Europython was a month ago (early July) and I've been meaning to pull together a write-up since. So here goes...

First of all, Python Italia are some seriously well organised folks. I can't think of another programming conference that was so smoothly executed. Add to that the food (yes, the FOOD!) and location (Florence is a city everyone should take the time to visit) and you have something akin to programmer utopia. I especially enjoyed several UK Pythonistas and London Dojo attendees giving talks: Mike Sandford's talk on the logging module was especially useful and Peter Inglesby's "Discovering Descriptors" was a fascinating dive into attribute access (for non-geeks: yeah, I know... sounds really interesting right..?).

I gave a talk that combined my love of programming and music:

It seemed to go quite well and the attendees (standing room only) seemed to enjoy it. I was secretly pleased to have rickrolled them all (in Latin!) without any of them noticing (watch the video and see if you can spot the offending slide). I was also delighted that many of the attendees couldn't tell the difference between my computer generated music and that composed by Mozart or Fux. In any case, all the code and the HTML/CSS for the slides can be found on github.

Finally, the best part of Europython was being able to attend with Mary (but without our three children who were staying with grandparents). Not only did we have a lot of of fun discovering Florence together but we were out every evening enjoying the tastes, sights and sounds of that great city with friends old and new. It was also fun for me because it gave Mary a window into my (often quite abstract and inaccessible) world and see me give my talk. Given that Europython 2013 will be in Florence again I suspect we'll both be back next year.

What's next? Well, PyconUK is just around the corner and there's another NHSHackday soon! If you're going, say hi!