PyCon Russia Domestic Cuisine and International Relations

    “I don’t want to be arrested in Russia simply because I talk about my life,” these and other reasons why foreigners refuse to attend our conferences. Under the cut - a few tales from life.

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    PyCon Russia 2014 is coming soon, the program is ready, tickets have been bought for speakers, visas have been issued. We again have a strong speaker team: among them five python core developers, speakers come from the USA, Canada, Great Britain, Austria, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Yekaterinburg).

    But, frankly, this year the formation of the program was given to us with much more blood than in the past (and we thought it would be easier - you could appeal to the positive experience of PyCon 2013) “High feelings” unexpectedly got in the way - the general political situation in Russia.

    PyCon 2014 will be June 2-3, respectively, we started inviting speakers in the first quarter of the year, which coincided with the events known to us all.

    And then it began ... We were negotiating with dozens (!) Of people, which were recommended by members of the program committee and last year’s foreign speakers. There were an incredible number of failures.

    Here, for example, a letter from a famous developer from Ukraine:
    "Good day,
    Thank you very much for the invitation!
    And thank you very much for your position - we know that there are reasonable people in Russia and it’s good to have pitons among them :)
    Unfortunately, because of the current situation, I do not consider for myself the possibility of entering the Russian Federation in the near future.
    Thanks again!"

    We were upset, but continued to work further.

    With speakers from far abroad came out even more interesting. Here, for example, is what a US citizen, python core developer, a famous speaker at us.pycon.org answered:
    “For many years I dreamed of visiting Russia, and I would love to come - but, unfortunately, I cannot - because of the current anti-Gay law adopted in 2013. I know that it is not very strictly observed, and I’m unlikely to violate but I can’t take risks, I don’t want to be arrested just for telling me about my life.
    I am really very sorry as soon as this law is repealed - I will be very happy to come to you and speak. "I know that this will not happen this year, and that it is not in your power, but, alas, while this is so, I cannot come."

    Oh. Just write “Gay Friendly” on the site.

    By the way, this very law scares for some reason not only gays, but also bloggers. Here is what another famous person in the community writes to us:
    “I am very pleased that you invited me to become a headliner at PyCon Russia. I am also very encouraged that you have a lot of Twisted fans! Several Russian expats are working with me right now (all Twisted users!) And I understand that you have a very interesting community that I would like to meet.
    However, recent political events in Russia make me think about my personal safety when traveling to your country. I have a blog and some considerations can be interpreted as “propaganda of homosexuality”. I am a popular blogger, and I read recently that a law has been issued in Russia according to which visited blogs are equated with the media. And of course, objectively now, relations between Russia and the USA are strained due to the situation with Ukraine. ”


    Here it is. We got up on our ears, even turned to the US Consul in Yekaterinburg for support - asking him to reassure his compatriot, wrote that, they say, this is all the media hype, it’s actually safe here. But on this day, as luck would have it, an unfortunate incident occurs: the vice consul of the US Consulate General in Yekaterinburg, Christina Hayden, and five American musicians were detained by police in Serov (this is a city in the Sverdlovsk region). As it turned out later, they were detained for the case and quickly released, but still it became clear that the consul was not our assistant here.

    In general, a very active international life is taking place here - in the central zone of Russia, on the border of Europe and Asia.

    But not all causes of failure are so dramatic. One European wrote to us that he won’t go, because “PyCon Russia does not support Code of Conduct”. Code of Conduct is a standard of conduct at a conference, primarily aimed at prohibiting sexual discrimination and harassment.

    Fortunately, the rules of conduct at the conference are not the law of the Russian Federation, and here we can make decisions ourselves. You know, in order to get a good speaker, we introduced them: pycon.ru/2014/conference/coc . So let's try this time to dispense with harassment and sexual harassment, okay?

    By the way, after the past, PyCon formed at least one married couple: the organizer girl married the speaker. And, although this was never the goal of the conference, we are still very happy.

    Speaking of girls. I will replenish our post with another funny fact from the internal kitchen: unexpectedly, we received an application from - attention! python developers from india! The girl is 22 years old, she wanted to come and read a report for 15 minutes for beginner developers about one Python library. Look! The men are afraid to go, and the young girl from India sent herself an application. (True, we rejected the application, we are making a conference for experienced developers, and it’s expensive to bring a person from India for a 15-minute report.) But we were flattered anyway.

    By the way, next year Alex Martelli and his wife Anna Rovenskroft promised to come to us .. So already next year - we have every chance to listen to the report of the female pythonic. But, oops, it seems I’m already breaking the code of conduct, so let’s dwell on this :)

    As a result, despite all the vicissitudes - we won! We even managed to bring one American - Brian Curtin. This is the director of the Python Software Foundation and he will tell you:
    • how things are going with the distribution of Python 3 (why everything went wrong as intended)
    • why it has been officially announced that the version of Python 2.7 will be supported until the end of 2020
    • how it lives and where there is a global python community

    In addition, the conference program includes reports from the author of Flask, core developers Twisted and CPython, from developers from Elasticsearch, Rackspace, Yandex, Wargaming, Headhunter, Jetbrains, and many others. Here they are all: http://pycon.ru/2014/program/content/

    See you at PyCon Russia 2014! Nowhere else in Russia can you meet such speakers anymore!

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