.. _ucb_py4science_guido:

============================================
 Guido van Rossum at the Py4Science meeting
============================================

.. admonition:: Quick links

   * Video_ of the entire session. The talks cover the first 50 minutes, and
     Guido's part starts at the 54 minute mark.
   * A `post on my blog`_ with more details (all slides are here though).
   * Guido also blogged_ his impressions.
   * Blog posts by `Jarrod Millman`_ and `Matthew Brett`_.

.. _post on my blog: http://fdoperez.blogspot.com/2009/11/guido-van-rossum-at-uc-berkeleys.html
.. _blogged: http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2009/11/python-in-scientific-world.html
.. _Jarrod Millman: http://jarrodmillman.blogspot.com/2009/11/visit-from-guido-van-rossum.html
.. _Matthew Brett: http://nipyworld.blogspot.com/2009/11/guido-van-rossum-talks-about-python-3.html

On November 4 2009, we had a special session of our informal Py4Science_
seminar series, where Guido van Rossum visited for an open discussion regarding
the uses of the Python language in scientific research.  On my blog I have
already `posted a longer narrative`_ on this topic, the main purpose of this
page is to hold links to the slides from all the presentations.

.. _Py4Science: py4science_ucb_
.. _posted a longer narrative: http://fdoperez.blogspot.com/2009/11/guido-van-rossum-at-uc-berkeleys.html

Keep in mind that these were *extremely short*, less than 4 minutes long in
general (we covered 14 presentations in 50 minutes flat), so you may want to
have a look at them in conjunction with the video_ of the session [1]_.  The
rapid-fire sequence of 'lightning talks' covers the first part, and the open
discussion with Guido starts at the 54 minute mark and lasts for one hour.

I presented both an overview of Python in scientific work, and also material
from 4 other projects whose authors could not attend in person.  I am very
thankful to them for sending me their slides, and in advance I apologize for
somewhat butchering their material, as I crammed both the general discussion
and 4 sub-talks in a total of about 16 minutes.

The full list of presenters/slides for the lightning talks are:

#. Fernando Perez: `overview <fperez_py4science_overview.pdf>`_.
#. [Presented by me] `Andrew Straw <http://www.its.caltech.edu/~astraw>`_:
   `Fruit Fly flight control
   <movie20091001_194331_obj198_confinement_halfspeed.avi>`_. *Note:* this file
   is a movie in ``.avi`` format, see my description in the main video_ (at 
   5m 30s).
#. [Presented by me] Perry Greenfield: `Space Telescope Science Institute
   <perry_STScI4Guido.pdf>`_. 
#. [Presented by me] Enthought: `the Enthought tools <enthought_overview.pdf>`_.
#. [Presented by me] Prabhu Ramachandran's `FOSSE India project
   <prabhu_fossee.pdf>`_. 
#. William Stein: `Sage: open source mathematics <wstein_sage.pdf>`_.
#. Chris Burns: `nipype: neuroimaging analysis <cburns_py4sci_nipype.pdf>`_.
#. Ariel Rokem: `nitime: time series in neuroscience <arokem_py4sci110409.pdf>`_.

#. Brent Pedersen: `bioinformatics <brent_pedersen/index.html>`_. *Note:* The
   previous link points to a locally hosted copy of the slides; `this
   <brent_pedersen.tgz>`_ is a static tarball.

#. Josh Bloom: `Real-time Classification of Massive Time-series Data Streams
   <josh_python4science_talk_v2.0.pdf>`_.
#. Ondrej Certik: `Sympy: symbolic computing <certik-09-11-4.pdf>`_.
#. Wim Lavrijsen: `High Energy Physics <wim_lavrijsen_Py4Science.pdf>`_.
#. Erin Carson and Armando Fox: `PySKI <erin_carson_PySKIPresentation_11409.pdf>`_.
#. Bryan Catanzaro and Armando Fox: `Copperhead <cantanzaro_LightningCopperhead.pdf>`_.

Once we opened for general discussion, we took a quick hand vote based on
`these topics <fperez_discussion.pdf>`_ I'd listed as possible starting points,
and we had about one hour of conversation with Guido.  You should be able to
get the gist of it from the video; fortunately even though the questions from
the audience can't be heard very well, they are short and Guido's replies
contain sufficient information to understand the context.

I am very happy with the overall result of this meeting, and I hope it's only
the start of a longer dialogue between the scientific community and the core
developers of the language.

.. [1] Thanks to Jeff Teeters from the Redwood Institute, we have once again an
   excellent record of the session (Jeff has kindly taped all recent Py4Science
   meetings, and did a spectacular job with Kilian Koepsell taping the whole
   SciPy'09 conference).

   .. _video: http://www.archive.org/details/ucb_py4science_2009_11_04_Guido_van_Rossum

.. include:: links.txt