[EuroPython] Scheduling call for papers and acceptance of talks

[Nicolas Chauvat]

On Sun, Feb 27, 2005 at 11:31:39AM +0000, Paul Everitt wrote:

> liked to socialize. :^)  However, some folks also seemed disappointed 
> with the quality of some presentations.
>
> ask people to prepare in advance.  Benefits: people don't throw 
> something together at the last minute, we attract people that are 
> naturally more prepared, and we have time to interact via a review 
> process.
> 
> This is pretty well understood, for anyone that has done a refereed 
> paper.

+1

> We plan to reserve huge chunks of time, perhaps each afternoon after 
> the break, for lightning talks.

+1

> Personally, I think it is unfair to the 90 people in the audience that 
> paid good money to travel, to suffer through someone that waited 8-10 
> hours in advance to work on their presentation.  In some cases, the 
> speaker can pull it off.  In many cases, the presentation could have 
> used some refinement and practice.
> 
> Thus, give some arguments from the point of view of the 80, not the 1.  

+1

> We *have* to choose the presentations in advance.  We can't wait until 
> the last moment to choose presentations.  Last year, we were asked to 
> move up the deadline so chosen speakers could book tickets at a lower 
> fare.  In some cases, the speakers have to get their organizations to 
> book the tickets and that takes a while.
> 
> Quite obviously, we can't make an informed choice on a presentation 
> with a title and 50 word description, unless we know the person.  That 
> becomes unfair to the new people who haven't presented.

+1


If we quit dreaming about the "we're lonesome coder kings and we're also
so good at presenting things that we don't need to get prepared" theme,
which is IMHO a pure lie, we might get a chance to improve the quality
of europython. Never wondered why scientific conferences had a review
process ? Because it actually helps forcing wannabe nobel-prize winners 
into doing their homework *before* the conference and come with arguments
that can stand 5 min under public scrutiny. Well-run confrences, at least.
Being good at saying things in public does not mean you say interesting 
things and I would bet that people travelling to sweden have theaters 
with funny shows and plays closer to where they live. 

Let's focus on valuable well-prepared python content for talks, open up
space for tons of lightning presentations and if need be open a "I can
entertain you all with python jokes and poor content" track.

BTW, I've been trying to get slides well ahead of time for the Science
Track and the more interesting talks I had where almost always the one
that got ready first (and helping authors with questions and remarks
often increased quality too).

-- 
Nicolas Chauvat

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