Today the PyCon staff and the Python Software Foundation are happy to officially kick off PyCon 2012, the 10th annual PyCon US conference, happening in Santa Clara, March 7th-15th. We are very proud to launch with a vibrant, refreshed site, updating the overall look and feel and reflecting the energy of the conference and community.

PyCon 2012 is going to pull out all the stops! We want to host the best community conference in the Python community, bar none. Holding the conference in California, so near the biggest technology hub in the United States and with easy access to international travel, means that we expect to break our previous records for attendance.

We’ve completely overhauled all the aspects of the conference web site - including the design, organization, and content. We have added a diversity statement, which we feel is in keeping with the spirit that PyCon has always held, as well as an official code of conduct for participants.

We will send out the call for talks, tutorials, and poster sessions very soon. We are starting the review process much earlier than in years past, and with more documentation to make it easier to prepare a winning proposal. We also have a bigger team handling talk, tutorial, and poster reviews than ever before, to provide you with more feedback and guidance during the review process.

We are extremely proud to be launching with an amazing array of (24!) sponsors as well. Google and Dropbox are our first top Diamond Sponsors, followed by Microsoft, Nasuni Corporation and Gondor (by Eldarion) at the Platinum level. Walt Disney Animation Studios, Bitly, Revsys, Canonical, Loggly, CCP Games, Linode, DotCloud, ZeOmega and Snoball.com are all Gold sponsors.

American Greetings Interactive, Github, Accense Technology, Cox Media Group, myYearBook, Wingware, 10Gen/MongoDB, net-ng and The Open Bastion have signed on as Silver level sponsors. We are also pleased to have OSU/OSL and OpenHatch.org as F/OSS partners.

With these, and the sponsors to come - and the amazing array of talks, tutorials, poster sessions, lightning talks, open spaces and sprints we are going to have, this will surely be a landmark 10th PyCon.

You can read more, and see a list of all of our sponsors at: http://us.pycon.org/2012/sponsors. If you or your company are interested in being sponsors, please see http://us.pycon.org/2012/sponsors/info/. We welcome sponsor of any size and in any industry - Python is a wide, diverse, and amazing community.

You can find out more about the location and conference location on the excellent venue page, track our progress on the official PyCon blog and on twitter via the #pycon hashtag, and by following the @pycon user or @jessenoller. You can also see who else is attending on Lanyrd, and catch us on IRC at irc.freenode.net - #pycon.

If you have any comments, concerns - or want to get involved, please contact me (Jesse Noller, PyCon Chair) at jnoller@python.org or the pycon-organizers@python.org mailing list.

Thank you.

Jesse Noller, Chair - PyCon 2012