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It's conference time once again. In two weeks, I'll be attending PyCon, a conference that no Pythonistas should miss, then one week later, I will be at ConFoo, a conference that we are organizing at Montréal-Python along with other local user groups.

If you've been to a multi-track conference, you know the drill. As the speaker wraps up for his conclusion, instead of paying attention, you rush to unplug your laptop and to reach for your annotated program. Indeed, you've got only a moment to find out in what room the next talk that you planned to see is.

But this year is different.

One week ago, PyCon unveiled a very nice track selector application. It's very nice because it allows you to select in advance the tracks that you don't want to miss, to add them to you calendar application or to share your schedule with friends. That way, no more last minute rush to find where you go next.

I was really happy to see that so I shared the word with the ConFoo team, mentioning that it's the kind of things that we should develop for ConFoo 2011 next year. Well, it turned out that Anna, the ConFoo webmaster, really liked the idea and she came up with a schedule builder for ConFoo after only 48 hours. Both selectors have their own strengths and weaknesses but at least they get the job done. Hopefully more conferences will follow the trend of implementing track selectors; this is the kind of simple features that really improve the user experience.

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Since I'm coordinator of the Python track at ConFoo.ca, I like to keep track of what's going on at other Python conferences. PyCon recently published the list of selected talks so I decided to summarize it into a few high level stats:

• 96 sessions, that's 32 per day;
• 69 presenters, 1 for 3 sessions, 8 for 2 sessions, 60 for a single session (there are panels and sessions with more than one presenters);
• 75 sessions of 30 mins, 20 of 45 mins, and one that my scraper missed somehow;
• 27 'beginner' sessions, 60 'intermetiate', and 8 'advanced'.

How does that compare with PyCon 2009? Honestly, I don't know. Quick like that I can say that it's going to be a larger PyCon and that the level of the talks is increasing but that's about it.

How does it compare to ConFoo? Hard to say since we have not selected the talks yet but it's sure to influence us on the number of talks per speaker and on the level of the sessions. By the way, the ConFoo call for speakers was extended by a few days so it's not too late to submit something over the weekend.

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Something is brewing it the developers community of Montréal. More specifically, ConFooBBQ spawned a renewed interest in home brewing among developers. Yesterday, I was at the ConFoo.ca organization meeting and I learned that Francis Bégin just bought his ingredients to start a new batch after several years of idleness, and that he is looking at buying kegs, Mathieu Chartier confirmed that he is willing to team up with me so can brew a W3Québec beer together for the next ConFooBrew, and that two Ruby developers want to come to my place next time that I brew so they can get a feel for what's involved and get started on their own.

I'm all for coaching people but if you are just going to watch some other guy brew, you might as well watch it on you tube. Brewing, like cooking, is nice in itself because it fills your kitchen with the aroma of fresh ingredients being transformed but the real motivation come from the end-product that you are looking forward to taste. For that reason, I'm going to invite these brewers to my place but what we are going to brew will be their Ruby Red with the explicit condition that they have to serve it at their next Montreal.rb monthly meeting. That, dear readers, is how you tie strong bonds between communities.

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