NEW ZEALAND PYTHON USER GROUP

Media Statement

November 13, 2009

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

What do 150 software developers, a 2 day conference, and a programming language called Python add up to? Kiwi PyCon 2009, which was held in Christchurch this past weekend. PyCons are held annually throughout the world but this was the first time the event had been held in New Zealand.

The main keynote speaker, Joel Burton, who was flown from the US courtesy of both the Python Software Foundation and the Plone Foundation gave his presentation on the Saturday morning entitled “Why Python Web Frameworks are Changing The Web”. His presentation looked at some history of the development of Python Web Frameworks and also why Python is becoming the language of choice for many web developers.

The conference had two main tracks, with delegates enjoying presentations on project management, science and maths, games and animation, and web development. There were also more interactive sessions with conference attendees participating in short presentations or open discussions on a specific theme.

Tim Penhey, the conference’s second keynote speaker, presented his talk on the Sunday morning entitled “Launchpad: The Good, the Bad, and the OMG How Does That Work”. His presentation took a look at the lessons learned from building and running the launchpad.net project.

“The feedback we’ve received from the attendees has been really positive”, commented Tim Knapp, the conference’s Director. “Everything went really smoothly thanks to all involved and I’m so happy that we could set a high standard for future Kiwi PyCons”. Preparations to hold Kiwi PyCon 2010 in Paihia are already underway. For more information go to http://nz.pycon.org (opens new window).

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For media or conference enquiries please contact:

Tim Knapp, NZ Python User Group Vice President and Event Director

Phone: 021 156 6405

Email: kiwipycon@nzpug.org (opens new window)

Website: nz.pycon.org (opens new window)