From facundobatista at gmail.com Sat Sep 19 20:01:41 2009 From: facundobatista at gmail.com (Facundo Batista) Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:01:41 -0300 Subject: [Conferences] PyCon Argentina 2009, finished! Message-ID: (disclaimer: there's a Spanish version of this mail in my blog [0]... If you read Spanish I encourage you to go there because not only it's better written, but also images and links are as they should be, not footnotes) Ok, after so much foreplay and expectations, we finally had PyCon Argentina 2009, the first Spanish-spoken Python National Conference. My idea here is not comment how the event was from an end user point of view, but try to transmit feelings, thoughts and ideas about the organizing/executing side. (image: http://www.taniquetil.com.ar/facundo/imgs/pyconar09-cierre.jpg) Event Format ------------ The event was during two days, morning and afternoon, with three tracks in parallel most of the time. We used three auditoriums with different capacities (the biggest with 300 seats). Presentations were of the following types: Talks: They happened in the three auditoriums, with national speakers mostly, always in Spanish. Also there were some cases with most of one speaker, like a panel. The assigned time was 40 minutes, plus 5 of Q&A. After each talk, we left 15 minutes for people to go to the bathroom or another auditorium. Lightning Talks: These are 5-minutes talks. Anybody can give one of these (people writes their names in a paper during both days), with no restrictions in the subjects. Normally you don't expect too much quality of these talks (because they're fast, and tend to be improvised), but having 10-12 different subjects in only one hour makes it valuable. For these talks, all people seat in the main auditorium. Plenaries: We had two plenary talks (in the main auditorium, with all the assistant public, the whole hour), that were given by two international invitees: Jacob Kaplan-Moss (creator of Django [1], one of the web frameworks most widely used in the world), and Collin Winter (Unladen Swallow [2] developer, a Google project that promises a Python 5 times faster than the actual one). (image: http://www.taniquetil.com.ar/facundo/imgs/pyconar09-muchagente.jpg) Team Organization ----------------- Python Argentina does not have any formal or informal structure, we're all peers and each one pushes the project that wants. In this particular project, I structured the working team according to a military hierarchic organization (the same used in the enterprises). Basically I was the General Coordinator of the event, had a second person of trust (one person that you fully trust, not only about which decisions he/she makes, but also how he/she execute them; in this case he was Alejandro Cura), a team of about 6-8 people, and a lot of more eventual collaborators, with more or less participation (helping in the conference days, or in different committees, etc.). The most important requirement for a successful participation in the organization, taking into account that we're all volunteers, is to comply with what promised, no matter if the task is big or trivial. If you say "I'll do it", *do it*. The kind of work that is done throughout the year is very different than the work done during the conference days. During the year the response time is a lot lower, you need to take decisions that are influent in the long term but can be discussed in several talks or meetings, etc. During the conference days, the decisions are taken and executed at the moment, and there's no time to doubt. Generally, the better work done during the year, the conference days will be smoother, with less surprises. (image: http://www.taniquetil.com.ar/facundo/imgs/pyconar09-azules.jpg) Risks ----- There are several important tasks that take a lot of time and bring risks to the conference organization: The place where the conference is done, and the services offered there. In our case the conference was hosted in a private University, to whom we payed for different concepts (internet, security, sound). We've been talking with them since April about all that was needed, but a lot of stuff happened too close to the conference date. In particular, the internet access was installed the previous afternoon. Luckily, we had the volunteer service of Buenos Aires Libre [3], organization that set up the WiFi access, which was excellent. Printing. Beyond the paper stuff that we printed or photocopied (ads, polls, etc), we had three big things to print: the program of the event (a 32 pages book, full color), the Python tutorials in Spanish (116 pages book), and some Canonical notebooks. The design of each thing takes a lot of time, and also takes time to print them. I saw in too many conferences the mistake of sending everything to print too close to the final date, and always there's something that is not ready for the conference. It's always important to speak with the printing people in advance, and involve them in the design, to minimize later surprises. Financial and economical aspects. Months before the conference we created three different budgets, that we'd execute one way or the other according to the funds raised later (and based on these budgets we defined the sponsors categories). Luckily we didn't have to knock any door to raise the money: all the sponsors were brought by people that is in Python Argentina (because they work in (or own) the companies that sponsored the event). There are two important points: one is that the budget must be designed in levels, to maximize the benefit for the conference if you can not raise all the money; the other is that you need to start collecting the money as soon as possible, because spending the money (say, execute the budget) is not trivial and takes longer than you may think. Technical infrastructure for the organization. There are several tools that we used for us organizers to work together. We had a wiki to keep everything annotated, a mail list as the main information exchange mechanism, and IRC for some non-physical meetings that we had (especially for the talk selection, where participated a lot of people that live in other cities). We also used a SVN repository to keep all the files, specially the web site files. For the web site of the event we used pycon-tech [4], a project thought for this kind of events. The team. This is one of the main risks, because if you don't get a group with people that tries to achieve the same goal, that wants to get together and work towards a common target, it may happen that the event is not well organized just because of the organizers themselves. It's important to understand that in a conference organized by volunteers, it may be people that starts in the organization and then quits, or that people may jump into the wagon later. And the team is one of the first things you need to define! This is why is critical that the General Coordinator of the event to have enough power in the community to have a team assembled and working together during all the months that take to prepare the event. Generally, is recommended to do what you know how to do, and ask help to (or hire) specialists in the cases where you don't have the needing knowledge or resources. For example, the event wifi was set up and operated by Buenos Aires Libre, the same team that handled the wireless network in Wikimania 2009. After all said, however, you may find that there are problems you can not prevent or mitigate: the first day of the conference the electricity went out in all the neighbor. Some talks continued in a dark room for a while, and then we all went to have lunch, and lights came two minutes before the afternoon session started... (image: http://www.taniquetil.com.ar/facundo/imgs/pyconar09-remera.jpg) Content ------- The content is determined by the plenaries and normal talks, because the lightning talks don't go through the decision of the organizing team. For the international invitees plenaries, normally you choose the invitee and give him/her total freedom about what to say. In our case, the selection was done together with PyCon Brazil, and it was amazingly well done. On the other hand, for the normal talks, a Call for Talks is done some months in advance, and after the presentation limit date, a committee gets together to discuss which talks will be chosen. This selection is based on the talk quality, and in the subjects that need to be represented during the conference. (imagen: http://www.taniquetil.com.ar/facundo/imgs/pyconar09-collinwinter.jpg) Social Aspects -------------- One point that you need to take care and pay attention in the conference is its social side. A National Conference is a very good opportunity for people to get together, see each other again after some time, exchange ideas and knowledge, etc. The evenings after each day of conference is a good moment for people to have dinner or some drinks together, and make this social encounter happen. In our case, we wanted to make this deeper by organizing an asado [5] on the Sunday after the conference, to which all speakers and organizers were invited, with their families. The goal here is to enjoy a relaxed day together, eat good meat (or vegetables!), have a glass of wine, talk, play some games, etc. (imagen: http://www.taniquetil.com.ar/facundo/imgs/pyconar09-asado.jpg) [0] http://www.taniquetil.com.ar/plog/post/1/425 [1] http://www.djangoproject.com/ [2] http://code.google.com/p/unladen-swallow/ [3] http://www.buenosaireslibre.org/ [4] https://pycon.coderanger.net/ [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asado -- . Facundo Blog: http://www.taniquetil.com.ar/plog/ PyAr: http://www.python.org/ar/ From noufal at gmail.com Sun Sep 20 18:00:13 2009 From: noufal at gmail.com (Noufal Ibrahim) Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:30:13 +0530 Subject: [Conferences] PyCon Argentina 2009, finished! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9963e56e0909200900x4293ff56l9a9459b16ee2a84a@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 11:31 PM, Facundo Batista wrote: > (disclaimer: there's a Spanish version of this mail in my blog [0]... > If you read Spanish I encourage you to go there because not only it's > better written, but also images and links are as they should be, not > footnotes) [..] Swell event Facundo. Congratulations! Our first PyCon in India is scheduled for the coming weekend. Once it's over, I hope to write something up on the event and post it up on my blog. -- ~noufal http://nibrahim.net.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From vid at svaksha.com Mon Sep 21 11:18:52 2009 From: vid at svaksha.com (vid) Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:03:52 +0545 Subject: [Conferences] PyCon Argentina 2009, finished! In-Reply-To: <9963e56e0909200900x4293ff56l9a9459b16ee2a84a@mail.gmail.com> References: <9963e56e0909200900x4293ff56l9a9459b16ee2a84a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <12470af00909210218w6c9b0807o37066f05c9232d3f@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 21:45, Noufal Ibrahim wrote: > > Our first PyCon in India is scheduled for the coming weekend. Once it's > over, I hope to write something up on the event and post it up on my blog. You can email the event writeup to : http://python-open-mike.posterous.com/ -- vid http://vid.svaksha.com || From mal at egenix.com Wed Sep 23 11:49:43 2009 From: mal at egenix.com (M.-A. Lemburg) Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:49:43 +0200 Subject: [Conferences] Sponsors and delegate contact info In-Reply-To: References: <9963e56e0908111108v5989fc1g25ffe92c859030d8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4AB9EF37.2060307@egenix.com> John Pinner wrote: >> A couple of the more experienced people tell me that this is a >> standard practice during most corporate conferences. I wanted to know >> if any of the other PyCon organisers faced such a situation and if >> they did, what was their course of action. >> > > We have not been asked for this at PyCon UK, nor at the EuroPythons with > which I've been involved. I think that we would refuse. There was a list of all conference participant names together with their email addresses in the EuroPython toad bag this year (and AFAIR also in the years before) - something I find very helpful as attendee, since you can then contact people at the conference based on this list. So at least for those sponsors who attended the conference it was in theory possible to put all those attendees on a contact list. I think this is standard practice for smaller conferences. Larger conferences only hand out a list of sponsors with their email addresses, so the situation is reversed ;-) Now, I don't know what the privacy rules are in India, but at least in Germany, you wouldn't be allowed to give out details such as email addresses to third parties without explicit consent of the attendees. -- Marc-Andre Lemburg eGenix.com Professional Python Services directly from the Source (#1, Sep 23 2009) >>> Python/Zope Consulting and Support ... http://www.egenix.com/ >>> mxODBC.Zope.Database.Adapter ... http://zope.egenix.com/ >>> mxODBC, mxDateTime, mxTextTools ... http://python.egenix.com/ ________________________________________________________________________ ::: Try our new mxODBC.Connect Python Database Interface for free ! :::: eGenix.com Software, Skills and Services GmbH Pastor-Loeh-Str.48 D-40764 Langenfeld, Germany. CEO Dipl.-Math. Marc-Andre Lemburg Registered at Amtsgericht Duesseldorf: HRB 46611 http://www.egenix.com/company/contact/