Pycon disappointment

[Pete Forde]

> I know what the argument for the results of Pycon 2008 will be: we
> needed the money. My answer: it's not worth it. If this is what you
> have to do to grow the conference, then don't. If the choice is
> between selling my experience to vendors and reducing the size of the
> conference, then cut the size of the conference. Keep the quality of
> my experience as the primary decision criteria, or I'll stop coming.

This commodification of "eyeballs" is happening in the Ruby community,
as well. 2008 seems to be the year of Ruby conferences, and both
organizers and attendees have been entirely complicit in the gradual
dilution of interesting, un-biased presentations.

As a result, many of the most innovative members in our community no
longer show up. This is a real shame.

My friends and I decided to stage a grassroots Ruby conference this
summer; it will have no paid sponsors for exactly this reason. We're
trying to change up the typical format as well: it's a single-track
event, no "keynotes", no schills for well-heeled interests. We're even
organizing activities for significant others traveling with conference
attendees so that everyone has a good time.

The response we've gotten to this approach has been curious; many
people totally get why these things are important, and the speaker
list reflects this. However, we've also had a lot of complaints that
our event is too expensive. In fact, they say that it should be free,
like a BarCamp. Just get a bunch of sponsors, and that will be the
ticket. We say bollocks to that.

http://rubyfringe.com/

I'm posting here because even though the Python and Ruby communities
are seen as being in some sort of competition, I personally believe
that we have more in common (and lots to learn from each other) than
we are credited for. For example, the popular Haml template engine is
white-space sensitive, and that's a direct nod towards Python syntax.

Thanks for your post, Bruce. You've given us a huge boost that we're
doing something right, here.