[Pycon-openspaces] Open Spaces planning

Mon Jan 18 16:27:30 EST 2016

I like that idea Hobson!

I was just planning on using Tweetdeck since sending out each tweet manually at the right time would be really stressful but your idea sounds even better.

Let’s hear what Brandon and Ewa think about this :)
Anna
> Am 18.01.2016 um 22:21 schrieb Hobson Lane <hobsonlane at gmail.com>:
> 
> Thank you for sharing your thinking. I agree that tweeting from @python.org <http://python.org/> about all pycon events may not be good. I like your opt-in approach. I look forward to hearing what you come up with. 
> 
> You've got a new tool that wasn't available in Montreal, a tweet queuing bot. Even for tweets from @pycon_events, Anna and other organizers might enjoy having a twitter bot to allow them more time to get creative with the announcement text. They can review the open-spaces board whenever they walk by, and not have to worry about hitting the send button at the right time for each event. The "queue" of tweets could serve as the "checkmark" next to an open-space event, indicating that it has been reviewed and approved by Anna and the committee. It could even populate a dynamic list deep in the open-spaces page on python.org <http://python.org/>. Might be a nice way for committees to work together in a distributed, efficient, transparent way. But if organizers are more comfortable with pencil and paper, and thumbtacks, I can totally appreciate that too. There doesn't need to be an app for everything ;)
> 
> --Hobson
> (503) 974-6274 <tel:%28503%29%20974-6274>
> gh <https://github.com/hobson/> twtr <https://twitter.com/hobsonlane> li <https://www.linkedin.com/in/hobsonlane> g+ <http://plus.google.com/+HobsonLane/> so <http://stackoverflow.com/users/623735/hobs>
> On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 12:43 PM, Brandon Rhodes <pycon.brandon at gmail.com <mailto:pycon.brandon at gmail.com>> wrote:
> If we decide that these announcements will work best as an opt-in experience, where we point people at a second account like @pycon_open_spaces or @pycon_events or @pycon_reminders, then there might not be any need to spend time on automation. We would give the Open Spaces committee the credentials to tweet directly to that account, and 15 minutes before each hour (or whatever) when you checked the board to vet the upcoming slate of Open Spaces you'd write their topics into a quick tweet.
> 
> If instead we decide that these could be tweeted directly from the main @pycon account, and that the extra dozens of tweets wouldn't drive people to unfollow @pycon — remembering especially that most of our 15.1k followers won't be at the conference and would get zero benefit from these hourly tweets — then I'd still probably prefer to avoid a solution that copied tweet content from one account to another, and instead have @pycon simply retweet what the other account had just tweeted. That way people could avoid the noise by (if they know about the feature) turning off retweets without completely unfollowing @pycon.
> 
> But: given that only 3k of our 15k followers will be at the conference, I'm fairly unlikely to want us to be tweeting hourly events from @pycon. I'm really preferring something like @pycon_events or even @pycon_onsite as the channel for by-the-minute event updates that aren't really major (though it's fine for one-off announcements like canceled talks and 3–4 big events a day to tweet from @pycon, I think, that's totally expected) and if we just give the Open Spaces committee access to that account, then there won't be a need for an IFTTT-style copy of text from one stream of tweets to another.
> 
> But this is really a topic I've not thought about much. I'll go back later today and look over how the @pycon Twitter account was used during each of the three main conference days during Montréal 2015, and follow up here with further thoughts! 
> 
> On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 3:21 PM, Hobson Lane <hobsonlane at gmail.com <mailto:hobsonlane at gmail.com>> wrote:
> Hi Anna,
> 
> Who is responsible for composing and sending tweets? If they'd like, I can help the twitter organizer develop a twitter bot to queue up and tweet reminders from any twitter @account.
> 
> There are commercial webapps that can do that as well, like Buffer.com, but they aren't open source and aren't python ;) Of course a twitter bot could be used for any scheduled announcement (sessions, special events, etc), if desired. My colleagues and I have proposed a tutorial session on building a twitter scheduling bot, so this would not be much additional work. 
> 
> --Hobson
> 
> On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 10:39 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16 at gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16 at gmx.de>> wrote:
> That is a great idea, Brandon!
> 
>> Am 18.01.2016 um 19:31 schrieb Hobson Lane <hobsonlane at gmail.com <mailto:hobsonlane at gmail.com>>:
>> 
>> I think you might be right, Brandon. An opt-in push approach might be all that's needed. A link to an iCal and Coogle calendar item for each open space might be the easiest way to accomplish that opt-in "reminder" feature.
>> 
>> --Hobson
>> (503) 974-6274 <tel:%28503%29%20974-6274>
>> gh <https://github.com/hobson/> twtr <https://twitter.com/hobsonlane> li <https://www.linkedin.com/in/hobsonlane> g+ <http://plus.google.com/+HobsonLane/> so <http://stackoverflow.com/users/623735/hobs>
>> On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 10:07 AM, Brandon Rhodes <pycon.brandon at gmail.com <mailto:pycon.brandon at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> I suspect that open spaces are simply hard for people to keep up with because we do a “pull model” — people have to go walk up to the board and read all the little cards to see what is going on. I wonder what would happen if we, every hour 15 minutes before the start of the next slots, just tweeted a brief tweet like:
>> 
>> 3pm Open Spaces: Robotics! PyLadies organizers! New web frameworks! Astronomy!
>> 
>> The downside is that it would make our Twitter account very noisy. If there were a separate @pycon_open_spaces Twitter account that we advertised, I wonder how many people would follow it? Or maybe it should be @pycon_events or @pycon_alerts and we could also tweet “lightning talks in 15 minutes!” and “PyLadies auction starts at 7pm” and so forth? Or maybe the mobile app has an alerts channel that people could subscribe to, or a way that we could update Open Spaces 15 minutes before every hour so that they came up in everyone's mobile app?
>> 
>> Of course I might be crazy. But it feels like there should be a way for people to ask for Open Spaces notifications to be pushed their direction, instead of having to remember to go walk across the whole conference center and back to the Open Spaces board to see what is going on the next hour.
>> 
>> On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 1:01 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16 at gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16 at gmx.de>> wrote:
>> That’s an interesting thought. Thank you for explaining that to me, Hobson!
>> So I’m a bit torn. On the one hand I understand the issue and think polling might be a good idea, on the other hand the big advantage of the Open Spaces is that they are very „free“ and informal in a way, unlike talks, which are chosen based on what people would like to see so if we did a poll I’m afraid we might scare people away from Open Spaces or put some sort of pressure on them to offer what others want to see and not what they would like their Open Space to be about. In general I’m a fan of letting people do what they love. 
>> 
>> If we did the poll beforehand it would also be an issue that our list of topics wouldn’t be extensive because people tend to come up with topics at PyCon spontaneously. I wonder if we could put up a second board and somehow facilitate a poll onsite but that’s just a thought.
>> 
>> Maybe Kinga and Brandon can chime in. I’d be interested in their opinion on this.
>> 
>> Thank you!
>> Anna
>> 
>>> Am 18.01.2016 um 18:52 schrieb Hobson Lane <hobsonlane at gmail.com <mailto:hobsonlane at gmail.com>>:
>>> 
>>> Gotcha. Perhaps polling would still be a way to inform organizers about the interests of their audience. It's also a good way to inform attendees about open spaces and get their "buy-in" for the range of topics/activities offered. Some of the open spaces seemed lightly attended in past years. I know when I hosted an open space last year, I would have benefited from such a survey. Only one person showed up to my open space on neural nets. If I'd known the interest level was so low I might have adjusted my topic and activity suggestion a bit.
>>> 
>>> --Hobson
>>> 
>>> --Hobson
>>> (503) 974-6274 <tel:%28503%29%20974-6274>
>>> gh <https://github.com/hobson/> twtr <https://twitter.com/hobsonlane> li <https://www.linkedin.com/in/hobsonlane> g+ <http://plus.google.com/+HobsonLane/> so <http://stackoverflow.com/users/623735/hobs>
>>> On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 8:32 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16 at gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16 at gmx.de>> wrote:
>>> Thank you Hobson!
>>> 
>>> I just wanted to clarify what our job as the Open Space committee is to make sure we’re all on the same page. Our main job is to facilitate the Open Spaces, which means we make it possible for people to organize their own little Open Spaces by providing rooms, a sign up board, ideas for Open Spaces, general infrastructure, and promotion. Our job is not to organize each little Open Space ourselves. The PyCon attendees will pick a topic, pick a room and a time onsite themselves. Onsite our main job will be to make sure to put up the sign up board everyday, monitor the board and make sure the Open Space topics are CoC appropriate, document the topics, and be there in case of questions.
>>> 
>>> I hope this clarifies while voting on topics for example is not necessary as the people will sort of make that decision for themselves onsite :)
>>> 
>>> Have a good week everyone and please feel free to add new cards, assign yourselves to cards, etc.
>>> 
>>> Anna 
>>> 
>>>> Am 15.01.2016 um 21:46 schrieb Hobson Lane <hobsonlane at gmail.com <mailto:hobsonlane at gmail.com>>:
>>>> 
>>>> Thank you. I may not have been logging on or searching for boards correctly. I see it now, and I added a couple cards. Feel free to edit or delete anything I put up.
>>>> 
>>>> --Hobson
>>>> 
>>>> On Jan 15, 2016 6:02 AM, "Anna Ossowski" <ossanna16 at gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16 at gmx.de>> wrote:
>>>> Hi Hobson,
>>>> 
>>>> I must have added the wrong Hobson Lane (user name hobsonlane) the first time. That’s strange because I used your email address to find you. Anyway, just readded you under the right user name :)
>>>> 
>>>> Anna
>>>>> Am 15.01.2016 um 14:49 schrieb Hobson Lane <hobsonlane at gmail.com <mailto:hobsonlane at gmail.com>>:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hi Anna,
>>>>> 
>>>>> I cant find the Open Space trello board under my user name "hobs".  Could you re-add me?
>>>>> 
>>>>> --Hobson
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Jan 14, 2016 10:20 AM, "Anna Ossowski" <ossanna16 at gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16 at gmx.de>> wrote:
>>>>> Hello Hobson and Kinga,
>>>>> 
>>>>> I hope you’re both well!
>>>>> It’s the new year and PyCon is happening in just a few months. While our main work won’t start until closer to the conference, I just wanted to check in with both of you so we can start planning.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I just created a Trello board for us, which I added both of you to. If you didn’t get added for some reason, please let me know your Trello name and I’ll add you again. Trello is a great tool for planning and collaboration so I thought it would be useful for us.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I created 5 boards so far „To Do“, „In Progress“, „Done“, To Contact“, and „Ideas“. Please feel free to create new boards, add cards, or move cards around. I would also like to encourage you to assign yourself to tasks that you would like to tackle. I think the board names are pretty self-explanatory :) When you start working on a task, please just move it to the „In Progress“ board and when it’s done please move it to the „Done“ board.
>>>>> 
>>>>> My guess is that we should start working on things in March at the latest to have enough time to get everything done before PyCon starts at the end of May but there are things we can start preparing now so feel free to tackle tasks whenever you have time. The only thing we should wait with until closer to PyCon is contacting people. If we contact them too early people might forget about it.
>>>>> 
>>>>> If you have any questions or need anything, please feel free to contact me anytime :)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thank you!
>>>>> Anna
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Pycon-openspaces mailing list
>>>>> Pycon-openspaces at python.org <mailto:Pycon-openspaces at python.org>
>>>>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces <https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces>
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
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>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Brandon Rhodes
>> PyCon 2016 Conference Chair
>> pycon.brandon at gmail.com <mailto:pycon.brandon at gmail.com>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Brandon Rhodes
> PyCon 2016 Conference Chair
> pycon.brandon at gmail.com <mailto:pycon.brandon at gmail.com>

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