[PyCon-AU-announce] Announcing miniconf keynotes

[Brianna Laugher]

We've already announced that the main conference keynotes are Damien George
<https://2016.pycon-au.org/media/news/50> and Dr Russell Keith-Magee
<https://2016.pycon-au.org/media/news/48>, with Solange Cunin
<https://2016.pycon-au.org/media/news/47> speaking at the dinner
<https://2016.pycon-au.org/dinner>. Now it's time to find out who will be
keynoting our Friday miniconfs!

First up at the *DjangoConAU* will be *Donna Benjamin*! An absolute legend
of the Australian open source scene, and sitting on the board for the
Drupal Association, Donna will take us through *Django & Drupal: A tale of
two cities*. This knowledgeable comparison between the two projects
(something of a tradition at DjangoCon AU) will explore the common
challenges and highlight where approaches diverge, providing an opportunity
to reflect on how each project can grow stronger separately, and maybe even
together. Donna is also speaking on Sunday on Turning user stories into
websites <https://2016.pycon-au.org/schedule/65/view_talk?day=sunday>.

Secondly at the *Internet of Things miniconf*, if you can't wait until
Saturday to hear *Damien George*, luckily you can get a sneak peek on
Friday! Damien will talk about high-level languages that have been adapted
for use in microcontrollers including Lua, JavaScript, Ruby, and of course,
Python. Lachlan Blackhall, organiser of the Internet of Things miniconf,
said, "The inaugural IoT miniconf at PyconAU will be an exciting
opportunity to learn about and discuss everything from Python on embedded
devices, to how Python is powering IoT enabling cloud services and
everything in between."

Thirdly, at the popular *Science and Data miniconf*, we will hear from *Juan
Nunez-Iglesias*, on *Python's bright future in science
<https://2016.pycon-au.org/schedule/200/view_talk?day=friday>*. Juan is a
core developer for the scikit-image library and a research scientist at the
Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative, in the University of
Melbourne. He has taught scipy workshops around the world and co-authored
the "Elegant SciPy" book, putting him in a prime position to comment on
Python's status in the scientific programming community.

Finally, at the *Education Seminar*, we're excited to hear from *Roland
Gesthuizen*, from Digital Learning & Teaching Victoria, speaking on * Smart
City: Connecting the dots and digital kids*. Roland's current mission is to
challenge students to design, build a smart city consisting of intelligent
vehicles and infrastructure. To do this they need to program a navigation
algorithm to autonomously navigate vehicles through a series of traffic
challenges that test collision avoidance and road safety. Roland has an
active interest in the development of online learning communities, open
education and software freedom, and is a recipient of the 2010 ACCE
Educator of the year Award and 2012 ISTE Making IT Happen Award.

With four amazing options, the hardest part of Friday morning will be
choosing which one to attend! Conference check-in opens from 8am on Friday
our venue <https://2016.pycon-au.org/about/venue>, Level 1 of the Melbourne
Convention and Exhibition Centre. *You can also check in on Thursday
afternoon, from 4:30pm to 6:00pm*, so if you are around the CBD on
Thursday, we encourage you to beat the rush and collect your badge then.

=== About PyCon Australia ===

PyCon Australia is the national conference for the Python programming
community. The seventh PyCon Australia will be held on August 12-16 2016 in
Melbourne, bringing together professional, student and enthusiast
developers with a love for programming in Python. PyCon Australia informs
the country’s developers with presentations by experts and core developers
of Python, as well as the libraries and frameworks that they rely on.

To find out more about PyCon Australia 2016, visit our website at
http://pycon-au.org, follow us at @pyconau <https://twitter.com/pyconau> or
e-mail us at contact at pycon-au.org.

PyCon Australia is presented by Linux Australia (www.linux.org.au) and
acknowledges the support of our Platinum Sponsors, DevDemand.co and IRESS;
and our Gold sponsors, Google Australia, Optiver and Hewlett Packard
Enterprise. For full details of our sponsors, see our website.
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