[Inpycon] Some thoughts on talks

[vijay]

too add to this.

   If speaker come and contact session chair about 5 min before and specify dependencies before would be really good as it does not become show stopper(lesson learnt from session Deployment to large server 
farms using Fabric and BitTorrent. ) .
   If speakers due to some emergency are not able to come it would be great if they inform organizing team so that they can plan to reschedule talk.
   
With Regards
Vijay


--- On Mon, 27/9/10, Anand Balachandran Pillai <abpillai at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Anand Balachandran Pillai <abpillai at gmail.com>
Subject: [Inpycon] Some thoughts on talks
To: "Mailing list for the PyCon India conference" <inpycon at python.org>
Date: Monday, 27 September, 2010, 5:37 PM

Conference is over, we did a decent-good job and people are generally
happy, except the odd tweeter here and there. So time to reminisce. 

I have (mentally) jotted down a few things I thought should improve 
regarding talks next year. Before I lose track of them and we all lapse


into lethargy (till June 2011 :-), let me document it here.

1. Call for CFP at least 3 months earlier. Pycon US does it
3 months in advance (Nov 2010 for March 2011 Pycon). So
in our case we should schedule this in early May for a Sep

conf. That gives us enough time to scrutinize the talks and
do a more thorough review.

2. Have multi-tiered review process: Last year we had almost
no review, this year we had a 4 member group review. I am

suggesting 2 tiered reviews next year on where we first have
a screening round where we actually drop talks before even
rating them (not based on consensus, but perhaps base on 
vote) followed by the second round where we rate the remaining

talks.

3. Number of talks - I took in quite a bit more than I could chew
this year, since well, I wanted to have as many talks as we 
could pack in. I see that it is not a very good strategy and we should

prefer quality over quantity from 2011. I am thinking like 6-7
45 min talks with 5 minute interval between each talk. So if
we have 3 halls, we can have up to 36 talks for 2 days - good
enough and more if we select the talks well. 


4. Interval between talks - We need buffer between talks which
we kind of learned the hard way in the last two days :) (A big thanks
to the talk co-ords Vijay, Ramki and Kunal). 5 minutes of buffer
seem fine and we should plan to wrap up by 5pm to leave

remaining 1-2 hours of sunlight for impromptu stuff. 

5. Lightning talks track - We need to prioritize lightning talks
and perhaps have a hall dedicated for lightning talks and
sprints that could follow from it. So if people feel bored or

want to have a change there is always this hall available.

6. Tutorial tracks - Maybe have a lab or class-room for a dedicated
tutorial track where people could sign up for tutorials on anything
ranging from 1-2 hours. 


7. Phone numbers - Finally this is a small thing which we missed 
in the CFP form, but came back to bite us in a big way when
a few speakers went absconding. We had no way to contact them
immediately and well, we somehow managed things with impromptu

discussions. So next year onwards, CFP forms should have
cell numbers for us to reach the speakers in case of emergencies.

Suggestions, brick-bats etc etc welcome. Please join in the discussion
if your Pycon hang-over is over :)


-- 
--Anand





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