Portland Chosen as PyCon 2016/2017 Location

After a thorough evaluation of several potential host cities, the Python Software Foundation has chosen Portland, Oregon as the next location for PyCon. Following PyCon 2015, taking place in Montréal for the second time, Portland will play home to PyCon for 2016 and 2017.

"This was the first site I had visited where all of the vendors knew of open source software before I arrived. Because Portland is so familiar with the OSS world, I became confident that as a city, they can help make PyCon 2016/17 very successful," said PSF Event Coordinator Ewa Jodlowska.

Portland edged out several other cities in the running, and will make for a great home to PyCon. Several other technology conferences call Portland home, including OSCON, which hosted the last International Python Conference, the precursor to PyCon.

The conference will take place in May of 2016 and 2017, a departure from the recent March and April events of the past. "This will be a great time to visit the Lan Su Chinese Garden, Japanese Garden, Rose Garden, and Arboretum," remarked Jodlowska. The city's wide array of restaurants and entertainment will make for an all around great time. "The city offers great coffee roasters, microbreweries, bakeries, pizza, fine dining, crazy donuts, and best of all FOOD CARTS!"

Following PyCon's trip into Canada, the Portland PyCons will represent the seventh location of PyCon, coming after Washington, D.C.; Dallas, Texas; Chicago, Illinois; Atlanta, Georgia; Santa Clara, California; and Montréal, Quebec, Canada.

As the final dates for the Portland events become available, we'll be sure to announce them here and on the PyCon blog.

Barbara Shaurette and Katie Cunningham earn Community Service Awards

On Friday, July 18th the board of the Python Software Foundation voted to award both Barbara Shaurette and Katie Cunningham a Community Service Award for Q2 2014.

The award is given in recognition of their work to create and run their Young Coders classes, along with freely distributing their teaching materials.

The program began at PyCon 2013 and was an immediate success. The followup blog post is the second most popular post in PyCon's history by a wide margin, and the event was one of the most talked about topics of the conference.

“I don't think you'd ever see that kind of experimentation in a classroom full of adults, who would more likely do everything in their power not to break their computers,” Barbara wrote of the kids’ ability to learn, write, and run code.

Since it's beginnings in Santa Clara it has been run at several other conferences, including again at PyCon 2014 - complete with one day having been taught in French, PyTennessee, and most recently at PyOhio.

We thank Katie and Barbara for their work in actively promoting and teaching Python to a new generation of programmers.