Business track (was Re: [EuroPython] The new volunteers )

[Magnus Lyckå]

At 13:46 2003-10-16 +0200, Laura Creighton wrote:
>I didn't envision doing talks so much like we had at past EuroPython, but
>rather like talks I gave years ago at Open Source conferences in the USA.
>What we would do is to invite a bunch of people from government and
>business to our 2 day conference.  (this was only for them, so, clearly
>we would have to make some changes to suit EP).  On day 1, we would
>take some requests from the audience.  things that they wanted solved
>in their lives.  We claimed that we could give them an open source solution.
...
>Now clearly we cannot structure EP that way -- for one thing, the hackers
>would have to miss the con to write code, but maybe we invite such business
>people to a day before the con meeting and proselytising effort?

This is a really interesting idea. Maybe we could think about how
to accomplish something along these lines after all...

I have an idea for a talk that would fit the same kind of audience,
and I'd really like to see people who aren't already Python users
at EPC.

I'm now involved in a medium sized development project for a Swedish
government agency, and I've quickly developed a number of fairly simple
Python programs that have saved a considerable amount of time for
people working with DBA, SCM and testing.

Initially I asked people about repetetinve and boring tasks that they
would like to get automated, but I got very vague responses on such
questions. It seems most people aren't aware of how much time they spend
doing repetetive and boring stuff that a machine could do much faster
and more reliably. The tools are made in such a way that they are kept
busy, and they don't see the waste. I've seen it myself when I've been
strolling around, seeing what people work with, and when I've tried to
figure out why some things take a lot of time.

It still surprises me to see how large development projects put 100% of
the programming effort into coding the final deliverables, and 0% of
their programming effort on creating tools that will make the project
run faster and more reliably. This is not the first time...

Inluding Python in the toolbox, assigning a "tool smith" who helps the
developers, tester, and other team members with tools that reduce
repetetive work can boost productivity and reduce risk quite a lot.



--
Magnus Lycka (It's really Lyckå), magnus at thinkware.se
Thinkware AB, Sweden, www.thinkware.se
I code Python ~ The Agile Programming Language