The EuroPython 2011 Conference was held in Florence, Italy in late June. This is the primary European conference about the Python programming language and is aimed at Python programmers, users, and enthusiasts of all levels, both. Topics covered ranged from more advanced subjects, such as Refactoring PyChart by Jacob Hallen and Making CPython fast using trace-based optimisations by Mark Shannon, to many talks and workshops for beginners. The five-day sold out event featured 160 sessions and 66 speakers. Over 600 people attended including 18 Googlers from seven different offices from around the globe.
A couple of our engineers gave fascinating talks, including keynote speaker Alex Martelli, who delivered a thought-provoking discussion on Good API Design. Also speaking was Brian Fitzpatrick, known for his Life at Google YouTube series: Ask a Google engineer—Fitz and Ben from Chicago. His talk on The Myth of the Genius Programmer had wide appeal, arguing that successful software is usually written by a team of smart programmers, not a single “genius.” Wesley Chun, a Google cloud Developer Advocate, gave five talks, including a 90 minute session on What is a Google App Engine?, an update on the most recent releases on the App Engine platform and best practices for existing App Engine developers. Péter Szabó, software engineer, delivered two talks about his open-source Python projects this year: Emulating Stackless and greenlet with each other and Precompiling and deploying Python to any Linux, Mac OS X or FreeBSD system. The conference organizers were very enthusiastic and helpful. Their hard work before and during the conference made the life of the speakers and the participants easy.
Our Google booth included a Google quiz loaded with Python-related programming and culture questions crafted specifically for this conference. More than 170 attendees stopped by to try their hand at questions like: How do you write a correct ternary conditional expression in Python? What is Python's "null" object? What is the Python module you import to create low-level networking code? One lucky winner won a Samsung Galaxy S phone. In the evenings there were multiple programming and other fun competitions - including the Google Code Jam, a small replica of our popular global coding competition.
Lest we forget where we were, there were some nice Italian touches throughout the conference like pouring regional wine, Chianti Classico, at every lunch to complement the excellent traditional Italian food, lots of gelato, and copious amounts of the legendary Florentine steak at the conference’s PyFiorentina dinner. Free time allowed for leisurely strolls around the historical city and a visit to the Uffizi Gallery. We’re already looking forward to attending EuroPython 2012. Until we meet again in Florence next year, you can survey our comprehensive list of technical events featuring Google engineers and other speakers.
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