EuroPython Blog

We are pleased to introduce our next keynote speaker for EuroPython 2015: Carrie Anne Philbin. She will be giving her keynote on Thursday, July 23, to start the EuroPython Educational Summit.

About Carrie Anne Philbin

Carrie Anne is leading the education mission for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, but is also known as an award winning secondary Computing & ICT Teacher, Author, YouTuber:

• Author of “Adventures in Raspberry Pi”, a computing book for teenagers wanting to get started with Raspberry Pi and programming. Winner of Teach Secondary magazine’s Technology & Innovation Best Author award 2014.
  
• Creator of a YouTube video series for teenage girls called “The Geek Gurl Diaries“, which has won a Talk Talk Digital Hero Award. The episodes include interviews with women working in technology and hands on computer science based tutorials.
• Vice chair of the Computing At Schools (CAS) initiative to get more girls and minority groups into computing, which created a workshop based hack day for teenagers concentrating on delivering good content to include all and ‘Hack the Curric’ bringing academics, educators and industry experts together to create inclusive resources for the new Computing curriculum.

In 2012, she became a Google Certified Teacher and KS3 ICT subject Leader at a school in East London. She has a blended and open approach to teaching as can be seen on her website ICT with Miss P. She became a Skype Moment Maker and ambassador for technology. She is an evangelist and often speaks at conferences like BETT, Raspberry Jamboree, YRS, PyCon UK and now EuroPython.

The Keynote: Designed for Education: A Python Solution

The problem of introducing children to programming and computer science has seen growing attention in the past few years. Initiatives like Raspberry Pi, Code Club, code.org, (and many more) have been created to help solve this problem. With the introduction of a national computing curriculum in the UK, teachers have been searching for a text based programming language to help teach computational thinking as a follow on from visual languages like Scratch.

The educational community has been served well by Python, benefiting from its straight-forward syntax, large selection of libraries, and supportive community. Education-focused summits are now a major part of most major Python Conferences. Assistance in terms of documentation and training is invaluable, but perhaps there are technical means of improving the experience of those using Python in education. Clearly the needs of teachers and their students are different to those of the seasoned programmer. Children are unlikely to come to their teachers with frustrations about the Global Interpreter Lock! But issues such as usability of IDEs or comprehensibility of error messages are of utmost
importance.

In this keynote, Carrie Anne will discuss existing barriers to Python becoming the premier language of choice for teaching computer science, and how learning Python could be helped immensely through tooling and further support from the Python developer community.

EuroPython Educational Summit

We will have Educational Summit focused talks, trainings, birds of a feather sessions to debate and also Educational Sprints for the building of education focused projects during the weekend.

EuroPython 2015 Educational Summit

Please see the summit announcement for more details.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2015 Team

EuroPython is organized and run by volunteers from the Python community, but we’re only a few and we will need more help to make the conference run smoothly.

We need your help !

We will need help with the conference and registration desk, giving out the swag bags and t-shirts, session chairing, entrance control, set up and tear down, etc.

Perks for Volunteers

In addition to endless fame and glory as official EuroPython Volunteer, we have also added some real-life few perks for you:

• We will grant each volunteer a compensation of EUR 22 per shift
• Volunteers will be eligible for student house rooms we have available and can use their compensation to pay for these
• Get an awesome EuroPython Volunteer T-Shirt that you can keep and show off to your friends :-)

Register as Volunteer

Please see our EuroPython Volunteers page for details and the registration form:

If you have questions, please write to our helpdesk@europython.eu.

Hope to see you in Bilbao :-)

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2015 Team

We had originally planned switching to On-Desk Rates yesterday, but because ticket sales are going well, we are extending the deadline for more than a week.

Buy our EuroPython 2015 Tickets

On-Desk Rates

On-Desk Rates will be active starting on Monday, 2015-07-06, 00:00:00 CEST:

• Student: 180€
• Personal: 440€
  
• Business: 690€
  (all incl. 10% Spanish VAT)
  

This means that you can save up to 30% on ticket prices, if you buy your tickets before:

Sunday, 2015-07-05, 23:59:59 CEST

and still benefit from our Standard Rates:

• Student: 120€
• Personal: 340€
  
• Business: 530€
  (all incl. 10% Spanish VAT)
  

Social Event

Please also remember to book your Social Event Ticket. The price for this, EUR 40, won’t change, but we only have a limited number of tickets available.

For more details on the social event ticket, please see our announcement.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2015 Team

We’re pleased to announce a new venture at this year’s EuroPython…

The Beginner’s Day

If you’re thinking of coming to the conference but you’re new to Python, this could be the session for you. Whether you’re totally new to programming or you already know another language, this day is to give you a crash-course in Python, and the ecosystem around it, to give you the context you need to get the most out of EuroPython.

Bring your laptop, as a large part of the day will be devoted to learning Python on your own PC. This session will take place on the first day of the conference, the Monday. It will be presented in English (although a few of the coaches do speak basic Spanish, French and Italian). 

Sessions will include:

• A high-level introduction to Python and programming in general.  Where did Python come from, what is programming all about, and what do I need to know to understand all these in-jokes about cheese shops?
• A self-directed learning session, with specific tutorials for total beginners and more experienced programmers, accompanied by coaches who will be there to answer your questions and help you when you get stuck.  Learn at your own pace!
• A session on the Python “ecosystem” – An introduction to the Python ecosystem: some topics and bits of jargon that are bound to come up this week: open source, free software, github, packages, pip, pypi, scientific computing, scipy, numpy, pandas, ipython notebook, web frameworks, django, flask, asyncio, the BDFL, the Zen of Python, etc etc.  What are the tools, areas of interest, in-jokes, people of note.
• “How to get the best out of the conference” - recommended talks, what to do at lunchtimes or in the evenings, tips on when and how to ask questions (hint: as often as possible!), what an “open space” is, and more.

We really need to get an idea of numbers for this session, so if you are interested in attending, please drop a quick email to Harry Percival <obeythetestinggoat@gmail.com> from the program work group.

Also, be sure to get your tickets in time, since ticket sales have picked up a lot since we announced the schedule.

PS: We’re also looking for volunteers to help with coaching students during this session. If you enjoy teaching Python to beginners, and you don’t mind sacrificing your EuroPython Monday to it, please do get in touch with Harry Percival <obeythetestinggoat@gmail.com> !

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2015 Team

We have negotiated an extension of the deadline to register for the partner program tours with the local tour operator.

EuroPython 2015 Partner Program

There is plenty to see in and around Bilbao. We have worked out a set of interesting tours, together with a local tour company to choose from, for partners and EuroPython attendees alike:

• Panoramic tour of Bilbao
  
• Excursion to San Sebastian
  
• Guggenheim Museum
  
• Excursion to La Rioja
  
• Boat tour of Bilbao

The tours include travel, lunch and tickets (where needed).

We’d like to encourage early sign-up, since seats are limited.

The new registration deadline is July 4th.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2015 Team

The financial aid work group has started to email everyone who applied for financial aid this year.

We are fortunate to have a budget of almost 20,000 EUR available for financial aid this year, thanks to well running ticket sales, speakers who donated their speaker discounts towards the finaid budget, and a generous grant from the Python Software Foundation (PSF) as our financial aid sponsor:

We received 52 request for financial aid from many countries all around the world: 12 countries from Europe, 2 from Latin America, 2 from Asia, 1 from Africa and 1 from North America.

This year we focused on students (40%) and unemployed people (30%), with the remaining funds going to attendees from startups, academia and research. We also have specific diversity grants for Django Girls, PyLadies and motivated women. 75% of the financial aid was given to speakers, poster presenters, volunteers and Python community contributors.

Waiting list

Financial aid applicants who were not selected for the first round of grants will be placed on a waiting list.

Looking for additional financial aid sponsors

Companies which want to help raise the financial aid budget to also support those people who are currently on the waiting list, please contact the sponsor work group at sponsoring@europython.eu.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2015 Team

We are happy to announce the schedule for EuroPython 2015 in Bilbao.

With over 200 sessions, over 180 speakers, 5 days of talks, trainings, keynotes, lightning talks and open spaces, followed by 2 days of sprints, EuroPython will be one of the most exciting and vibrant Python events this year:

EuroPython 2015 Schedule

The schedule is available in table and list format. Please note that we are still applying changes to the slots and will also add some more interesting special sessions to it in the coming days.

If you want to join the fun, be sure to get your tickets as soon as possible, since we are starting to sell out quickly.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2015 Team

We have sent out the first batch of emails to our speakers. The coupon codes have been created and added to your profiles.

In order to access them, please log in to the website, go to your profile page and click on “Orders, invoices & coupons”:

The coupon code can then be entered when ordering your conference ticket.

Already ordered your ticket ?

If you have already ordered your ticket, you can request a refund at the conference desk.

Donating your discount towards financial aid

As in past years, we also provide a way to donate your discount towards our financial aid budget. If you’d like to donate your discount, please write to our helpdesk@europython.eu.

If you let us know before June 14, we can then allocate the funds towards financial aid for 2015. Any donation after June 14th will be used for next year’s financial aid.

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2015 Team

We are proud to announce an educational summit at EuroPython 2015. This is being organized together with the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

EuroPython 2015 Educational Summit

We will have Educational Summit focused talks, trainings, birds of a feather sessions to debate and also Educational Sprints for the building of education focused projects during the weekend.

Reduced ticket prices for teachers and kids

To to facilitate attendance, teacher can attend the conference at the reduced student rate. If you want to bring along kids, we also have special tickets for them.

Spanish track

For those who don’t feel comfortable with English, we also provide Spanish  tracks to get you up to speed with Python.

Summary of the agenda

• July 21 - Trainings in Spanish (including an introduction to Python)
  
• July 22 - Talks in Spanish
  
• July 23 - Educational Summit Talks (English, all day) + Trainings (English, afternoon)
• July 24 - relax, discuss, attend other conference talks
• July 25 - Educational Summit Sprints
• July 26 - Educational Summit Sprints

More information is available on the Education Summit page. If you have questions, please write to helpdesk@europython.eu.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2015 Team

The EuroPython website supports buying tickets for other people (friends, colleagues, etc.). As a result, it is necessary to “assign” the tickets you buy to either yourself or someone else. The assignment process is explained below.

Please tell us your preferences

The reason we’re interested in you applying this configuration as soon as possible, is that the tickets include a number of preferences which we need to know about in order to properly prepare the conference.

When assigning tickets you will fill some fields, telling us your t-shirt size and cut (women or men style) and your diet preferences. If you don’t provide this information, we cannot assure we’ll have the right t-shirt available for you. Likewise, if you are vegetarian or vegan, it is important to mark this in the preferences, so that we can order enough vegetarian/vegan food.

How to edit the fields of the ticket

First you need to log in and go to your profile and, if you already bought your tickets, you will see something similar to this. Click in view your tickets.

After you have navigated to the tickets, we need you to assign the ticket: simply hover over the ticket and you will see two options. Please select, if the ticket is for you or for someone else.

Remember: Before assigning the ticket the other persons, these must be registered on the website. Otherwise, the assignment won’t work.

After assigning the ticket, each person to which the tickets are assigned need to fill out the ticket preferences using his/her profile page (don’t forget to click save to store the settings):

Some additional help for the preference form:

Tagline: This line will appear after you name. Be original!

Diet: Omnivorous or Vegetarian/Vegan

Python experience: Whats your experience level with Python?

Dates: Which days do you estimate to come. You are not signing anything. You can put some days and come others. But this helps us to better prepare the conference.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2015 Team