History of PyCon Taiwan

Before PyCon Taiwan

Thinker Li organized PyCTW, the predecessor of PyCon Taiwan, in both 2008 PyCTW and 2011 PyCTW. They were one-day events gathering Pythonistas in Taiwan together.

2012 is the first year of PyCon Taiwan

The first PyCon Taiwan was founded in 2012, by yyc and volunteers from communities. The topics mainly focused on scientific computation as well as introduction to Python-based tools. The organizers decided to follow the Everybody Pays policy originated from PyCon US: Everyone, including the staffs and speakers of PyCon Taiwan, is required to pay for the ticket. The principle, which we honor to this day, distinguishes PyCon Taiwan from other conferences in Taiwan.

In 2014, the Python Taiwan community hosted the APAC

We hosted the PyCon APAC/Taiwan, as PyCon for the APAC area, in both 2014 and 2015, lead by chairpersons Tim Hsu and Keith Yang. We were lucky to invite Jessica McKellar, director of Python Software Foundation, and many prestigious contributors in the community as our keynote speakers. During the BoF, we launched a problem-solving competition in collaboration with CheckIO, as an entertaining activity. We also arranged programs like Show Time and Job Event in order to promote the sponsors. Tutorials covering several topics were held, ranging from Python introduction to web crawling, data mining, signal processing, and even interaction with Raspberry Pi.

The 2015 PyConAPAC held an additional fee-based PyDay

PyDay, an activity for new programmers hosted jointly by PyCon Taiwan and top universities in Taiwan, was also held for the first time in 2015. Keynote speakers from PyCon Taiwan came to the PyDay event, and share their experience throughout the sessions.

2016 「Implement the Future, Together!」

We passed the APAC flag to South Korea in 2016, and brought our focus back to the native Taiwanese community. But PyCon Taiwan, now under the slogan “Implement the Future, Together!”, was stronger than ever, and received a overwhelming amount of proposals and participants. We were lucky to invite jserv and Audrey Tang, who are both famous Taiwanese community leaders and established hackers, as well as foreign speakers including Paul Hildebrandt, senior engineer at Disney Animation Studio, Steve Dower, software developer at Microsoft, and Amber Brown, manager of the Twisted project. Paul brought us an enlightening speech about how Python is applied to animation production in Disney, which the audience thoroughly enjoyed. Along with the first local keynote speakers at PyCon Taiwan, we also made new attempts including a FinTech session, interactive games combining sensor technology and a vending machine, and experience-sharing talks about teaching programming to young adults. The photo albums have our most treasurous memories.

2017 「Future」

2017 was our most futuristic PyCon Taiwan ever. All of our keynote speakers, including globally renowned machine-learning expert Hsuan-Tien Lin, are not only recognized in their respective fields, but also community leaders, trend-setters, and visionaries for the next generation. In line with the community-focused theme, we also held an "unconference conference" for the first time, looking forward to spurring discussion in the community, to great success. The late-night party was also expanded to include contributions from community members with various talent. Adrian Liaw’s piano performance was such a treat!

2018 「Acceleration」

Largely the same team were brought back to host PyCon Taiwan in 2018. Continuing the established theme, the image was set to “acceletation”, both in the technical sense and community-wise.

2019 「Innovation」

We retrospected the role of PyCon Taiwan as a community platform in Taiwan in 2019. We have continued to improve our agenda and events by introducing wonderful activities and experience from the other Python Conferences in the world to PyCon Taiwan. We also enhanced the exchange of experience between local-to-local and local-to-international Python communities, and adopted innovative plans.

2020「Moving Southward」

To promote local communities to the attendees, we hosted PyCon Taiwan in Tainan for the first time. And we introduced Community Track, hosted by eight local communities such as Taipei.py, Taichung.py, Tainan.py, Kaohsiung.py, etc. People can decide which local communities to interact with, and while doing so, understand the unique culture of different communities.

2021「Reunion」

This year is the 10th anniversary of PyCon Taiwan. Due to COVID-19, we will be hosting our first ever online conference. This is a big challenge for us, but we will overcome it with our passion. Besides passing on the experience in communities, we are also introducing brand new activities, like PyCasts and Young Inspirers, to facilitate and encourage discussions among different groups. We hope to invite all of you, either a python user, developer, or promoter, to join our gathering. Let’s get together and make PyCon Taiwan more professional, accessible, and energetic than ever.