[Inpycon] Necessity of foreign delegates. Was Re: Notes from InPyCon planning meeting of local Pune Team

[Lakshmi Vyas]

> Anyways it seems we rely on the foreign delegate to provide an
> overall enthusiasm building keynote rather than some hardcore python
> elucidation.

Here are some thoughts:

1. 	Are there people in India that can open the conference with first hand 
	information / interesting tidbits about past, present or future of python?
2.	Can the person coming in do both? Open the keynote with a non technical
	but informative and interesting keynote and later give a super technical talk?


> From an expenditure review
> perspective (how many miles does a rupee go to promote python), I have
> a feeling that such an expenditure could be better suited to
> supporting the growth of python in India.


I think the primary goal of a conference is to disperse information and provide
interactions that would otherwise be improbable. I  think of the cost as a 
necessity rather than an expenditure. We are inviting a foreign delegate not 
because  they are foreign but because they are core python developers / community 
members.


Thanks
Lakshmi.

On 21-Feb-2011, at 10:21 AM, Dhananjay Nene wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 10:27 PM, Sreekanth S Rameshaiah
> <sree at mahiti.org> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On 19 February 2011 18:30, Noufal Ibrahim <noufal at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Sat, Feb 19 2011, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On Sat, 2011-02-19 at 11:34 +0530, Navin Kabra wrote:
>>>>> 3. Is a foreign speaker really necessary? We spend a lot of money, and
>>>>> maybe
>>>>> they don't have the star power that we think they have. Opinion was
>>>>> divided
>>>>> on this topic.
>>>> 
>>>> not really necessary unless the person is already in India.
>>> 
>>> I disagree. Details in another thread (Navin's mail which I forwarded to
>>> the list)
>>> 
>> Good to do if cost is shared through a grant as in last year.
>> -1 if we have to generate the entire cost.
>> - sree
>> 
> 
> Since I am new to broader discussions about pycon india, I took some
> point to ponder on the topic. I am not too sure how useful a foreign
> delegate is. Here's a quick summary.
> 
> a. It is unclear if seasoned pythonista's decision to attend will be
> influenced by the existence of a foreign delegate
> b. Part of the foreign delegate's fees are paid for by Pycon India
> whereas the local speakers don't have to, is a dualism that is hard to
> explain. Of course foreign delegates paying for themselves (or fully
> paid for by PSF should be fine).
> c. Anyways it seems we rely on the foreign delegate to provide an
> overall enthusiasm building keynote rather than some hardcore python
> elucidation. So, we don't seem to be wanting to go for some advanced
> python skills that we would otherwise find it hard to get from others
> in India. At the same time there are perhaps some topics that the
> foreign delegate could comment upon which are not otherwise not easily
> understood through at least the python user mailing lists and websites
> (as an eg. perhaps some insights into pypy VM)
> d. The opportunity cost of the expenditure. At 1L, we cold imagine
> sponsoring anywhere between 5-10 teams to work on a python summer of
> code during vacations in India (this is a new idea that came to my
> mind as I was thinking through the topic). From an expenditure review
> perspective (how many miles does a rupee go to promote python), I have
> a feeling that such an expenditure could be better suited to
> supporting the growth of python in India.
> 
> Again, I am new to this area, so I may not understand all the dynamics
> of how important it is to have a foreign delegate to rope in the local
> delegates. But this is my 2c (or 2paise).
> 
> Dhananjay
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