[EuroPython] Work on Call for Participation for EuroPython 2015 has started

[John Pinner]

Hello Paul,

On 2 February 2014 14:24, Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> On Sunday 2. February 2014 02.09.04 Hynek Schlawack wrote:
>> >> It’s quite the contrary: the current organizers were criticized for
>> >> their current work they do and I tried to explain that romanticism about
>> >> a conference in 2007 isn’t helping, that it’s great to have at least
>> >> one big European Python conference, they are hard to do, and to the end:
>> >> let them do their thing.

<snips>

>> That are *completely* different concerns from what you're bringing up and I
>> find it highly irritating to be confronted with pot metaphors based on that
>> derailment.
>
> What's a "pot metaphor" here exactly? Why might someone sensibly advocate a
> limit on attendees without having some kind of "elitist" agenda? Oh, that's
> right, I already explained why: a $100/person loss on a thousand person
> conference is pretty convincing; maybe it really does have something to do
> with that after all.
>
> This kind of thing is what irritates me hugely about the so-called Python
> community and why, as I've explained to a few people before now, I've diverted
> a lot of my time to other initiatives instead. You have people who have made
> substantial investments of their own time and resources into establishing
> something that benefits others, and what you often get in response is sniping
> about some hidden agenda or how people could have done more or better.
>
> It's like the mainstream subculture around Python has made some kind of virtue
> out of getting people to work for free so that people can pretend to be those
> people's boss and think they have the right to demand things from them. This
> pervades the so-called community from top to bottom and in almost every
> regard. Whereas other initiatives and communities offer appreciation for any
> contribution, with a "thank you" for having done anything at all, the apparent
> norm in the Python scene is to tell people that they didn't do enough or that
> what they did was inferior to what should have been done, or that it wasn't
> licensed according to "community expectations" (where they get to sell your
> work in a binary and send you the bug reports), replacing "thank" with another
> word of choice, in effect.

I'm sorry, Paul, I agree with you on many things, but this is
something I don't recognise at all...
>
> Christian wrote that "ANY organization having volunteers work for them should
> be extremely humble for having anyone spend their spare time for them."

Yes.
>
> Well, without accusing any organisation of anything, I think the so-called
> community as a whole should re-evaluate how it treats people who offer their
> time and resources to benefit everyone else.

Yes. And I have no knowledge nor experience of the EPS treating its
volunteers badly, which I think was what started this thread : a
slightly emotional post from Christian based not on first-hand
experience, but on hearsay.

Best wishes,

John
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