[caissy]

This year was my first PyCon ever. Being a student, I did not have the funds to pay for a 4 night hotel and a 600$ flight. I really wanted to go, so I just decided to put what ever it would cost on my almost full student line of credit. Thanks for the this financial aid, I was able to reimburse everything, and my final cost for attending PyCon was near zero.

While being at PyCon, I also decided to help the best I could. I was a session runner for 4 different tracks. This led me to meeting amazing people (Doug, Dave, etc) and having a few minutes private talk with the speakers as we rushed down the stairs to their room.

Overall, what really amazed me during the weekend is the community itself. I still can't put words on how incredible the outreach that the community is trying to accomplish is (Financial Aid, PyLadies, The Yound Coder, Poster session, etc). This is what makes PyCon and the Python community so unique.

[nicholassmith]

This is why having a way of getting people who deserve it but cannot afford it is a very good thing for conferences. I hope more conferences adopt it as a policy.