

Bringing First Timers to PyCon Through Financial Aid - pykello
http://pycon.blogspot.com/2013/03/bringing-first-timers-to-pycon-through.html

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caissy
This year was my first PyCon ever. Being a student, I did not have the funds
to pay for a 4 night hotel and a 600$ flight. I really wanted to go, so I just
decided to put what ever it would cost on my almost full student line of
credit. Thanks for the this financial aid, I was able to reimburse everything,
and my final cost for attending PyCon was near zero.

While being at PyCon, I also decided to help the best I could. I was a session
runner for 4 different tracks. This led me to meeting amazing people (Doug,
Dave, etc) and having a few minutes private talk with the speakers as we
rushed down the stairs to their room.

Overall, what really amazed me during the weekend is the community itself. I
still can't put words on how incredible the outreach that the community is
trying to accomplish is (Financial Aid, PyLadies, The Yound Coder, Poster
session, etc). This is what makes PyCon and the Python community so unique.

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nicholassmith
This is why having a way of getting people who deserve it but cannot afford it
is a very good thing for conferences. I hope more conferences adopt it as a
policy.

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samet
That was awesome. I couldn't go to PyCon without Financial Aid. This is the
biggest amount of aid I've ever heard in a conference. 100.000$ is really big.

Conference was hillarious, I was glad to be there. Thanks all for the aid
program.

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jedberg
It would be great if that blog post ended with a big "Donate" button so that
after reading the great story I can give money to help fund some scholarships
for next year.

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tolos
I don't really want to go if I can randomly lose my job.

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nicholassmith
Seriously, that issue has been talked to death and this isn't the place to
reignite it.

