The International Python Conference (IPC) is held anually, in the U.S., more or less in the end of their winter. The biggest names in the community gather there and make talks; it's a great opportunity to meet people. In the past it was also used to make decisions about the future of Python, and there is talk of bringing this aspect back in the next conferences.
Next conference
There will be three Python conferences in 2003, two in the US and one in Europe.
[http://www.python.org/pycon/ PyCon 2003] will be held in Washington DC in March. It will be a community-oriented event, organized by volunteers with the expert help of [http://yetanother.org/ Yet Another Society] (who already arrange YAPC - "Yet Another Perl Conference" - and Mozilla Developer Days. The admission fee will be low, less than $200, and the conference is likely to be a lot of fun.
The [http://europython.org/ European Python and Zope Conference 2003] will be held in Charleroi, Belgium on June 25-27, 2003.
The official Python11 conference will be part of O'Reilly's [http://conferences.oreillynet.com/ Open Source Convention].
Past conferences
[http://www.python10.org Python10], the 10th International Python Conference, was held at February 4-7, 2002 in Alexandria, VA.
[http://www.python9.org Python9], the 9th International Python Conference, was held at March 2001 in Long Beach, CA
[http://python.org/workshops/2000-01/ Python8], the 8th International Python Conference, was held at January 2000 in Arlington, VA
[http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/ Python7], the 7th International Python Conference, was held at November 1998 at Houston, TX
[http://python.org/workshops/1997-10/ Python6], the 6th International Python Conference, was held at October 1997 in San Jose, CA
[http://python.org/workshops/1996-06/ Python5], the International Python Conference IV, was held at June 1996 in Livermore, CA