first europython talks day
Finally back to the hotel, it is time to take a look back and analyze the first talks day at europython 2009.
After the opening I've referenced in my previous post, I headed for the first talk of the morning for me, Acceptance Testing with RobotFramework. Pekka Klärck, the lead developer of RobotFramework covered both the needed introduction to the project (a tool to automate code testing) and a more detailed explanation of how it works and how you could benefit from it. Very interesting talk, being the best part of it when he showed us how to combine the RobotFramework with Selenium to perform automatic web testing. Very interesting and practical talk!
Just after this first one ended, we headed to Lecture Room 1, where Luke Leighton was prepared for the The Zen of Pyjamas talk. I've never heard of Pyjamas until the europython, but it is quite an interesting piece of software. So, what it is? This note from the project website is pretty clear:
"pyjamas is a stand-alone python to javascript compiler, an AJAX framework / library and a Widget set API. "
That means that, with pyjamas, you can write python code and then generate javascript code to handle most usual ajax tasks. If you add to that, the fact that there is a Pyjamas Desktop project that allow you to pick up a Pyjamas project (web) and generate a full-bloated desktop application... it is quite a worth to take a deeper look into the project.
The only problem with this talk was related to the fact that it was a 60-min talk, in a full-crowded room (too many people in there). So from time to time wasn't very comfortable. But a nice talk anyway Luke is a real showman!.
From the upstairs room, we had a privileged view of the main hall, where all the stands are installed (google, oracle, plone, oreilly, etc), as well as the white boards to write open space and lightning talk proposals.
After the talk about pyjamas, we had lunch in the cafeteria of the conservatory. I don't know the name of those dishes, but I've learned why everybody outside UK (and a lot of them from inside) say English food is not so good...
After had lunch we went back to Adrian Boult Hall, to attend the Corey Doctorow's KeyNote. He covered an interesting topic that has been there since the origin of the Internet, the copyright/license issues about content in the Internet (or moving through). The room was full of people (I think everybody was there) and it was a joy to listen to him.
At the end of the keynote, he give for free 3 copies of 2 of his books, just throwing them into the air, pointing at the attendes. Just a picture of his keynote (click on it to get a bigger view). I've added a picture of one of the tries the crew from the europython did, just trying to connect with Guido (Guido Van Rossum)
Then I attended a talk about python and the xapian search engine, from Richard Boulton, who was somehow nervous and spent more time talking about the things his flax solution does than to demostrante how to use xapian with python... (IMHO, and do not misunderstood me, I think flax is a nice approach).
Back to Adrian Boult Hall once more, to saw Zeth running a presentation about pixelise, a django-app that allows you to manage XML files efficiently using a DBD XML database.
Finally, I got back to room number 1, picked up a nice place, and relaxed myself a bit, while waiting for the next three talks.
At 19:00 the day ended officially at europython... it was time for pub-parties!.
Sadly for me, there was no party today. I had a lot of work to do to prepare tomorrow's publication of one of our current projects so, after a short walk from the conservatory to the hotel (really near, a 10-minute walk through the city center), and a stop to have some dinner, we arrived somehow tired at the hotel.
I've been working on that project since then, but now seems the perfect time to go to bed. (But let me show you some pics of the trip went back to the hotel first)
