EuroPython Blog

We extended the deadline for the poster session until 28/04/2014. If your talk has been rejected this will give you the opportunity to resubmit your talk proposal for the poster session. The review process has come to an end and we will publish a list of accepted talk with in the next days.

We are pleased to announce that you can now order a prepaid SIM card through the EuroPython 2014 website. For 15 Euro you can select between a data plan with 1GB traffic limit or a phone plan with 200 minutes, 200 SMS and 200 MB traffic inclusive. You can choose the plan online as soon as you hold the SIM card in your hand. For more details see the official offer. Unfortunately the company doesn’t offer an English translation, but Google Translate or something similar should work fine - both plans are special deals between blau.de and EuroPython.

We also started the sale of Financial Assistance support tickets. 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.

You can buy the SIM card(s) and the Financial Assistance support tickets directly through the EuroPython website (“ticket sale” menu).

Last weekend the web team met in Berlin (and was supported by one member remotely) in the rooms of Veit Schiele Communications GmbH in order to bring the EuroPython 2014 website software forward. The team under the leadership of Markus Holtermann implemented the following new features: 

• A short while ago we made some heavy changes to the main menu. Unfortunately the user experience wasn’t the way we expected it to be. Thus we got some comments on the EuroPython mailing list [1]. It took us some time to decide how to change the way the menu should work. Eventually, a click on a main menu item only toggles the menu as of now (GitHub issue 103) [2]
• We want to generate the badges (and other stuff for the conference) directly from the user data you provide on the website. This presented us with some kind of challenge as you will see in the next bullet point, too. We decided that the singe point of truth for the user data is the user profile. We therefore added a field where you can enter your interests. (GitHub issue 105) [3]
• As said before, the single point of truth for the user data is and will be the user profile. Unfortunately, during the purchase process of a ticket, we only have information about the buyer, not any of the intended ticket users. Although we didn’t change this part in the update (and we won’t change it in the future), you are now able to assign a ticket to another user. This is incredible useful for those buyers ordering multiple tickets, eg. for their colleagues or friends. To assign the ticket to somebody else, ask him/her for the user name and assign the ticket to him/her from your purchase view [4]. If the intended user doesn’t have a account yet, ask him to create one. All tickets that are *not* assigned to somebody will use the first and last name given during purchase. (GitHub issue #101) [5]
• Since many attendees are not from Germany, we looked for a way to hand out SIM cards. Due to legal restrictions this is not *that* simple in Germany (you normally need to present a photo ID). Fortunately we found a reseller where we become some kind of reseller ourselves (it’s a bit more complicated than that ;) ). Hence we will offer SIM cards within the next days that you can buy beforehand and you can pick up during check-in (more details soon). (GitHub issue #100) [6]
• When you modify your profile and try to upload a new avatar, but there are errors in some other fields, the avatar gets lost. We solve this by adding front-end validation to this and many other forms. (GitHub issue #47) [7]
• If you are looking for a job (in your real live, not the one on the internet :D), or if you think about getting a new job for whatever reason, you can now opt-in (and later opt-out) of job offers by our sponsors. We will *NOT* hand over any of your data to the sponsors. The sponsors have to give us their offer and we will send it only to those users interested in job offers. (GitHub issue #78) [8]
• The list of your purchases now shows canceled purchases too. (GitHub issue #102) [9]

Apart from those changes interested for you as an attendee, loads of other changes made it into production. If you are interested, have a look at our repository on GitHub: https://github.com/EuroPython/djep

All new features went into production today with an update of the portal software.

Thanks a lot to the web team and all other sprinters for their dedicated work on the EuroPython 2014 web software.

[1] https://mail.python.org/pipermail/europython/2014-February/008323.html
[2] https://github.com/EuroPython/djep/issues/103
[3] https://github.com/EuroPython/djep/issues/105
[4] https://ep2014.europython.eu/en/tickets/mine/
[5] https://github.com/EuroPython/djep/issues/101
[6] https://github.com/EuroPython/djep/issues/100
[7] https://github.com/EuroPython/djep/issues/47
[8] https://github.com/EuroPython/djep/issues/78
[9] https://github.com/EuroPython/djep/issues/102

We just completed the first round reviewing the financial assistance requests. The financial assistance programme offers grants for people in need of a financial aid to join EuroPython. In the first round we granted a total of 5.500 Euro to sixteen persons. 

The financial assistance program is still open for further grant requests. The next decisions will me made middle of April and May. So please make sure that your request arrives in time. The complete process and requirements is described here.

Financial Assistance Programme

We are pleased to announce two of our keynote speakers of EuroPython 2014.

Travis Oliphant will speak about “Python’s Role in Big Data Analytics: Past, Present, and Future” and Bob Ippolito  will talk about “What can Python learn from Haskell”.

For details check our keynote speakers page.

Dear European Python communities,

we created a EuroPython 2014 flyer for promoting the conference at various other events over the next weeks and months. We encourage everyone going to related conferences or events spreading the word about EuroPython 2014. Just send an email to the EuroPython helpdesk with information about who you are (name and postal address), how many flyers you need and information about the event where you intend to distribute the flyer. 

In addition we ask all local Python user groups and communities to add the EuroPython 2014 logo to their website and a link to the EuroPython 2014 website.

The success of EuroPython 2014 also depends on you!

Spread the word!

Thank you very much in advance.

We started today with the review process for the submitted proposals. 248 proposals for talks and 38 proposals for trainings have been submitted. The  Call for Proposals for posters is still open until 12/04/2014. Rejected proposals can be resubmitted for the poster session.

All registered reviewers can now start with the review process. You just have to login with your account into the ep2014.europython.eu site and click on the “Reviews” menu. There is a lot of work to be done so please start early.

The review phase ends on 30/03/2014. 

Thank you all in advance for submitting this huge amount of proposals and all reviewers.

We would like to point out that the next EuroPython organizer meeting will take place on 13/03/2014. Volunteers are invited to meet with  the Berlin organizer team.

There is also a Webteam software sprint scheduled for 22-23/03/2014. if you are fit with Django (CMS) and Python of course, please join us.

Have you seen our Accommodation page? We have arranged special prices with some hotels and hostels near the venue location. Always compare the prices with the ones of hotel booking sites. Berlin also offers a variety of options for booking private apartments or private rooms for reasonable rates. In addition we set up an ether pad for attendees interested in room sharing. Please add your room requests or offers to the ether pad if you are looking for a cheap option and if you don’t worry to share a room with other Pythonistas.