PyCon 2014 is over, and as usual, I loved every minute. There are a huge number of people that I know there, and about 5 different sub-communities that I feel an irrationally strong attachment to.

Some highlights:

• I gave a talk entitled Getting Started Testing, which people seemed to like, though if you are interested, I can point out the five places I messed up...
• Jenny turned me into a cute illustration, which was a fun surprise.
• I was super-proud of Michelle Fullwood, who has been working on an Arabic learning tool at Boston Python project nights, and always demurred when I brought up the idea of her talking about it. But Sunday morning, she gave a kick-ass lightning talk about it!
• I had a great meal with Kenneth Reitz, Cory Benfield, and Ian Cordasco, where we bonded over indentation, packaging, abstract syntax trees, and startup gossip.
• Had a chat with Guido in which I explained what the word MOOC means, and introduced him to Will and Sarina, who told him about diff-cover, our tool for per-commit coverage and quality measurement.
• I sat next to John Perry Barlow for a bit before his keynote. He was witty, erudite, inspiring, and good-natured.
• We held some Open edX open spaces which drew a number of people. I gave a talk about it at the Education Summit, and I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people asking me about it.
• I had conversations with tons of good people, some I already knew, and some I just met.

My head is still spinning from the high-energy four days I’ve had, I’m sure I’m leaving out an important high point. I just love every minute!

On the downside, I did not see as much of Montreal as I would have liked, but we’ll be back for PyCon 2015, so I have a second chance!