginners’ Day ?

Beginners’ Day is a session we are running, just for newcomers to the Python programming language, on Tuesday, July 24th from 09:30 - 16:45, at the Edinburgh International Conference Center (EICC), the EuroPython 2018 venue, and just in time to get you ready for all the talks which follow on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

You will need a conference pass to attend, but otherwise, it’s free, so if you’re thinking of coming to the conference, but you’re new to Python or programming, this could be the session for you.

The workshop will be run by:

• Vincent D. Warmerdam (PyData Amsterdam) 
• Christian Barra (EuroPython board member)
  

Sign up for Beginners’ Day

Whether you’re totally new to programming or you already know another language - this full day session will give you a crash-course in Python, and the ecosystem around it. You’ll get the context you need to get the most out of the rest of the EuroPython conference.

Bring your laptop, because this will be a hands-on session!

This session will be presented in English (although a few of the coaches do speak basic Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese).

Please see the Beginners’ Day page for the full program:

https://ep2018.europython.eu/en/events/beginners-day/

If you’d like to come, please do register in advance for this session, so that we know how to plan to make it the best yet. We need to know the numbers for planing the workshop.

Sign up for Beginners’ Day

Call for Mentors

Already know Python ? Want to be a mentor ? Fantastic !

Especially if you can add an extra language to help non-English speakers feel comfortable asking questions, or if you’ve never mentored before and want to try to share your knowledge for the first time.

Please sign up as a mentor on our mentor registration form.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2018 Team
https://ep2018.europython.eu/  
https://www.europython-society.org/

We have great news ! After many months of sorting the UK VAT registration issue, we have finally been registered for VAT in the UK. This is the number, we’ve all been waiting for:

GB 297620469

We’ve now generated all the missing invoices for existing purchases and hope that this will make it easier for companies to now register their employees as well.

EuroPython 2018: Get your tickets before we sell out

Downloading Invoices

If you have already purchased tickets, you can find the invoices in your account. Simply log in, go to the profile page, select “Orders, invoices & coupons” on the right and you should find the invoice links for your orders.

The invoices are generated as PDFs, so you can print or archive them easily.

Sorry for keeping you waiting so long.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2018 Team
https://ep2018.europython.eu/  
https://www.europython-society.org/

As we have already announced, access to trainings is not included in our regular conference tickets this year. We have done this to keep the conference ticket prices reasonable, acknowledge the value in the trainings are and to add more flexibility.

Two full days of trainings included

Training passes allow you to access all trainings on the two training days, Monday and Tuesday. Each training will run for 3 hours and they will be scheduled in 3 parallel tracks. 

Please note: Training access is on a first-come-first-served basis. We don’t provide registration for specific training sessions.

A light lunch is served on the training days, which is included in the training pass price.

• Business training pass: EUR 295.00 excl. VAT, EUR 354.00 incl. 20% UK VAT
  (for people using Python to make a living)
• Personal training pass: EUR 175.00 incl. 20% UK VAT
  (for people enjoying Python from home)
• Student training pass: EUR 125.00 incl. 20% UK VAT
  (only available for pupils, students and postdoctoral researchers; please bring your student card or declaration from University, stating your affiliation, starting and end dates of your contract)

The trainings pass does not grant you permission to attend the main EuroPython conference days or the sprints. Please get a separate conference ticket for this.

Available training sessions

We have already selected an initial set of trainings, you can view on our session list:

https://ep2018.europython.eu/en/events/sessions/#Training-sessions

We will also have a few sponsored trainings, which are free (you don’t need a training pass to attend these). These will be announced in a separate blog post.

Only a limited number of training passes available

Since we don’t want to overbook the trainings sessions, we have limited the number of training passes to 200.

Training pass sales will start on Friday, June 8, at around 12:00 CEST.

(that’s 10:00 UTC, 11:00 BST, 13:00 EEST, …)

Given the experience with the early bird tickets, which sold out in less than 45 minutes, we recommend to get your ticket as soon as you can.

Regular conference tickets are selling out much faster than last year as well, so the same recommendation applies to those as well.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2018 Team
https://ep2018.europython.eu/
https://www.europython-society.org/

At last year’s event we had a professional conference photographer, Alessia Peviani, from our community, help us cover the event in pictures:

https://ep2017.europython.eu/en/europython/photos/

This year she unfortunately cannot attend, so we’re looking for help from other photographers in the community.

Here’s what we can offer:

• recognition and publicity by listing you as the official EuroPython conference photographer
  
• free tickets for the conference and trainings
  
• refund for travel and accommodation up to EUR 500
  
• gratitude by our attendees who really appreciate having this kind of documentation available
  

What we are asking for:

• cover all aspects of the conference in photos
  
• photos licensed under the CC BY-NC license, with a special exception for the EPS, so that we can use the photos for promoting the conference
  
• self-management and help with administering the Flickr group, uploads by other community photographers and discussions
  

If you are interested in helping us, please write to media@europython.eu.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2018 Team
https://ep2018.europython.eu/
https://www.europython-society.org/

We have received an amazing collection of 376 proposals. Thank you all for your contributions! Given the overwhelming quality of the proposals, we had some very difficult decisions to make. Nonetheless we are happy to announce we have published the first 110+ sessions.

Here’s what we have on offer so far:

• 12 Trainings (complete)
  
• 98 Talks (some more will follow)
• 6 help desks (complete)
• 10 posters (complete)

More sessions to come

We have informed all speakers with accepted submissions by email. We are further selecting a second wave of talks, that will be announced soon.

Please see the session list for details and abstracts. In case you wonder what  poster, interactive and help desk sessions are, please check the call for proposals.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2018 Team
https://ep2018.europython.eu/  
https://www.europython-society.org/

We are happy to announce that we’ll start early bird tickets on

Thursday, at around 12:00 CEST.

We have 200 conference tickets available at the Early Bird rate and they usually sell out within a day or two.

Invoices will be available in a few weeks

Since we’re running the conference in the UK this year and conference tickets are taxed at the location of the conference, we have to charge and pay 20% UK VAT on the tickets.

In order to do this, we need a UK VAT registration and associated VAT ID. Unfortunately, this whole process has taken way too long and so we’re starting ticket sales without issuing invoices at this time, simply because we would not be able to issue valid VAT invoices.

We will issues these as soon as we have the UK VAT ID, which should be within the next couple of weeks if all goes well.

We’ll announce this on the blog and you will then be able to download the invoices in your website account.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2018 Team
https://ep2018.europython.eu/
https://www.europython-society.org/

As part of our commitment to the Python community, we are pleased to announce that we offer special grants for people in need of a financial aid to attend EuroPython 2018.

We offer financial aid conference grants in these 3 categories:

• Free and discounted ticket: Get a standard ticket for the conference for free (including access to conference days (Wed-Fri), Beginners’ Day workshop and sprints.). Note: training passes are NOT included in the free conference ticket.

• Travel costs: We will cover the travel costs pro rata, depending on what you are applying for.

• Accommodation: We can partially cover your accommodation costs

Grant Eligibility

Our grants are open to all people in need of financial aid. We will specifically take into account the following criteria in the selection process:

• Contributors: Potential speakers/trainers of EuroPython (people who submitted a proposal) and all who contribute to EuroPython and/or Python community projects.

• Economic factors: We want everybody to have a chance to come to EuroPython, regardless of economic situation or income level.

• Diversity: We seek the most diverse and inclusive event possible.

How to apply

You can apply for financial aid by filling the form on the EuroPython 2018 Finance Aid page:

https://ep2018.europython.eu/en/registration/financial-aid/

If you have any questions, please read the FAQ or send an email to finaid@europython.eu

Timeline

• June 5th (2018-06-05) - the deadline for submitting the applications
• June 12th (2018-06-12) - applicants will be notified by e-mail around
• June 17th (2018-06-17) - deadline for applicants to accept the grant
• June 20th (2018-06-20) - applicants will receive confirmation notific
• July 23rd (2018-07-23) - last day when we accept invoices

Refund management

Free ticket: The individual coupons will be generated for a free ticket.

Accommodation and Travel grant: All grants involving reimbursements will be reimbursed by PayPal or bank transfer. Please send us your receipts (hotel invoice, plane/bus/train ticket) before the conference for approval.

Become a special Finance Aid and Diversity sponsor!

You or your company can support our finaid initiative by becoming a sponsor.

We have a special sponsor package “Financial aid sponsor” and a “Financial aid donation” option that can be booked separately or in combination with a sponsor package:

• https://ep2018.europython.eu/en/sponsor/packages/#Financial-Aid-Sponsor
• https://ep2018.europython.eu/en/sponsor/options/

For more information please contact the sponsor work group .

Bring us a new sponsor and get free ticket for EuroPython 2018!

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2018 Team
https://ep2018.europython.eu/
https://www.europython-society.org/

At EuroPython, we let our attendees have a significant say in the selection of the sessions which are presented at the conference. We call this “talk voting” - attendees can tell us which submitted talks they’d like to see at the conference.

To be eligible to vote for talks, you need to be a submitter of talks and everyone who attended one of the previous year’s EuroPython conferences.

Since we’re a bit short on time, talk voting will only be possible for a few days, until Sunday, May 27.

How talk voting works

Please log in and proceed to the page https://ep2018.europython.eu/en/speakers/talk-voting/ to vote for talks.

The talk voting page lists all submitted proposals, including talks, trainings and posters.

At the top of the page you find a few filters you can use to narrow down the list by e.g. selecting tags you’re interested in or only show one type of proposal and also to select the sorting order.

For each submission, you can find the talk title with a link to the talk page.

In order to vote, have a look at the title/abstract and then indicate your personal interest in attending this session. We have simplified the voting process and you may chose between these four options: “must see”, “want to see”, “maybe” and “not interested”. Please ignore the option “not voted” - it’s an alias for “not interested”.

If you have questions about the talk, you can go to the talk page and enter a comment.

Note that your votes are automatically saved to the backend without the need to click on a save or submit button.

Talk selection

After the talk voting phase, the EuroPython Program Workgroup (WG) will use the votes to select the talks and build a schedule.

The majority of the talks will be chosen based on the talk voting results. Part of the available slots will be directly assigned by the Program WG based on editorial criteria to e.g. increase diversity or give a chance to less mainstream topics.

In general, the Program WG will try to give as many speakers a chance to talk as possible. If speakers have submitted multiple talks, the one with the highest rate will most likely get selected.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2018 Team
https://ep2018.europython.eu/
https://www.europython-society.org/

We would like to remind you that our two week call for proposals (CFP) closes on Sunday.

Submit your proposal !

Submissions will be open until Sunday, May 20.

If you’d like to submit a talk, please see our CFP announcement for details:

https://blog.europython.eu/post/173666124852/europython-2018-call-for-proposals-cfp-is-open

Submissions are possibe via the CFP page on the EuroPython 2018 website:

https://ep2018.europython.eu/en/call-for-proposals/

We’d like to invite everyone to submit proposals for talks, trainings, panels, etc. Looking at the submission counts, we are especially looking for more trainings submissions (note that you get a free conference ticket and training pass as trainer of a selected training).

Submissions will then go into a talk voting phase where EuroPython attendees of previous years can vote on the submissions. The program work group will then use these votes as basis for the final talk selection and scheduling.

We expect to have the schedule available by end of May.

Please help us spread this reminder by sharing it on your social networks as widely as possible. Thank you !

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2018 Team
https://ep2018.europython.eu/
https://www.europython-society.org/