PyLadies presents: Panel with Lords of the GIL

A huge thank you to Uber (http://www.uber.com) for offering to host the event on such short notice and to Heroku (http://www.heroku.com) for sponsoring snacks + drinks!!

OMGIL!! PyLadies presents a panel discussion with Lords of the GIL(sort of) for both PyLadies and PyGents.

Join Guido van Rossum, Alex Gaynor, Frank Wierzbicki, and Philip Jenvey for a discussion on the development of popular Python implementations: CPython, PyPy, and Jython, moderated by our own South Bay PyLady: Rachel Sanders.

Submit your question(s) on Python core development, the GIL, and other implementation questions for our panelists via Google Moderator (http://www.google.com/moderator/#16/e=203d76)!

Schedule:
7:00pm - Doors open/socializing
7:30pm - Welcome, a quick intro on the GIL
7:45pm - Panel Discussion
8:45pm - Wrap up discussion, more socializing
9:00pm - Beauty sleep

About our panel:
Guido van Rossum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_van_Rossum) is the original author of Python, known as the Benevolent Dictator for Life. He currently mentors and contributes to the ongoing development of CPython. Guido recently left his position at Google to join the Python-shop, Dropbox (http://dropbox.com).

Alex Gaynor (http://alexgaynor.net/) is a core contributor to CPython and PyPy, as well as the Django web framework. He currently is a software engineer for rdio (http://rdio.com), and a recent graduate of RPI.

Frank Wierzbicki (http://fwierzbicki.blogspot.com/) is the lead developer for Jython, and a member of the Python Software Foundation. With many years of experience writing in Python and Java, he co-authored the book: The Definitive Guide to Jython (http://www.jython.org/jythonbook/en/1.0/).

Philip Jenvey (http://dunderboss.blogspot.com/) is a software consultant, a founder of the Pylons Project (http://www.pylonsproject.org/), and a developer for PyPy, Jython, CPython and SQLAlchemy (http://www.sqlalchemy.org).

Our moderator: Rachel Sanders (http://twitter.com/trustrachel), the South Bay PyLadies organizer, is an engineer for LinkedIn working with Python full time.

About popular Python implementations:
CPython (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPython) - the default & most widely-used implementation of Python, written in C (not to be confused with Cython).
PyPy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PyPy) - a just-in-time compiler, originally Python written in Python, now is translated from RPython to C code.
Jython (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jython) - an implementation of Python written in Java. The Jython implementation does not use the Global Interpreter Lock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Interpreter_Lock) (GIL) - a limitation of the use of Python threads, and is therefore quite popular with Django, Pylons, and SQLAlchemy.
IronPython (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IronPython) (not represented in the panel, unfortunately) - an implementation of Python written in .NET. and also does not use the GIL.