Last weekend I went to PyCon Due, the 2nd Italian conference on the Python programming language.  It was in Firenze, a few minutes walk from where I live, so it’s been very handy.  This year the conference was much bigger than last year’s.

For starters, on Friday Richard Stallman spoke at Palazzo Vecchio.  I couldn’t go (I had to work) but luckily enough I listened to RMS in a speech he gave at Hackmeeting 2002 in Bologna, so I’m blessed already.  I missed the opportunity to visit the outstanding Salone del 500, tough.

The next two days were at Auditorium Duomo, where the guys from python.it organized three parallel tracks running from 9am-7pm, with little breaks for some rest and socialization opportunity.  There were many well-known speakers, including Raymond Hettinger, Brian Fitzpatrick and of course Alex Martelli.  I attended talks about Django, Google App Engine, how to listen to our users, Plone, nginx’s mod_wsgi, Zope3, Twisted, Python 3.0 and Python inner workings.

A long list of companies sponsored the event: some big 900-pound gorillas like Google and Skype, as well as local fast-growing Italian companies.  Of course they took the opportunity to try and hire high profile developers, presenting their business and collecting contacts.  Too bad the company I work for didn’t participate.

All in all, with over 300 attendees I can say the conference was a big success, even if some talks were a little under par in terms of quality or effectiveness.  I didn’t like the “teach me” formula but most talks were  definitely outstanding.  And did I mention the hostesses were beautiful?  Go python.it go!  You totally rock!