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Expos and Conventions

Take a Page from the NY Times Travel Show

Watching your wallet but still lusting to wander in 2010? If you're in Manhattan February 26 – 28, 2010, swing by The New York Times Travel Show at the Jacob Javits Convention Center.

Presented by American Express, the show brandishes some 500 destinations, resorts, hotels, cruises and tours to fanaticize over while spelunking the cavernous hall of pavilions and regional exhibits.

Giveaways are ubiquitous for those who fill forms, and less patient sorts can learn about snagging outlandish travel deals by attending Saturday and Sunday's seminars. Top industry names brighten the lineup, including gurus Arthur and Pauline Frommer; 1,000 Places to See Before You Die author Patricia Schultz; and The New York Times' own Stuart Emmrich.

Television personality and travel scribe Julia Dimon will take her audience "Beyond the Tourist Zone" to fair trade coffee farms in Nicaragua and slimy critters in the Venezuelan jungle, among other highlights from her 80-country exploits. And a session with PBS Travelscope host Joseph Rosendo reveals why Thailand, India and Guatamala are good 2010 getaways.

Also sharing tales from the road is a panel of travel writers that includes Susan Orlean and David Farley. Aspiring travel writers can catch a seminar with gonomad.com's Max Hartshorne and Kent St. John, and anyone with a hankering for Cuba, family bargains or gay-friendly destinations will find seminars to match. Many of the forums are followed by author book signings at Borders Books.

Besides travel tips, big Travel Show draws are the cultural fanfare and exotic cuisine. This year, Javits's six performance stages show off a repertoire of dancers and musicians, from the Dominican Republic's Clarinetes Mágicos to South Africa's soccer-inspired Diski Dance honoring the 2010 World Cup.

Family attractions abound. Kids can get up-close and personal with live penguins and sloths at "Wild Things: Live!," while stressed parents take in the ancient Eastern art of circular breathing.

For Javits globetrotters who work up an appetite, they can sample menus from the Mexican revolution and spicy Indian poori, or enjoy cruise fare without turning green as Norwegian Cruise Line Chef Eric Cousin ladles out tastes from the sea.
And given December's reported 23% spike in cruise spending by American Express card holders, there may be cause for celebration.


This year's Travel Show unfolds amid signs of recovery in several other sectors of the travel industry as well. Taken together with pent-up travel interest and irresistible bargains, consumers are starting to look for places to vacation in 2010.
Thankfully, the Javits Center is large enough to accommodate the weekend's anticipated crowds.

In any case, there's no talk of bumping anyone.

Jacob K. Javits Convention Center
644 West 34th Street

New York, NY
http://www.nyttravelshow.com/

Photo:traveljunkiejulia.com

HempCon 2010 Medical Marijuana Show

The HempCon 2010 Medical Marijuana Show is being held February 19-21, 2010 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. HempCon is Los Angeles’ largest gathering of activists, entreprenuers, educators, cultivators and patients of the medical marijuana community. HempCon is an educational event as well, with a weekend of seminars and presentations by industry leaders, advocates and attorneys.

HempCon promotes itself s a chance for members of the community to learn more about the medical use of marijuana. To promote understanding and awareness of the medical marijuana community, many educational speakers and entertainers will be presenting and performing throughout the show.

This year, HempCon will feature a variety of exhibitors in such categories as apparel, doctors, hydroponics, legal services, and publications, as well as medical-marijuana dispensary, collective, delivery and evaluation specialists. Exhibits feature business professionals from a wide range of industries, from collectives to retail vendors, as well as graphic/web designers, appliance manufacturers and cultivation innovators.

This year’s show features keynote addresses from two top medical marijuana activist: Cheryl Shuman, executive director, and Frederic Rhoades  director of operations, of Beverly Hills NORML (National Organization for the Reform Of Marijuana Laws), Southern California’s most influential and active non-profit organization committed to the advancement of the medical marijuana movement and the reform of marijuana legislation. Additional speakers include:

Michael Lerner, Daily Buds
Chris Hubbert, LA Weekly
Steve Bloom, Celebrity Stoner
Daniel M. Bornstein, Attorney

For more information, visit http://hempcon.com.  

HempCon 2010 Medical Marijuana Show
February 19-21, 2010
Los Angeles Convention Center

1201 South Figueroa Street
Los Angeles, CA 90015-1399

It's All About User Engagement - Engage Expo

Engage!® Conference and Expo is the definitive event on youth entertainment technology. Taking place February 16-17, 2010 at the Javits Convention Center in New York City, this year's Engage runs concurrently with Toy Fair.

Engage covers the critical information needed to deeply connect with and generate revenue from youth and parents online and on mobile devices. Coverage includes social games, virtual goods, virtual worlds, branded apps and online-offline toys.

100 engaging speakers presents 32 intense sessions delivering key insight into new monetization strategies, proven ways to strengthen customer relationships, and essential marketing solutions to maximize reach.

This year's Keynote speakers are:

Will Wright, Founder and Chief Executive, Stupid Fun Club and Creator, Spore andThe Sims
The renowned creator of the world's top-selling computer game of all time celebrates his first ever visit to Engage! and Toy Fair with the opening day Engage! keynote. Will's presentation, The Evolution of Entertainment, A Toy's Place, will look at toys, play, and the product development process from a new perspective. "I'm really excited to be at Engage! Expo and Toy Fair this year,” said Wright. “I mean come on, who doesn't love toys?"

Lane Merrifield
, Executive Vice President, Disney Online Studios, and Co-Founder and General Manager, Club Penguin
In addition to Club Penguin, Lane also oversees the development for all of The Walt Disney Company's virtual worlds including the soon to be launched World of Cars Online.

Natalie Hornsby
, VP of Marketing, Cepia LLC. Creators of Zhu Zhu Pets
Natalie has been the driving force behind the marketing and branding of Zhu Zhu Pets, which went from  from obscurity to phenomenon in half a year.  

Tor Sirset, Vice President of Marketing Girls/Preschool, Bandai America Inc.
Bandai is expanding to the girls category and integrating online into the majority of these toys. Sirset discusses the strategy behind this rollout and how the Internet plays an increasingly important role in the crafting and marketing of toys.

The conference includes 4 major tracks:

Toys and Online – With the advent of web-connected and wireless-connected toys, toys that have an online or virtual world component, toy companies now have a direct connection to their consumers. Some of the sessions are:

  • Leveraging the Web: Connecting Kids' Online Worlds to Offline Toys
  • A Focus Group with the Kids: What Are They Playing, Where are They Spending?
  • It's the Activity Stupid: Keeping Kids and Tweens Engaged
Online Games and Virtual Worlds – Online games and virtual worlds provide the ultimate in user engagement. Whether it is flash games on a web site, a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) or a 2D or 3D virtual world, users stick around longer and build a relationship with the game, world or brand. Sessions include:
  • Tapping into the Emotional Triggers of Consumers
  • Adapting to Customers' Preferences and Business Needs: Best Practices for Keeping Your Online World Running, After You've Launched
  • Safety in Online Worlds: How the Federal Trade Commission Sees It
Technology Platforms – This 1-day track discusses the latest in engaging technology platforms and the best practices for implementation, from the immersive experience of 2D and 3D virtual worlds to minimal online experiences, such as mobile apps, that may involve just a few minutes of daily interactivity. Sessions include:
  • Adding A Powerful Online Presence To An Existing Offline Brand
  • User Generated Online Content for Kids: Freedom vs. Safety
  • Developing A Dynamic and Engaging Online Play Strategy On a Budget
Virtual Goods Conference – Generating millions in revenues, Virtual Goods have been described as the perfect business: charging real money for digital products that may not exist in the real world. Sessins include:
  • Trends in Virtual Goods and Payment Solutions
  • Digital Kids and the Rise of Retail Game Cards
  • Taking Your Brand to iPhone, Facebook and Other Online Platforms

Some of the session speakers are:

Chris Bergstresser, CEO and Co-founder, Vector Entertainment, Inc.
Cynthia Breazeal, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT Media Lab
Rich Cleveland, Sr. Director Marketing, Digital Media and Gaming, Hasbro
Renata Dionello, Director, Consumer Business Development, PayPal
Anita Frazier
, Industry Analyst, Toys & Video Games, NPD Group
James Gatto
, IP Practice Section Leader, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP
Krista Marks, General Manager, Disney Online Kerpoof Studios
Jesse Soleil, Vice President, Emerging Media and Technology, eScholastic
Tim Williams, VP Sales and Marketing, Engage Digital Media
Susan Wu, CEO & Co-Founder, ohai

Engage! brings together the leaders from the technology, toy, game and entertainment industries and provides critical cross-industry learning and valuable new business partnership and networking opportunities.

For more information, visit www.engageexpo.com.  

Engage!® Conference and Expo
February 16-17, 2010


Javits Convention Center
655 West 34th Street
New York City,

PyCon 2010

PyCon 2010 takes place February 17 to 25, 2010, at the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta, Georgia. The conference is organized and run by volunteer programmers of the computer language Python; the users' perspective governs everything from talk selection to conference cost, making an exceptionally worthwhile conference. The first two days are tutorials, followed by the three-day conference.

Attendees gather for serious learning, discussion, and strategizing, as well as fun. PyCon 2010, the eighth annual conference of the Python programming community, promises more talks, more education, more creativity; more work and more play. PyCon 2009 drew nearly a thousand Python programmers from around the world, representing projects on all seven continents - including Antarctica.  

Interest in PyCon is growing along with the use of the Python language itself. This year alone has seen a 50% increase in the number of talk proposals submitted by community members, and the organizers have added an unprecedented fifth track to the conference schedule.

The conference will include 95 regular talks and panels, covering everything from language basics to deep-space astronomy to robotic submarines. PyCon also offers 32 half-day tutorials, Open Space sessions, special keynotes, Lightning Talks, development sprints, an exhibit hall, and a hands-on lab - countless opportunities for attendees to learn.

This year, PyCon also introduces Poster Sessions for detailed, personal examination of a variety of topics with subject matter experts. Poster sessions provide an alternative presentation mechanism that facilitates more one-on-one communication between the presenter and the audience. Poster sessions are particularly suited for topics of interest to a subset of the community.

Python's growth has been partially driven by an explosion in new implementations of the language. The IronPython and Jython implementations make Python a good tool for .NET and Java environments, say proponents, in that it helps make full use of those platforms' capabilities and libraries. Other implementations, like Stackless and Google's Unladen-Swallow, focus on improving Python execution speed.

Finally, the Pynie and PyPy implementations bring Python programs to all-new experimental execution environments. All these implementations will be examined in several PyCon talks and in PyCon's Python Language Summit and Virtual Machine Summit.

Keynote Speakers

Antonio Rodriguez was CTO of HP's consumer imaging and printing business where he worked on a wide array of projects: from mass customization to making the web more "printable," to e-reading, to mobile platforms. He came to HP through the acquisition of Tabblo, a company he founded in 2005.

Mark Shuttleworth
is founder of the Ubuntu Project, an enterprise Linux distribution that is freely available worldwide, and has both cutting-edge desktop and enterprise server editions, and has become very popular. In April 2002 Mark flew in space, as a cosmonaut member of the crew of Soyuz mission TM34 to the International Space Station.

Invited Talks
include:

Ian BickingDeployment, Development, Packaging, and a Little Bit of the Cloud

Jeff RushInterfaces, Adapters and Factories

Jack DiederichPython's Dusty Corners

Ned Batchelder  – Tests and Testability

Lightning Talks
A lightning talk is a short presentation of an attendee’s choosing, no longer than five minutes. Unlike scheduled talks, there is no approval process; speakers simply sign up during PyCon.

This quick pace forces speakers to focus on the essentials and treats the audience to ten different topics in an hour. PyCon 2010 will aim for five sessions.

Development Sprints
A sprint is a time set aside for developers to come together and focus their undivided attention on improving an open source project. The PyCon Development Sprints are four days of intensive learning and development—a focused, sustained time to test, fix bugs, add new features, and improve documentation.

Development sprints are a key part of PyCon, a chance for the contributors to open-source projects to get together face-to-face for up to four days of intensive learning and development. Newbies sit at the same table as the gurus, go out for lunch and dinner together, and have a great time while advancing their project. All experience levels are welcome.

About PyCon
Presented by the Python Software Foundation and sponsored by Google, the world’s largest Python conference brings together a diverse group of developers, enthusiasts, and organizations to explore new challenges, launch new businesses and forge new connections within the Python community. PyCon provides attendees with the opportunity to delve into the dynamic programming language relied upon by institutions from MIT and NASA to Cisco and Walt Disney. PyCon helps people learn new tools and techniques, present their own projects, and meet other Python fans.

About Python
Python is an open-source, dynamically typed, object-oriented programming language that can be used in nearly the entire range of technology applications. It offers an easy learning curve and access to a vast array of libraries. With implementations available for all common operating systems as well as the Java and .NET platforms, Python can be used on virtually any system in existence. Python's power and versatility have made it one of the world's most popular programming languages, currently ranked #7 in the TIOBE index. Like other open-source, dynamic languages, it offers rapid productivity and a vigorous developer community; at the same time, Python's clarity and reliability give confidence to enterprise users.

For more information, go to http://us.pycon.org.  

PyCon 2010
February 17-25, 2010


Hyatt Regency Atlanta
265 Peachtree Street NE
Atlanta, Georgia, USA 30303

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