[Inpycon] Registration system [was] Budget estimates

[Noufal Ibrahim]

All the issues you've pointed out will not be there if we outsource. I
don't get this whole purity thing. The last conference was majorly
sponsored by a ruby shop and we distributed ruby apps with the swag
kits. Did that detract from the conference? If the registration is
done by an external company that uses Ruby, will that prevent us all
from having a good conference? I say no.

On 4/21/10, Kenneth Gonsalves <lawgon at au-kbc.org> wrote:
> On Wednesday 21 Apr 2010 11:19:59 am Noufal Ibrahim wrote:
>> I'm strongly -1 for the fossconf app. I don't mean to diss Kenneth or
>> the work he and Theju have done on it but I think it's more trouble
>> than it's worth.
>
> btw, it was further refined for mukt.in (wasn't used fully as the conference
> got postponed). But all the hardcoded stuff was removed and the guy using it
> managed to put in his css in a couple of days.
>
>>
>> It took approximately 40 days last year to get the app into a running
>> condition.
>
> it took 40 days for the app to be approved - it was in running condition
> from
> day 1. Yes there were bugs - bugs are everywhere in os apps - look at
> melange
> or Dougn's app for pycon.
>
>> This delayed our publicity efforts since we didn't have a
>> face on the web. The CSS issue was even worse since the person who
>> Sree assigned for it was unavailable and it got stretched out too
>> much.
>
> it was clearly pointed out that the app was meant for organising the
> conference and was not a front end - I had repeatedly requested for a static
> page frontend like we had in fossconf Chennai. When no one came to host it,
> the static pages and blog were added to it. Sree had undertaken to do the
> css
> and vanished without a trace - so I had to bolt something together. Anyway
> the
> css issue is in the past - all that has been decoupled and if anyone comes
> forward to contribute css, it is trivial to change the look and feel.
>>
>> The app crashed multiple times (for whatever reason) after it was
>> deployed and there were critical periods (like the day before the
>> conf.) when it was down and Kenneth was travelling.
>
> yes it did crash - my tiny vps is used to 10-15 hits a day and apache just
> froze with hundreds of hits a minute. At present I have a big fat hetzner
> server at my disposal - I had also repeatedly requested someone to provide a
> mirror - but no one came forward.
>
>> During the
>> scheduling, we had trouble with various things like slots (I'm not
>> sure about the specific issues but Ponnuswamy and Devyan who did that
>> had some trouble).
>
> they did. Mainly because they worked on it at the last minute. But there was
> no major hassle. Ponnuswamy is also a co-author of the software and so I
> assumed he knew his way around the scheduling module since he had written it
> and used it previously.
>>
>> All we need on a site is a few informational pages (static HTML is
>> fine for this). Maybe a blog (we can either use static HTML or some
>> off the shelf blogging thing like wordpress - No, I'm not puritan
>> about Python).
>
> fossconf has this - only thing we called the blog 'posts'. fairly easy to
> rename it as blog. I am a puritan about python and many other things. I feel
> that a python conference should use python.
>
>> The registration/money collecting part we'll outsource
>> to doattend rather than waste time on getting it right.
>
> why? if the conference has money to burn, why not donate it to developing
> python software - we could hire a css/html guy and give him a percentage
> which
> would be far less than what doattend will get.
>
>> Software
>> projects have a way of expanding to suck up time and we don't have
>> that.
>
> I am a strong believer in automating things - I had this miserable
> experience
> of coordinating society formation through a wiki, and the pages are still a
> mess. If anyone thinks he can organise a major event through a wiki, he is
> welcome to try - I personally would not wish that task on my worst enemy.
>>
>> A 'poor' website doesn't make a poor conference. If there are people
>> who are willing to spend time on some nice designs, more power to them
>> and we can use those designs but I'm strongly in favour of throwing
>> together a few simple 2 column pages that outline the schedules etc.
>> and getting this out of the way. Not more than a day or two. Stock
>> designs are fine.
>
> stock designs work fine with fossconf also
>>
>> The success/lack thereof of the conference is decided by the talks and
>> human interactions during the actual two days of the event and not the
>> quality of the software running the website. Let's just get this out
>> of the way and move on with the meat of the project.
>>
>
> yes
>
> --
> regards
> Kenneth Gonsalves
> Senior Associate
> NRC-FOSS
> http://certificate.nrcfoss.au-kbc.org.in
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-- 
~noufal
http://nibrahim.net.in