edleafe

Symphony orchestras used to claim to be the equivalent of a 'meritocracy' (don't think that they used that term, though). They selected strictly by audition, relying on the ears of the (male) conductor/director, and less than 10% of the musicians selected were women. When they changed to have the musicians perform behind a screen, and without identifying them by name, the number of women selected increased dramatically.

A similar dynamic happens in the tech world. The people determining 'merit' have that same built-in bias against females, and will judge their work as lower than it should be. The bias need not be conscious, and in most cases the men think that they are being fair and honest, but it's there.

Awesome! Either post an issue to GitHub, or for general questions, etc., write me at ed.leafe@rackspace.com.

Hi, I'm not Jesse, but I work with him, and maintain pyrax. I have only done some basic testing with 2.6, and everything appears to work correctly. I have also not used any of the new features of the 2.7.x versions of Python.

I would encourage you to try using pyrax with 2.6, and if you do run into any problems, please file an issue on GitHub and I will address it. We are ramping up our testing capabilities, and adding testing under 2.6.x is in the plans.

Troll much?

You imply that there is a money trail, cronyism and nepotism, but offer nothing to substantiate those claims.

I've been involved with PyCon for years, and know jnoller and many of the other people who donate so much of their time and energy to make these conferences successful, and IMO there is not a less selfish group of people anywhere. They are a huge reason that each PyCon is better than the one before.

Having come to PyCon from the world of Microsoft conferences, I was initially shocked that, as a speaker, I had to pay my way. In the old world, I had my travel/hotel paid for; my registration comped; and sometimes even got a speaker gift to boot! It was an abrupt change to speak at PyCon and only receive a little stamp or ribbon on my badge.

Now as much as I like getting stuff paid for, I have to say that I much prefer the PyCon approach: it makes for a much more interesting experience, and a much richer community. It's hard to explain precisely, but I think it has to do with an overall sense of contributing to rather than taking from the community that makes the egalitarian approach to paying for PyCon. In other words, if you aren't willing to contribute the time needed to prepare a session, maybe PyCon isn't the event for you.