[Inpycon] Necessity of foreign delegates. Was Re: Notes from InPyCon planning meeting of local Pune Team

[Harshad Oak]

>From my experience, I would say that a foreign face definitely helps fill
seats & provide an overall stature to the event. Also irrespective of how
the session goes, such sessions tend to get good ratings.

However
a) As you have said, the dualism on covering/not covering expenses is hard
to explain
b) The software profession in India is now vibrant & mature enough to not
have to always rely on foreign inputs.
c) IMHO it is the responsibility of major Indian conferences like Pycon to
create & nurture technology stars in India rather than try & bask in
reflected glory.

So IMHO while we should welcome foreign speakers, we do not need to go out
of our way to get them.

Regards,
Harshad

>> First mail on the list. Pleased to be a part of the Pycon team.
>> Sorry about my silence on the lists, have had too much on hand... But I
am more or less following the discussions.


On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 10:21 AM, Dhananjay Nene
<dhananjay.nene at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 10:27 PM, Sreekanth S Rameshaiah
> <sree at mahiti.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 19 February 2011 18:30, Noufal Ibrahim <noufal at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Sat, Feb 19 2011, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:
> >>
> >> > On Sat, 2011-02-19 at 11:34 +0530, Navin Kabra wrote:
> >> >> 3. Is a foreign speaker really necessary? We spend a lot of money,
> and
> >> >> maybe
> >> >> they don't have the star power that we think they have. Opinion was
> >> >> divided
> >> >> on this topic.
> >> >
> >> > not really necessary unless the person is already in India.
> >>
> >> I disagree. Details in another thread (Navin's mail which I forwarded to
> >> the list)
> >>
> > Good to do if cost is shared through a grant as in last year.
> > -1 if we have to generate the entire cost.
> > - sree
> >
>
> Since I am new to broader discussions about pycon india, I took some
> point to ponder on the topic. I am not too sure how useful a foreign
> delegate is. Here's a quick summary.
>
> a. It is unclear if seasoned pythonista's decision to attend will be
> influenced by the existence of a foreign delegate
> b. Part of the foreign delegate's fees are paid for by Pycon India
> whereas the local speakers don't have to, is a dualism that is hard to
> explain. Of course foreign delegates paying for themselves (or fully
> paid for by PSF should be fine).
> c. Anyways it seems we rely on the foreign delegate to provide an
> overall enthusiasm building keynote rather than some hardcore python
> elucidation. So, we don't seem to be wanting to go for some advanced
> python skills that we would otherwise find it hard to get from others
> in India. At the same time there are perhaps some topics that the
> foreign delegate could comment upon which are not otherwise not easily
> understood through at least the python user mailing lists and websites
> (as an eg. perhaps some insights into pypy VM)
> d. The opportunity cost of the expenditure. At 1L, we cold imagine
> sponsoring anywhere between 5-10 teams to work on a python summer of
> code during vacations in India (this is a new idea that came to my
> mind as I was thinking through the topic). From an expenditure review
> perspective (how many miles does a rupee go to promote python), I have
> a feeling that such an expenditure could be better suited to
> supporting the growth of python in India.
>
> Again, I am new to this area, so I may not understand all the dynamics
> of how important it is to have a foreign delegate to rope in the local
> delegates. But this is my 2c (or 2paise).
>
> Dhananjay
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