Financial Assistance Programme
In the second round of the EuroPython Financial Assistance Programme we granted an additional sum of 3000 EUR for April which results in a total sum of 8000 EUR so far. There will be a third last round in May. So if you are seeking for financial support for coming to the EuroPython 2014 in Berlin you can still apply for the last round.
We also started the sale of Financial Assistance support tickets last month. You can buy one or more Financial Assistance support tickets for a value of 10, 20, 50 or 100 Euro. With the purchase of Financial Assistance tickets you will support further Python enthusiasts to go to EuroPython 2014 in case they need financial support for a ticket or travel expenses. The EuroPython organization team granted already 5.000 Euro last month in the first of three rounds. Please show your appreciation for the Python community and help us to bring more people to the conference which could not make it otherwise.
Partner programme
We are currently working on the details for a partner & family programme in case you want to bring your better half or your whole family to Berlin. Berlin offers a lot of options for spending the time outside the conference programme like visits to museums, boat trips or guided trips to the Berliner “Unterwelten” and many other places of interest. A survey will be announced and published shortly in order to involve you and your partner into the arrangement and selection of the partner programme.
Diversity at EuroPython
There has been a heated discussion over the last week about the representation of women as speakers at EuroPython 2014 and about diversity in general. You can find the official thread here and the official statement of the EuroPython organizers here. Starting point of the discussion was that PyCon 2014 in Montreal reached an outstanding attendance of about 30% women (both as speaker and attendees).
The EuroPython organizers are committed to diversity by gender, sexual orientation and location. Besides the existing Code of Conduct we are working on an explicit Diversity Statement in order to make the EuroPython 2014 enjoyable for everyone. Making EuroPython more diverse is a long-time process that involves the EuroPython Society, the local organizers and the European Python community as a whole. Diversity and outreach can not be dictated but must be lived in reality on all levels.
Schedule
Therehas been some confusion related to the published preliminary schedule (also under the aspects of diversity). The complete schedule will be announced shortly with roughly additional 50 talks and all trainings. The programme team is currently heavily working on the final version that will also take more diversity aspects into account for choosing the talks. We apologize for the confusion - specially to all persons that submitted a proposal keeping them in an uninformed state. The problem was caused by some internal miscommunication but also by the desire to publish a resilient schedule as early as possible in order to let the speakers make their travel arrangements in time.