Pycon disappointment

[atom.anderson at gmail.com]

Okay!

I just read this entire thread to be caught up.  I am a first time
PyCon-goer (as my previous post states).  Because I have nothing to
compare this year's experience to, I'll give it to you as I saw it.
None of this is intended as a rant, (except maybe the lightning talk
section;)

Gripes
------

Numero Uno:  The Lightning Talks.

The best lightning talk I saw was the one where the guy's code didn't
work and he couldn't believe it or simply move on with his
presentation, it was hilarious but I felt bad for the guy.

I have to be honest, I had heard GREAT things about the lightning
talks and I went to the session expecting to hear something great, or
at least feel the same sense of community I felt when discussing
python in education (i'm a student) or its use in the industry.  I
went with a friend who also attended the conference from my school and
sat down expectantly.

I noticed the guy was trying to set up a powerproint (or OOo or
whatever) presentation and I simply couldnt believe it.  A powerpoint
presentation?  Pictures?  text?  preparation?  That doesn't sound like
lightning at all.  It sounds like, "slow-tning" talks.  Methodically
prepared sales-pitch presentations on johnny q. coder's latest
commercial triumph.  I thought these talks were spur of the moment,
community-delivered and off the cuff?

In my opinion, i don't believe that lightning talks should include the
option of using presentation software, maybe thats too restrictive,
but it seems to me that we'd be treated to much more grassroots or
user-given talks rather than sponsor-given ones.

I could just be ranting.


Number Two:  Presenters should be required to post their slides on the
web site / schedule before they are permitted to present.

We want 'em, they've got 'em, and I was in more than one session where
simply having uploaded them to the PyCon schedule would have saved the
presenters bacon when it came time for their laptop to die or
something else.

I realize that these presentations are fluid and change (often the
night before!) but a failsafe like this wouldn't hurt anyone.

Number Three:  Too much code, not enough concept.

Presenters this one's for you.  I can't count the number of
presentations I attended where the presenter would click through three
slides of pycode just to show us a two or three-line snippet that
illustrated their point.  Worse yet, it was often at the bottom of the
screen so no one but the front row could see it.  This goes for text
two.  I saw some great presentations as well, and they had limited
text on each slide.  The last thing your audience wants to see is a
slide drenched in text of any kind.

You only have 30 minutes (or less).  Show us brief couplets of code
for syntax sake.  We don't care about code, we care about the
concept.  If it were an hour lecture you could go through pages of
code and itd be great, but when we can't even read the whole slide
before you move on then its too much.

Number Four:  What's a BOF?

Noob here.  My first pycon and I didnt know the terminology.  Shocker
huh?  Heh, well i figured it out into the first day, but still didn't
quite get the concept.  Around day two or three i started attending
these and learned just how cool they are.

With the RAPID growth pycon has shown over the last few years, perhaps
a little session at the beginning to help the newcomers or a
"Terminology" page in the handbook would be helpful?


Praise
------

As a student attending his first pycon, i must say it was AWESOME.
Depending on the sessions i chose to attend, i learned all KINDS of
useful stuff.  Pyglet, Stackless (i'm willing to give it a chance
despite the mediocre presentation), RE, pysight and more.

Coming from a small school out west, the experience of visiting a
convention where a community actually existed was an incredible
experience.  That was probably the best part of the conference was
seeing that there truly was a programming community and meeting other
like-minded people and being able to finally discuss things of
programming importance with them.  I guess thats what we had hoped to
see more of in the lightning talks.

We enjoyed the EXPO as well and a couple of our graduating attendees
have nabbed phone interviews with companies that were represented
there.

I am definitely planning on returning to pycon next year, if only to
rub shoulders with other python programmers again and *hopefully*
attend a conference that has learned from any mistakes this year and
become an even better event for 2009.

adam