It’s the time of the year again, where the pythonistas (the people who use and develop programs using python) in Malaysia come together for a yearly conference, PyCon MY in Kuala Lumpur.

If you are new to python and it’s conferences, here’s as short description of what a PyCon is:

The Python Conference (PyCon) is an annual convention for the discussion and promotion of the Python programming language. It originated in the United States but is also held in many other countries that have active Python developer communities.

The first PyCon we had in Malaysia was in March 2014, with the support of iTrain by allowing us to have a one track, one day conference at their offices. Over 70 people came, with Eric Holscher of Read The Docs fame as our keynote speaker.

In August 2015, we had our second yearly PyCon MY with over 100 people attending.

In the Asia Pacific (APAC) region, PyCons are being held in many countries. The APAC community is a group of PyCon organizers and they meet up annually to discuss how to better reach out to their respective locals in particular and the APAC region in general. Once a year, one country will host the PyCon APAC version of the conference.

If you’ve never been to a PyCon before, here are some comments from those who were at our 2015 PyCon MY last year:

pycon is one of those event where I manage to learn on different technique on python being used, something that hard for me to do at work. It is a place where I meet different python developer in malaysia, it is pretty awesome

– Swee Meng, co-chair PyCon MY 2015

I attended PyCon last year as a speaker. It was really a great experience to talk to other experienced developers and passionate people in the industry. Expect an overload of knowledge to be gained! And new friends!

– Shulhi Sapli, speaker for PyCon MY 2015

It was great to attend a conference where people share what they have been doing with python. We don’t have many community led technical conferences focused on building stuff in Malaysia but PyCon is one of them. Seeing how the people that came connect to one another, making new friends and the attendees eyes glittered looking at other people’s projects made running the conference worth it!

– Iqbal Abdullah, chair PyCon MY 2015

I joined conference like PyCon primarily to look for alternative solutions that based on open source techologies. Being in public sector, having cheaper alternative with great local community support is important to us. It just after PyconMy last year that I started exploring data science in Python, particularly on using R with Python and building our internal application in Django

– Mohd Razmi, Pusat Pengetahuan, Komunikasi dan Teknologi (PPKT), USM, Kelantan.

PyCon MY’s aim, other than getting our local python users together for a yearly conference to share and celebrate each other, is to give opportunities for overseas python users and developers to meet and interact with our local pythonistas.

We’ll be having our third PyCon this year, this time to be held at the International University of Malaya-Wales (IUMW) Kuala Lumpur campus. We have 18 talk sessions planned with 18 speakers, including 2 keynotes,  and one PyCon dinner over a period of 2 days. We believe it will be a fun and learning weekend.

Tickets will still be on sale until Friday 8/19 and can be bought here. There will also be a PyCon Dinner Buffet on the first day of the conference, also at the venue and tickets will also be available until Friday 8/19