The morning session I attended was “Python in 3 hours”, which provided excellent coverage of Python for folks who may never have seen it before. Steve Holden, being more qualified than most to present this material, did a stellar job of not only presenting the material, but also addressing questions coming from the attendees.
Steve’s talk is fantastic, but I really wish there was an introductory talk for folks who were coming in with the question “Why Python?”. Steve’s talk assumes interest in the language, and that’s completely fair, but I brought a buddy who I think was looking more for the “why” than the “how”. Of course I try to evangelise the language where I can, but to be honest, I’m not as good a salesperson for Python as I wish I was. I use Python for all of my sysadmin tasks these days and love it, but I already hated the other languages I was using, so I guess I just wasn’t a very hard sell. 🙂