Pycon US registrations are closed and you didn't make it? Look no further: we are happy to officially announce EuroPython 2012, that will be held in Florence, Italy, on July 2nd-8th!
Following last year's success, we are happy to host you again in Italy for an even bigger event. With our projections, we expect more than 800 partecipants this year! We also delayed the conference a little on the calendar: by slipping into July, we are moving from high-season to mid-season as Florence tourism goes, and that will surely help a lot for travel arrangements, hotels, and everything that goes around the conference itself.
We carefully analyzed all the feedback forms we received last year, and we are still doing so. We are trying to gather as much feedback as possible, specifically about those areas where we tried something totally different compared to previous EuroPython editions.
One of these differences was the structure of the conference: given the low level of attendance on the tutorial days in 2009 and 2010, we went for something radically different: we increased the conference length to 5 full days, and scheduled the trainings in parallel to regular talks. The name change (from "tutorial" to "training") might seem minor to veteran Europythoners, but it helps conveying the basic message that trainings are not just for beginners.
The net result has been very positive: training sessions have been very busy on average (a couple of sessions had more people on each one than the total number of attendees at tutorials in 2010!) , and feedback forms say that 62% preferred this format compared to that of previous years.
We're thus confirming the same structure: the conference proper will be from Monday 2nd to Friday 6th, while sprints will be on Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th.
If you know that you're coming (and that includes 79% of the people who filled the feedback forms!), book your flight now! Don't wait for the conference ticket: we will open registrations on March, but the price will be mostly unchanged (no promises yet, but we don't foresee a revolution there).
Instead, we would suggest to wait before booking the hotel (or book just away, but make sure to have free cancelation): in fact, we're trying to finalize a very special concession price for rooms at the conference hotel. By leveraging the large number of attendees and fixing a big number of rooms immediately, we are hoping to be able to offer room booking (with also integrated room sharing!) within the checkout process on our website. So give us a few weeks to sort out all the details, everything will be ready when the registration is open.
While we are still finalizing the calendar of all the milestones between today and EuroPython, we are surely opening the call for proposals as soon as this week. So it's a good time to start thinking of a good submission. Whether you are a veteran speaker or a first-timer, we need you, your experience and your willingness to share to make EuroPython the great conference that everyone is awaiting!
We broadcast our announcements on different channels because we know people like it so. Make sure you don't miss anything about EuroPython: you can follow our @europython account on Twitter, or subscribe to our RSS feed, or to our low-traffic mailing-list. Pick the channel that suits you best!
Happy Pythoning!
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