[Inpycon] Hosting PyCon India 2022

[Joinal Ahmed]

Can we have smaller in-person conf in some cities as well?


On Wed, 13 Apr 2022 at 12:26 PM, Chandan Kumar <raukadah at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello Everyone,
>
> 2022 is here so we would like to open the stage for new teams to come
> forward and pitch for PyCon India 2022.
>
> We would also like to share the learning we had from hosting two
> editions of PyCon India online so that we could discuss within
> the community to decide on what format of conference the 2022 edition
> could be.
>
> *2020*
> The first year of online edition. Soon after we started to plan the
> conference, the lockdowns were put in place to control the spread of
> the virus.
> We had a hard time gauging the seriousness of the virus, and if we
> should continue planning an offline conference or the online one.
>
> The platforms were not mature enough and were still in the
> implementation phases during the early months.
> Only around August, the platform seems to be mature enough and we
> could decide on the platform.
> With just a month left for the conference, the team worked round the
> clock to get the sponsor onboard, build designs for the platform,
> selecting the best talks, mentoring the speakers for the new-age of
> conferences and trying to build the best experience for the attendees.
>
> Thanks for all the good words, all the hard work really paid off.
>
> *2021*
> - In 2020, we bought the one-year subscription for Hopin in a way that
> we could accommodate the 2021 conference too if possible.
>
> - During PyCon India 2020, we realized giving the sponsors the value
> for money was a very difficult task.
>   You would need to give sponsors ideas on how to engage with the
> crowd on an online platform.
>   The Majority of the audience in an online platform are listeners,
> and the sponsors need to come up with innovative ideas for the
> audience to interact with them.
>   We have been having a good long-standing relationship with our
> sponsors. Due to this reason we decided to not have sponsors for the
> online editions
>   and it would be better to reach out to them when we are back doing
> offline conferences.
>
> - People were tired of staying online. The screen time had increased
> drastically over the pandemic and after almost two years of online
> activities,
>    people were having screen fatigue and were also tired of online
> events & meetups. CFP and the Tickets took a huge hit.
>   Given the lack of sponsors, to make things even we had a minimum
> number of tickets to be sold but we had a very hard time achieving it.
>
> - The second wave of COVID-19 was very tough on the volunteers. The
> volunteers team had a hard time concentrating on the tasks with the
> situation around them.
>   This merely a volunteer task, we asked folks to take health and
> family first. The team went quite lean during this period.
>
> - I would say almost all the members of the team suffered Online
> Fatigue, which could be highly attributed to collaborating online.
>
> Though we had all the learnings from 2020, the second year felt
> somewhat tougher than the first. It was all because of the volunteers
> that made PyCon India 2021 possible.
>
> COVID-19 is still very much around, and new variants and new waves are
> still making headlines.
> Even though states had relaxed norms, the future is still far from normal.
> So I would like folks to discuss, based on the learnings of 2020 and
> 2021, how we want to move ahead with the 2022 edition of PyCon India.
>
> Here are the few options which we thought of:
> - Have a full-scale event.
> - Have a Hybrid conference(with the primary conference being offline,
> but having a online presence for folks to join and not travel)
> - Have a small-scale event.
> - Hold until everything is back to normal
>
> We urge the community to discuss this topic. If any new team wants to
> lead PyCon India 2022, please come ahead with your suggestions and
> proposals.
> The 2020 & 2021 PyCon India team would be happy to guide.
>
> Stay safe and continue wearing a mask!
>
> With Regards,
>
> Sayan Chowdhury & Chandan Kumar
> (On behalf of PyCon India 2020 & PyCon India 2021 team)
> _______________________________________________
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
> Mailing list guidelines :
> http://www.shakthimaan.com/downloads/glv/presentations/mailing-list-etiquette.pdf
>
-- 
Thanks
Joinal Ahmed
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.python.org/pipermail/inpycon/attachments/20220413/d5852679/attachment-0001.html>