the daylight seems to want you just as much as I want you

Like I wrote before, last week I was in Florence for the third installment of Pycon Italia.

I must admit, it was absolutely a fantastic event, so kudos to the the organizer! Everything went without glitches, the auditorium was spacious, coffee breaks and lunch were without compromise. And thanks to our lovely translators, we have on-the-fly, quasi real-time translations both English-to-Italian and Italian-to-English. I guess this is something any others non-English conferences need to copy, it was definitely awesome to be able to follow few talks presented in Italian. Of course, I need to say that it gives a different feeling (for a Python conference) when some VIPs like Guido von Rossum and Alex Martelli were there.

Both my Advanced Graphics Programming with PyQt and David's PyQt for Desktop and Embedded Devices were well received. Things could still have been better, for example I had this funny voice due to my hay fever (which was fortunately cured faster thanks to the Italian warm weather) and I did not realize that I packed too much stuff in the talks. Still, we are pretty content with the way it went. Before you ask, according to the organizer, some time in the future the slides and the video will be available online.

Needless to say, the conference participants were friendly and very passionate. And it was good to meet Enrico again. I also met Matteo whose Qt examples show up from time to time on Planet Qt. We also finally got to know Giovanni and his colleagues from Develer, which was the main drive behind the conference organization. We met a lot of other fellows as well, including KDE evangelists from Salerno. It is still a shame I forgot almost all of my basic Italian, I need to ensure I must polish it before I go to Pycon Quattro.

Beside the conference, Florence proves to be as good as what people say about it. It is beautiful. Amazingly beautiful. And of course, the most important of it, the food was great, as great as it could be. Being a fan of Italian culinary I did sample few excellent dishes, like Pappa al pomodoro and spaghetti frutti di mare. Having dinner outside, in a narrow passage, with happy children running around you, did indeed give a surrealistic atmosphere.

The obligatory picture of the grandeur facade of the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, the central tourist attraction in Florence, follows:

But nothing is more breath-taking than walking next to the river, reaching Ponte Vecchio, enjoying its stunning beauty at night, just on last Saturday when it was exactly full moon!

For more conference-related pictures, check out PyCon Tre Flickr group.