Highlights from DjangoCon 2008

By Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Team

Google's Open Source Team recently hosted DjangoCon 2008, the first ever international conference for developers and users of this popular web framework. While we're always pleased to host Open Source events at the Googleplex, we were particularly excited to welcome the Django folks once again. We love Django, making use of it extensively in products like Google App Engine, so it was a pleasure and privilege to give back to this community. More than 250 attendees in Mountain View, California, USA enjoyed two days of technical sessions and celebrated the recent release of Django 1.0, and thanks to the efforts of one of our stalwart Site Reliability Engineers, Rodolpho Eckhardt, we were able to welcome more than 50 additional guests via videoconference with Sao Paulo, Brazil. Better still, attendees raised several hundred dollars for the Django Software Foundation through a charity auction, their donations netting them swag like conference tees signed by Keynote speaker Guido van Rossum and notebooks (the legacy interface variety - paper only) signed by the Django Core Developer Team.

Many thanks to Conference Chair Robert Lofthouse for making DjangoCon 2008 a reality in just a few short months, our attendees for joining us and the entire Django community for both their amazing spirit and great code.

Wish you could have made it? We've got you covered; the conference sessions are now available on YouTube for your perusal.

Ed. Note: Due to technical difficulties, Jacob Kaplan-Moss' Saturday Keynote, The State of Django, was not recorded. Fortunately we've heard from Jacob that he'll be back in the San Francisco Bay Area later this year and will be happy to reprise his talk then. We'll post to this blog when that talk happens and the video is make available.