The SciPy 2013 conference is coming up on June 24-29 in Austin, Texas and you should go. Here are some good reasons:

You’ll learn something. There are beginning, intermediate, and advanced tutorial tracks this year, so it would be pretty much impossible for you not to learn something at those. I’ll even be there with Katy Huff teaching a tutorial on version control and testing. Even if you can’t make it to the tutorials there will lots of great talks and BOF sessions.

There are domain specific mini-symposia. If your field is represented you can go for a concentrated dose of relevant talks and to meet other Python users in your field. Here are the specific domains this year:

• Astronomy & astrophysics
• Bio-informatics
• GIS – Geospatial Data Analysis
• Medical imaging
• Meteorology, climatology, and atmospheric and oceanic science

It’ll be fun! The scientific Python community is chock full of really nice people. Even if you’re new and just learning how to use Python you’ll meet people who are eager to talk and make you feel welcome. (If you find this is not the case, email me or tweet me and I will see if I can help.)

Diversity at SciPy

I’ve been going to SciPy since 2010 and every year the attendees and speakers have been disappointingly white and male. Last year Andy Terrel and I chided the conference organizers about this and it looks like this year the organizers (which include Andy) are actually trying to do something about diversity: there is a Diversity Statement, a Code of Conduct, and pyladies will be there as a community sponsor.

If you’re not sure about SciPy because you’re worried you won’t fit in or won’t be welcome I want to be the first to tell you that you don’t need to worry and that you should come. Everyone who comes to SciPy has agreed to abide by the Code of Conduct and the conference organizers are there to help if you experience any problems. SciPy is a conference for everyone and having a more diverse community is good for all of us.