<div dir="ltr"><div>Before we introduce our important dinner speaker, we just want to make sure you know about our DjangoGirls workshop, a free programming workshop for women running during the conference sprints (<a href="http://2014.pycon-au.org/media/news/51">http://2014.pycon-au.org/media/news/51</a>) We'll have some other workshops to announce later in the week, stay tuned.<br>
<br></div>Now for the main course (no, we don't have a comedy sponsor)<br><p>Netwhois. logfilerotate. logfileradius. What do these three things have in
common? They were all written in Perl by Paul Gampe to solve problems faced by
ISPs in the 90s. Those are problems he would know about, being the man who
connected Japan to the internet.
</p>
<div style="float:right;padding:10px">
</div>
Paul Gampe’s dinner talk is entitled “The Rise and Fall of Perl: Lessons for
Python from an old Perl guy”. Paul will share war stories from his long career
in open source software, illustrating how Perl got big by being the language
of choice for solving a wide range of software problems. Paul believes that
Python now fills that role, and sounds a cautionary note, warning that “If you
forget where you came from, you might wind up like Java”.
<p>
He will also draw on experience gained through his involvement with Open
Source Industry Australia (OSIA), especially in preparing a response to the
proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership. Paul knows first-hand about the need to be
ever vigilant of the complexity of these multilateral agreements that have
immense challenges for an economy such as Australia’s, which needs to preserve
the existing flexibilities and freedoms Australians enjoy under our own legal
frameworks.
</p><p>
Paul Gampe currently directs information management, security, applications
and software development, communications technology and service management for
Australia’s leading Data-Centre-as-a-Service (DCaaS) provider, NEXTDC Limited.
Before that, Paul was Vice President of World-Wide Engineering Services and
Operations for Red Hat, where he directed a global function delivering
software engineering services and pioneered development of Red Hat’s Asian
language products. You might have seen him at <a href="http://linux.conf.au">linux.conf.au</a> talking about how
to make money from open source software.
</p>
Registrations for PyCon Australia 2014 are open and tickets going strong ). Book your<br>
conference ticket today! <a href="http://2014.pycon-au.org/register/prices" target="_blank">http://2014.pycon-au.org/register/prices</a><br>
<br>
<br>
=== About PyCon Australia ===<br>
<br>
PyCon Australia is the national conference for the Python Programming<br>
Community. The fifth PyCon Australia will be held on August 1--5, 2014<br>
in Brisbane, bringing together professional, student and enthusiast<br>
developers with a love for developing with Python. PyCon Australia<br>
informs the country’s Python developers with presentations, tutorials<br>
and panel sessions by experts and core developers of Python, as well<br>
as the libraries and frameworks that they rely on.<br>
<br>
To find out more about PyCon Australia 2014, visit our website at<br>
<a href="http://pycon-au.org" target="_blank">http://pycon-au.org</a> or e-mail us at <a href="mailto:contact@pycon-au.org">contact@pycon-au.org</a>.<br>
<br>
PyCon Australia is presented by Linux Australia (<a href="http://www.linux.org.au" target="_blank">www.linux.org.au</a>) and<br>
acknowledges the support of our Platinum Sponsors, Red Hat, and<br>
Eventbrite; and our Gold sponsors, Google Australia and Netbox Blue.<br>
For full details of our sponsors, see our website<div><div>-- <br>Clinton Roy<br></div><div>``Chief'' ``Organiser''<br></div></div></div>