[Inpycon] Venue Finalization {was} PyCon 2010 - Let's get started

[Kenneth Gonsalves]

On Wednesday 07 Apr 2010 9:20:27 pm Ramdas S wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 8:22 PM, Kenneth Gonsalves <lawgon at au-kbc.org> wrote:
> > On Wednesday 07 Apr 2010 1:49:35 pm Shashwat Anand wrote:
> > > +1 for hotel, it'll give the conference a professional look
> >
> > and a professional bill. I am all for a non-elite college which will
> > provide
> > audience and volunteers. Places like IISC and IIT, even the flies and
> > mosquitoes will turn up their noses at us. A good private college or
> > university will
> > 1. give halls for free
> > 2. some infrastructure too
> > 3. staff will help coordinate
> > 4. droves of student volunteers
> > 5. audience
> > 6. transport
> > and
> > 7. sometimes even a share of accomodation too
> 
> I am not disagreeing with you. However some of us feel that eliteness and
> brand matters. And I cannot also disagree with them
> 

yes. this is the core of the debate. What is the conference for? I must 
confess that I am probably an odd one out here as I do not come from the IT 
industry, so what I feel is not necessarily what the majority wants. I feel 
that we are in the formative years of a good python community here, and we 
need to focus on community building through the conference for a few years at 
least. At present we are thin on the ground with maybe a dozen or so active 
members. And these are all good people in the field so there is no guarrantee 
that the big G will not swoop down and transport them elsewhere. Although 
corporate and institutional support is great, the core should always, in my 
opinion be volunteers from the community. As the discussion on rubyconf shows, 
if a company chips in with large funds and people - a great looking 
conference. And if the company changes direction? no conference. I am looking 
for something sustainable - a conference every year. Even if smaller, more low 
key. As long as each year is better than the last. I do not think we can ever 
reach the stage of java, ruby and other conferences which are apparently 
primarily run by multinationals.

I had mentioned that even pycon had 15% newbie oriented talks (whether newbies 
actually attended is another matter). Last year we had two conferences. One 
for people who knew nothing about python (and there were around 100 of them) 
and the other for the geeks.

Just a few randomn thoughts ...
-- 
regards
Kenneth Gonsalves
Senior Associate
NRC-FOSS
http://certificate.nrcfoss.au-kbc.org.in