[Inpycon] Venue Finalization {was} PyCon 2010 - Let's get started

[Noufal Ibrahim]

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 7:15 AM, Kenneth Gonsalves <lawgon at au-kbc.org> wrote:[..]
> yes. this is the core of the debate. What is the conference for? I must
> confess that I am probably an odd one out here as I do not come from the IT
> industry, so what I feel is not necessarily what the majority wants. I feel
> that we are in the formative years of a good python community here, and we
> need to focus on community building through the conference for a few years at
> least. At present we are thin on the ground with maybe a dozen or so active
> members. And these are all good people in the field so there is no guarrantee
> that the big G will not swoop down and transport them elsewhere. Although
> corporate and institutional support is great, the core should always, in my
> opinion be volunteers from the community. As the discussion on rubyconf shows,
> if a company chips in with large funds and people - a great looking
> conference. And if the company changes direction? no conference. I am looking
> for something sustainable - a conference every year. Even if smaller, more low
> key. As long as each year is better than the last. I do not think we can ever
> reach the stage of java, ruby and other conferences which are apparently
> primarily run by multinationals.

I couldn't agree with you more. I don't want a corporate conference. I
want a community one and this was my only issue with the way RubyConf
was held. In all other respects, I thought it was excellent.

However, I would like the conference to improve over the years and for
corporates (ie. where the money is) to show more interest and invest
in it while we retain control of the overall direction and look/feel
of the event. With this in mind, I'd want the event to be bigger and
better than last time. The hotel idea was just something I threw off
the top of my head. The main things I want this time are (as listed on
the page).
 - International speakers (I've spoken to a couple who are interested
if we can cover their travel costs).
 - Professional A/V
 - Higher quality talks (more technical)
 - Good wifi
 - Dedicated sessions for sprints and 'non talk' events.

Let's go about this the data intensive way. Let's come up with a
budget and see what we can do. What do you feel?

[..]


-- 
~noufal
http://nibrahim.net.in