The development team of the Python interpreter (a.k.a python-dev) is organizing a bug weekend on Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st of November.
We would like to encourage anyone who feels interested in participating to give it a try. Contributing to Python is much less intimidating than it sounds. You don't need to have previous experience with modifying the Python source; in fact bug days offer a good opportunity to learn the basics by asking questions and working on relatively simple bugs (see "how to get prepared" below). And most core developers are actual human beings!
How it happens
The bug week-end will happen on the #python-dev IRC channel on the Freenode network, where several core developers routinely hang out. No physical meeting is scheduled, but anyone is encouraged to organize one and announce it on the official Python channels such as this one.
Participants (you!) join #python-dev and collaboratively go through the Python issue tracker at http://bugs.python.org . From there, you can provide patches and/or review existing patches. Also, you can help us assess issues on any specific topic you have expertise in (the range of topics touched in the stdlib is quite broad and it is more than likely that the core developers' expertise is lacking in some of them).
Or, if you feel shy, you can simply watch other people work and get more conf ident about participating yourself. Development is public and lurkers are welcome.
What you can work on
Our expectation is that Python 3.2 beta 1 will have been released a couple of days before the bug week-end and, therefore, one primary goal is to polish the 3.2 branch for the following betas and the final release. There are many issues to choose from on the bug tracker; any bug fixes or documentation improvements will do. New features are discouraged: they can't be checked in before the official 3.2 release.
How to get prepared
If you are a beginner with the Python codebase, you may want to read the development guide available here (courtesy of Brian Curtin): http://docs.pythonsprints.com/core_development/beginners.html
There's a small practical guide to bug days/week-ends on the wiki: http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonBugDay
And the development FAQ holds answers to generic development questions: http://www.python.org/dev/faq/
You can also do all of the above during the bug week-end, of course. Please, don't hesitate to ask us questions on the #python-dev channel.
