Keynote Talks

The PyCon organizers are proud to present the following keynote speakers:

Ivan Krstić (Friday morning)

Ivan Krstić is a software architect and researcher currently on leave from Harvard University. He is the director of security and information architecture at the One Laptop per Child project.

Prior to joining OLPC, Ivan served as director of research at the Medical Informatics Laboratory at Zagreb Children's Hospital, developing software infrastructure for wide-scale digital health care. He's deeply involved in open source and free software, and specializes in architecture and security of large distributed systems. He has consulted on both matters for some of the largest sites on the Internet.

Topic: "The Power of Dangerous Ideas: Python and One Laptop per Child"

Adele Goldberg (Saturday morning)

Dr. Adele Goldberg is one of the most respected people in the software industry. She was a laboratory manager at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center for many years, leading the Smalltalk-80 team, and was the cofounder of ParcPlace Systems, a company which produced application development environments for Smalltalk and C++, targeting corporate software developers. She has since worked on Python-based projects to develop virtual communities for both corporate and civic groups, to manage efficient drug development, and to deliver educational content to schools and corporations. Dr. Goldberg has served as President of the ACM and has received numerous awards for her contributions to computing. Smalltalk was used to prototype the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointers) interface at Xerox PARC, the cornerstone for today's modern graphical user interfaces. Her research interests have long focused on educational uses of computers, with an emphasis on teaching modeling through programming as well as on understanding the implications of mainstreaming eLearning in U.S. public schools.

Topic: "Premise: eLearning does not Belong in Public Schools"

Guido van Rossum (Saturday Lunch)

Guido van Rossum is the creator of Python, one of the major programming languages on and off the web. The Python community refers to him as the BDFL (Benevolent Dictator For Life), a title straight from a Monty Python skit.

He moved from the Netherlands to the USA in 1995, where he met his wife. Until July 2003 they lived in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC with their son Orlijn, who was born in 2001. They then moved to Silicon Valley where Guido now works for Google (spending 50% of his time on Python!).

Topic: "Python 3000"

Robert M. "r0ml" Lefkowitz (Sunday morning)

r0ml is an software architect and systems designer with over thirty years of experience. For two decades, r0ml worked on Wall Street, developing market data, trading, risk management, and quantitative analysis systems. More recently, as chief technical architect at AT&T Wireless, he drove the improvement of their CRM, ERP, commission, and data warehousing systems. Over the last several years, r0ml has become increasingly interested in open source software strategy at large enterprises, and is a frequent speaker on the topic.

Topic: "The Importance of Programming Literacy"