PyCon has it all
Last year I made a commitment to start going to different conferences. Ones on Node.js, security and so on, conferences where I know less about the subject. I've pretty much failed at that, going to ConFoo (3rd year), PyCon and the upcoming DjangoConEU. So there was a bit of reluctance about going to PyCon. I shouldn't have doubted it for a second.
This conference had everything. There was a selection of great talks. Things that stood for me were talks my Raymond Hettinger, Alex Martelli, talks on scaling Instagram and Disqus, Raspberry Pi, stenography, finding out bits about Facebook load balancing, the list goes on. I've come away wanting to change my code bases. That's a good sign.
The depth of talks straddling beginner and experienced topics was really refreshing.
I am also really looking forward to showing my daughters the computer the PSF bought for them.
But most of all it was the friends and people I met. People I've know and met at conferences over the many years at Plone conferences, Python conferences, consulting, working and just being part of the Python community. It was pretty damn awesome. Oh and the Plone Mobile was pretty great. More than anything, the people made it worthwhile. I should have stayed for longer.
Apart from the almost PyCons I've organised in Canada (2004 and 2006) this was my first Python Conference since 2001. And that was before there was a PyCon.
I don't know why I've stayed away for so long. I'll be there in Montreal.