This weekend we were at PyCon Australia 2013 in Hobart! Once again, it was very exciting to have a technology conference in our city. So exciting, in fact, that we sponsored the conference WiFi network. You're welcome! (We attempted to troll our friend --- conference coordinator Chris Neugebauer --- by setting the WiFi password to AskChris, but it backfired in that everyone asked us, rather than Chris. Better luck next time!) Our friends from the Australian Computer Society (Tasmania) also sponsored the conference.

Highlights of the conference were the three keynotes: Alex Gaynor, Mark Pesce, and Tennessee Leeuwenburg. Alex spoke about the nature of software engineering, and its relationship to art and science. Mark, during a brilliant dinner keynote, spoke about the Internet of things, and his new venture: MooresCloud. Tennessee discussed the use of tools for problem solving and communication. All three keynotes were highly enjoyable, alongside the sessions, and we highly recommend watching them as they become available on PyCon Australia's YouTube channel.

Exceptional conference coffee was again supplied by Ritual Coffee Tasmania. Although we didn't sponsor the coffee this year, it was as tasty as last year --- we can't wait to get a bag of beans to enjoy in the office.

Lightning talks were also highly enjoyable, as well as CodeWars --- a devious and irreverent coding competition devised by our friend and frequent collaborator Josh Deprez. This year, Paris from Secret Lab, and another friend and frequent collaborator Tim 'McJones' Nugent hosted the event. We're sure that we thoroughly confused all those who participated. It was pleasing to inspire a room full of conference-goers to chant "Bovril! Bovril! Bovril!"

We spent a lot of time hacking on the Holiday by MooreCloud, a fabulous set of very open and very hackable Christmas lights. Over the course of a few hours of coding (and harassment of Mark), Secret Lab and friends managed to build a script to make the Holiday respond to sound levels, a CPU activity display, a one-dimensional game of life style game, and a native iOS interface to the Holiday. It was all great fun, and we highly recommend that you order a Holiday while it's a little cheaper (they ship in November); it really is one of the coolest, most fun and inventive gadgets that we've seen in a while.

During the lightning talks at the end of the conference  the hacks that we'd all made for the Holiday were also showcased. Very cool! The other lightning talks were all highly enjoyable as well.

Our friend, Frank Sainsbury, was the life of the conference (as usual), delivering a surprisingly meaningful lightning talk on helping others, as well as (also as usual) entertaining everyone with his wigs, and assorted props.

Next year, PyCon Australia will be in Brisbane. We're looking forward to it! All our photos from PyCon Australia this year can be found on Flickr. Congratulations to Chris and his team for another successful world-class technology conference.

Also, huge thanks to Rex Smeal for his fantastic art work for our conference poster.

Once again PyCon Australia is being held in our hometown of Hobart, Tasmania, and one again we're sponsoring! We had an excellent time at PyCon Australia last year, and we're really looking forward to learning about the latest developments in Python, how to make games in Python, what not to do with Python, how to test with Python, security and Python, transitioning to Python, and much, much more! Congratulations to our friend and frequent collaborator, Chris Neugebauer (conference coordinator), for putting together such a a great show.

If you haven't registered for PyCon Australia yet, we strongly recommend you do! It's sure to be a blast.

This month we were lucky enough to sponsor and attend PyCon Australia, hosted (for the first time) in our hometown of Hobart! PyCon Australia is the national conference for users of the Python programming language. This was the third year that PyCon Australia has run since being founded in Sydney. We greatly enjoyed meeting members of the Australian and international Python communities, hearing their stories, tips and interests. All the sessions we attended were fabulous, but amongst the many highlights were:

• CodeWars – entertaining programming-as-a-spectator-sport problem solving to kick the conference off. Hosted and designed by our talented friends Tony and Josh, respectively. A great place to spot some amazing nerd gear!
• What to build. How to build it. – the first keynote, presented by Mark Ramm, took us on an entertaining romp through the idea of applying experimental methodologies to product design. Great stuff!
• Virtual robotic car racing with Python and TORCS – Python and virtual robot cars! What's not to like?
• Python for Humans – the second keynote, presented by Kenneth Reitz, was a thorough and useful discussion of making Python more user (programmer) friendly. Exactly the sort of stuff that should be a keynote!
• Lightning Talks – we always love lightning talks, and these were no exception. Lots of quick talks, mostly useful, and highly entertaining!

We also thoroughly enjoyed the dinner (a cruise to Peppermint Bay, followed by a fabulous meal and cruise back to Hobart!) as well as the coffee (which was a tasty blend called "African Swallow", designed specifically for PyCon Australia by Ritual Coffee). The coffee for all attendees was sponsored by Secret Lab, and we were proud to have our logo on every cup. The attendees all really seemed to enjoy the coffee, and we're very proud to have been involved in a small way in the running of such an excellent conference in Tasmania. PyCon Australia returns to Hobart next year as part of their 2-year cycle. We can't wait!

You can find the rest of our photos from PyCon Australia 2012 on Flickr and the videos from PyCon on YouTube. Congratulations to our friend, and frequent collaborator, Chris on the meticulous organisation he and his team undertook to bring us PyCon Australia!