During the conference there were three major formats: talks, workshops and lightning talks sessions. The event was attended by around 520 participants, who could choose from 4-5 parallel tracks (one afternoon there were even 6 of them simultaneously).
PyCon PL participants had an opportunity to listen to the talks from the speakers who were selected through the Call for Proposals as well as from those that were specially invited to the event. Among the latter were such well-known Python community members as Naomi Ceder, Nick Coghlan, Paul Hildebrandt, Steve Holden and Laurens Van Houtven. There were also many guests from abroad from nearby countries like Czech Republic and Ukraine, but also from far away India.
Among others, there was a presentation by Kamila Sidor(president of Geek Girls Carrots), who told about how to organize coding workshops for people who have no experience in programming.
Thanks to the grant received from the Python Software Foundaton in the amount of $3,000, we could, together with funds from other sources, reimburse some of our invited speakers transport costs and thus allow participants to listen to their talks on PyCon PL 2015.
During the event, workshops, led by Anna Wszeborowska, which provided an introduction to Test-Driven Development were also held. These workshops have been organized as a result of cooperation with PyLadies Poland.
The conference also includes activities not connected with Python language itself. Friday night was full of good music thanks to the concert of young artists. Besides that, every night you could try playing various board games - during the event such games were borrowed 72 times, which included 38 unique of them.
Another interesting activity that happened during PyCon PL and tested Python and problem solving skills was “Follow the White Python” programming contest in which participants could win valuable prizes like drones, smartwatches and smartphones. Also, conference attendees could enjoy attractions that were connected with venue itself, namely a music club, bowling alley, swimming pool or just drink a cold beer in cafe or bar.
PyCon PL 2015 was an enjoyable event not only because of the knowledge that was passed in the talks and workshops, but also because of the huge networking possibilities. As in the previous years conference has been met with great interest, also among women. A lot of new people appeared as well as some of the old PyCon PL veterans, which proves that the community of Python users has a great need for events like this. Let’s face it - PyCon PL is a must for Python programmers in Poland.
During the conference we made a promise to give rewards in three categories - for those who were most actively tweeting about the event, for authors of interesting reviews of the event and for conference photo gallery creators. Unfortunately we haven’t found any real PyCon PL 2015 photo galleries so the last category was dropped in the end.
In the reviews category 75% discounts on one standard PyCon PL 2016 ticket are awarded to authors of the following reviews (one discount per review):
http://blog.daftcode.pl/pyconpl-releasing-the-python
http://www.tjsoftware.co/blog/pycon-15-mission-impossible/14/
https://medium.com/@mlowicki/thoughts-on-pycon-pl-2015-d5446dd1ce9f#.v07fb9k9x
In the activity on Twitter category 50% discounts on standard PyCon PL 2016 ticket are awarded to the following account owners: @zef, @jakubsynowiec, @jkamienski, @_decu_.
We would also like to strongly encourage all those who have yet missed a chance to attend PyCon PL to try to participate in the next edition, which will be held once again at the Hotel Ossa Congress & Spa. See you in October in Poland!
