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PyCon 2013 Keynote Speakers

Keynote Speakers

Eben Upton, Founder and Trustee - Raspberry Pi Foundation

Eben Upton is a founder and trustee of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and serves as its Executive Director. The Raspberry Pi is an ultra-low cost, credit card-sized computer designed to fill a much-needed technological gap in communities that cannot afford more traditional computing hardware and to provide children around the world the opportunity to learn programming. He is responsible for the overall software and hardware architecture of the Raspberry Pi, and for the Foundation's relationships with its key suppliers and customers. In an earlier life, he founded two successful mobile games and middleware companies, Ideaworks 3d Ltd and Podfun Ltd, and held the post of Director of Studies for Computer Science at St John's College, Cambridge. He holds a BA in Physics and Engineering, a PhD in Computer Science, and an Executive MBA, from the University of Cambridge. In his day job, he works for Broadcom as an ASIC architect and general troublemaker.

You can find out more about Eben and the Raspberry Pi at project their site. The Raspberry Pi team is also on Twitter.

Jessica McKellar - Linux Kernel engineer, Python Outreach and Workshops

Jessica McKellar is a Linux kernel engineer from Cambridge, MA. She is a Python Software Foundation board member and an organizer for the largest Python user group in the world. With that group she runs the Boston Python Workshops for women and their friends -- an introductory programming pipeline that has brought hundreds of women into the local Python community and is being replicated in cities across the US. Jessica is a veteran open source contributor and a maintainer for several open source projects, including OpenHatch and the Twisted event-driven networking engine; she wrote a chapter on Twisted for The Architecture of Open Source Applications Volume II and is working with O'Reilly on a new edition of Twisted Networking Essentials.

Raymond Hettinger - Python Core Developer, Python teacher and freelancer

Raymond Hettinger is a freelance programmer with experience in cloud computing, high frequency trading, genomics, and optimization. He has worked at Sauce Labs Inc as a Director of Technology and at EWT/Fattoc as Chief Visualization Officer. Raymond attended West Point for 2 years, graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, and became a CPA in 1990. His favorite computer language is Python. Raymond also is a licensed pilot and has interests in math and the sciences.

Raymond can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Guido van Rossum, Python Creator, BDFL

Guido van Rossum is the author of the Python programming language. He continues to serve as the "Benevolent Dictator For Life" (BDFL), meaning that he continues to oversee the Python development process, making decisions where necessary. He is currently employed by Dropbox.

PSF Chairman Address

Van Lindberg, PSF Chairman

Van Lindberg is a software engineer and practicing attorney. What he does most, though, is translate - from "lawyer" to "engineer" and back. He likes working with both computer code and legal code to get things done.

Before becoming a lawyer, Van was a research and development engineer at NTT/Verio, building automation tools and distributed systems, mostly in Python. He has been involved with open source since 1994, when a friend introduced him to Linux.

Currently, Van works for Haynes and Boone, a law firm headquartered in Dallas. Van's work at Haynes and Boone touches both traditional intellectual property and the emerging field of open source law, where he advises businesses and open source groups on intellectual property issues.