[Conferences-discuss] shh....

[Paul F. Dubois]

OK, the noise on here is already unbearable. So I'll add to it by
commenting that Chicago may have an airport but YOU CAN'T EVER LAND AT
IT. At least, not on the day or time you select. Also it has fine 100%
humidity year round, and two temperature ranges, real hot and real cold.

Some disconnected thoughts:

To me it is a nobrainer to be a part of OSCON. It is even easier to
convince employers and oneself to go to a conference where there are a
variety of things to be learned. I don't find every single session of a
Python conference contains material I find compelling, no matter how
good it is. It is nice to know other things are around. 

Those of you who have never taken part in running a conference have
absolutely no idea how much is involved. Even the "small" conference at
LLNL was a significant amount of work for us. (By the way, the DOE now
has new restrictions on us running conferences and I doubt that we could
do it again.) Those advocating "amateur" conferences need to be
realistic about what happens when 300 people show up. Emergency
messages, lunch, coffee, ...; as Guido said, you can't just all go over
to Starbucks.

The lightening talks were fantastic. Anybody can stand even a horrible
talk if it stops soon, so ref'ing these is not needed IMHO. I got a lot
of info in a short time. This needs to be part of the main conference.