[EuroPython] Extending talk submission time - for the whole or just for some tracks?

[Beatrice Fontaine]

On Mon, 2004-04-12 at 11:52, Heimo Laukkanen wrote:
> Hi ya all,
> 
> first of all apologies that I haven't been active orginiser - while others  
> have done great work on the website and IRL. Site looks like a big  
> improvement from the last year.

Thank you. Nice Easter greeting :)

> However looking at the talk database on the Zope track I noticed that  
> there was only two submissions. This reminds me of the last year, when I  
> had to use my personal emailing and Paul's charms to get people to write  
> on certain subjects and ask them to first of all suggest ideas to people  
> and then get them to be interested about doing talk about that subject.
> 
> I will do that again now - and work with Paul Everitt to squeeze some  
> magic out of his vast networks. However this means that Zope track would  
> need to accept talks a little bit longer, since it will also take some  
> time for people to respond... And I will be traveling in California for  
> the next two weeks so I will not have interaction time with people that  
> much.
> 
> How does the program look like for other tracks at the moment? Is  
> extending submission time something that would be good for the whole  
> conference - or are we the only ones that need more time to wake up the  
> troops?

I am responsible for the social skills track and I have three proposals,
up to now. I think that having an extended paper submission cuts both
ways, since many people wait to read the detailed programme to register
for the conference, quite understandably. IMHO, depending on your own
vision for the track, I think you should deal with this aspect the way
you best see fit. However, since we were 8 days late with the talk
database and then 8 days late with the participant registration, I guess
it is only fair to allow another 8 days for talk submissions where the
track chair feels it is required :)

I have one submission on free software and one on selling open source.
Following the nightmare that is going on in Brussels at the moment, I am
of more than half a mind to push the patent law aspect as part of the
social skills track, and these two would fit in extremely well, as far
as I am concerned. I think all of us could do with several large buckets
of awareness in this respect, especially the entrepreneurs amongst us
who don't have the benefit of a legal department. The issue is sort of
stuck between the business aspect and the social aspect, because it will
entail a lot of awareness raising and advocacy on top of discussing the
legal aspects as such. Currently, there is one proposal for a panel
discussion on this for the business track and, as expected, we will need
to make sure to intelligently split between the business track and the
social track - we may have to shove presentations back and forth between
those as a consequence, I suppose.

At least one half will be on social skills per se, for which there is
one cool submission and I offered myself as the magician's assistant for
it, and it will be more of the type tutorial/interactive training
session, as it has to be if we want it to be useful. So this part will
most probably take half a day, all in all.

More and the track will explode, I guess, unless we want to run it two
days.

Cheers

bea

-- 
bea at webwitches.com
"My agenda is so hidden that I can't find it myself". Me.