PyCon 2010 was nothing short of amazing. Thousands of people who share a common interest of something as arcane as the Python programming language gathered in one space. The audience was so diverse with people from all over the world getting passionate about what they do. We were surrounded by some extremely talented people!
From a logistics perspective, we were not without challenges. The Centennial Ballroom is Atlanta's largest with the ability to separate into four sections. We coordinated multiple transitions from four sections (with independent sound and video) to one open room in 20 minutes or less. In some cases, we made the transitions in five minutes. This kept us on our toes to say the least. All the transitions went smoothly. It took four 14ft screens and four short-throw rear projectors, Imag, two confidence monitors, 150ft of pipe & drape, LED uplights, sixteen S4 Leko lights from the balconies, two Folsom data/video switchers, six SVGA distribution amplifiers, and ten powered speakers to make it work. Whew! And I didn't even mention the electricity used to power 2,000 laptops!
PyCon volunteers get a great deal of credit. These guys donated lots of their time. Some even traveled from overseas to help record sessions in this conference. They captured this video with an application they developed specifically for this event. It acts as a virtual video mixer simultaneously capturing in real-time the presentation and the video of the speaker. The ballroom was perfect for video recording with balconies on both sides of the room. The pipe & drape was purposely set low so their cameras could get crowd shots. The multi-camera functionality is another unique aspect of the software. Their work can be seen on http://pycon.blip.tv/
See you next year!
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