Andy McKay's blog

We are excited to announce that Jacob Kaplan-Moss will be giving one of the keynote talks at DjangoSki.

It's almost impossible to be around Django and not know who Jacob is. He's one of the original founders of Django, is on the foundation board, is the co-BDFL of Django and is the co-author of The Definitive Guide to Django. Let's face it, if it's got something to do with Django, Jacob has had some influence on it. Currently Jacob works at Revolution Systems where he gets to do lots more Django.

After missing Jacob at DjangoCon in Portland, it will be certainly good to have him around in Whistler. Perhaps even get some sprinting on Django 1.2 (which will be out a few days after DjangoSki). Jacob writes a great blog and is a great speaker.

I bet you've always wanted to parse your djangopeople.net account into JSONP so you can use it somewhere else on the web. Well your wait is over: djangopeople-jsonp.appspot.com will do just. Some examples of some famous and not so famous Django people. (and of course mr nobody).

We are pleased to announce the first keynote speaker for DjangoSki is David Ascher.

David Ascher is the CEO of Mozilla Messaging. He's been involved with Python for many years and has dabbled around in Django too. He co-authored Learning Python and worked on Komodo whilst at ActiveState (where he became the CTO). Most recently Mozilla Messaging released the rather cool Raindrop, which is written in Python.

David has done some great talks at Python conferences in the past, providing thought provoking and entertaining talks. We think he can ski too, but we'll find that out.

We would also like to thank our first sponsor for DjangoSki, OpenRoad Communications.

If you would like to sponsor DjangoSki and get your company in front of key Djangoers whilst supporting a great conference, contact ClearWind. For more information on the DjangoSki conference, go to djangoski.com.

We've released iPhone app that contains all the Django documentation. Basically we took the documentation, reformatted it a bit to try and fit on the iPhone and then pushed it all into PhoneGap. Unfortunately there was then a 5 week wait as Apple thought about approving it.

The app has just now been approved and is on the app store. There's more information on the Clearwind site, here.

There's a few things we'd like to improve like: reducing the memory footprint, remembering the last page and indexing in spotlight. I'm not sure how many of those things will be possible, but we'll keep the app to date with the latest docs.

And the best thing is, 30 cents out of every app sale goes to the Django Software Foundation.

I am very excited to announce the DjangoSki Conference in Whistler, March 2nd-4th 2010.

This is a conference that combines my favourite web application framework with one of my favourite sports, skiing. If you are going to run a conference, may as well do it somewhere with style right? The conference is slightly unusual in that it's styled a bit after an unconference. There are several keynote talks we are lining up and some introductory talks, but the rest of the conference is up to the attendees.

Each day will have sprints or ad-hoc talks created by the attendees. The real goal is to focus on the things I find enjoyable about a conference - meeting people and learning. Sprints are the ideal way to learn from other people. I'm not alone in this.

Details will follow as we get registration and keynotes organized.

So if you are planning a ski holiday this year and do Django, the choice has just become a whole lot easier. Come to Whistler and have a damn good time.

Taken a few months ago from our canoe as we paddled in Deep Cove, there was a log full of them, this one more relaxed than the others.

Wanted to know what that ship in the Vancouver harbour is? Where its going, where its been? Want to know the path of the seabus today?

Via Dethe Elza, from http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/. Want to get it easy to use on my iPhone for next time I'm at the beach.