Pycon disappointment

[fumanchu]

On Mar 16, 7:18 am, a... at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) wrote:
> Bruce Eckel  <lists.ec... at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If the following seems unnecessarily harsh, it was even more harsh for
> > me to discover that the time and money I had spent to get to my
> > favorite conference had been sold to vendors, presenting me as a
> > captive audience they could pitch to.
>
> Ouch.  I'm probably one of the few organizers currently paying much
> attention to c.l.py -- because I'm also one of the few who's not at
> PyCon.  We debated this extensively before going ahead, and we decided
> it was worth an experiment.  If your feedback is at all representative,
> this won't happen again, I assure you.

Add me to the list, then, please. I heard from several people that the
entire first day was a bit wasted, that even the non-vendor talks on
Friday were rather dull and simple.

This is my third PyCon, and I've found a reasonably-sized cadre of
people who come for the hallway conversations plus a Bof or two,
having given up on hearing anything new, useful, or inspiring in the
talks. There are several people I know who would like to see a more
advanced academic track.

> What we were trying to do was to increase sponsorship to decrease
> the cost to attendees -- we have NO interest in pushing the
> commercialization of Python.

Can't fault you for that. But perhaps we're seeing the limit of what
that approach can provide.


Robert Brewer
fumanchu at aminus.org