Dabeaz

Well, the winter months are now upon us--making it a perfect time to come to Chicago in the middle of January and have your brain exploded by the second edition of my Python Concurrency Workshop (January 14-15, 2010). Over the last few months, I've been working on numerous refinements to the previous workshop and adding some new material related to distributed computing (Actors, REST, distributed objects, etc.). I think I'm even more excited by this version than the last.

So what is this concurrency workshop you ask? Well, first all, you may have already encountered a small portion of it if you saw my presentation on the Python GIL---that was only a small part of the workshop's thread programming section. The rest of the workshop aims to explore a variety of other topics at a similar technical depth. For example, thread synchronization, thread debugging, message passing, data serialization, interprocess communication, multiprocessing, distributed computing, and advanced I/O handling. In a nutshell, it's an opportunity to learn more about what makes Python tick and to go beyond what you normally find in the user manual. The workshop is also a kind of proving ground for some of my future book projects and PyCON tutorials--I have made every effort to keep it cutting edge.

So, you might ask, who is the target audience of the workshop? Although a lot of advanced material is covered, I think the workshop is best suited for intermediate Python programmers who want to learn more. For instance, the workshop utilizes numerous Python features such as context managers, decorators, generators, and coroutines. If you've heard of such topics before, but aren't quite sure what they're all about, the workshop will fill in details. Second, the workshop has a very strong focus on networking and distributed systems. If you've been doing work in web services, cloud computing, parallel computing, or any related topic, the workshop aims to fill in a variety of essential technical details that will help you write more efficient code. Finally, if you simply want to escape the office and hang out with other Python hackers, the workshop won't disappoint.

Finally, although there is a small chance the workshop will be held in the middle of a wind-whipped Chicago blizzard, other amenities will more than make up for it. Some of Chicago's finest bakeries and coffee shops surround the workshop venue--ensuring a proper balance of sugar and caffeine required for a workshop of this nature. You won't be disappointed.

In any case, hopefully I'll see you at the workshop. It's going to be great!

posted by Dave Beazley  # 3:50 AM