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

[॥ स्वक्ष ॥]

On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 17:41, Anand Balachandran Pillai
<abpillai at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 7:05 PM, ॥ स्वक्ष ॥ <vid at svaksha.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 04:51, Dhananjay Nene <dhananjay.nene at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > a. It is unclear if seasoned pythonista's decision to attend will be
>> > influenced by the existence of a foreign delegate
>>
>> Sounds unfair to tag a delegate as "foreign" or count on their
>> attendance as the reason why Indians will attend. If that is the
>> measurement yardstick, do we have enough "Indian" pythonista's with
>> enough star credentials to pull in the crowds? The analogy (argument?)
>> seems meaningless.
>>
>>
>> > 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.
>>
>> Its not dualism and I agree with Noufal on this. There are many people
>> who would not be able to hear Raymond or Jacob or Ian <add your core
>> Python devel here> speak and this is a nice opportunity to listen to
>> them share their knowledge.
>>
>> Secondly, your "dualism" point fails as you dont have some facts
>> right. The PSF's grants (are hardly a sekrit, all the information is
>> available on their blogs and on the website) helps funds many people
>> (They dont discriminate on the basis of citizenship) for Pycon each
>> year. I had suggested a similar process for INpycon on multiple
>> occasions (last year a women's travel grant on the lines of
>> Euro-python) , but funds and sponsors were an issue. If anyone wants
>> to help kickstart this for INpycon you have a volunteer :)
>>
>>
>> > Of course foreign delegates paying for themselves (or fully
>> > paid for by PSF should be fine).
>>
>> Disagree, If they are invited by us, WE need to take care of the
>> hospitality aspects. Secondly, if your argument is only based on how
>> IPSS utilizes the funds it has collected -- well, in that case, IPSS
>> which holds the money "in trust" for INpycon should spend it for the
>> very reason it was setup, for/on the conference. Diverting funds for
>> other tasks, however noble they may be, isnt the core activity of
>> IPSS.
>>
>> > 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.
>>
>> -1 to diverting the INpycon/delegate fees collected for the
>> conference. It does not seem ethical at all. Rather, I would argue
>> that instead of expecting a non-profit like IPSS to do the heavy
>> lifting for them, companies that use python have a vested interest in
>> promoting the language and that financial gain is motivation enough
>> for them to consider investing on hiring and training employees, etc
>
> "Diverting" in what sense ? I think you are arguing against your own
> arguments which you made above.

Anand, again, are you replying to Dhananjay or to my mail, because
this is the second time you quote my mail (which was in favor of
getting a foreign speakers and opposing Dhananjay's suggestion to not
invite foreign speakers and use the money for other altruistic tasks
like spreading python). Not trimming the posts in your replies adds to
the misunderstanding, so I suggest you trim parts of the post you are
replying to and/or retain the OP's mail headers. It will cause less
thread drift and misunderstandings.


> This is not an ideal world, where we use the money we generate
> in the conference for purely "altruistic" activities such as giving
> training for students and the like. It is also an important activity going
> forward, but we started with the conference which is our main activity
> right now and it is only the right thing to "divert" any funds we generated
> from it last year towards doing it well this year. If that involves inviting
> a foreign delegate, it is part of the expenditure - the money is not
> going to anybody's pockets here.  We as a responsible society is
> fully entrusted to publish the statement of our accounts and make
> a clean breast of all our income and expenditure.
>
> It is kind of strange to argue that just because we are a community
> organized conference with average funds, we should be focusing
> only on talks by local people. Getting a foreign delegate to talk, if
> he is the right person, does attract interest and limelight to the
> conference and I think it is only the fair thing to do to the average
> student or programmer who is attending the conference, to expose
> him to some international Python talent. He would be only happy
> to get his money's worth for getting to meet such people right here
> in India.

Again, you are better off replying to Dhananjay, not me. In case you
didnt notice, I was on your side.


>
>
>>
>> ....
>>
>> On the topic of IPSS conducting SOC's, would it be a floss-based (like
>> GSOC and RedHat/Fedora) SOC, since the conference is about the python
>> language and not just Libre software. This is easier said than done
>> and unless this is discussed and clarified properly, I am strongly
>> against IPSS funds being used to (inadvertently) benefit a commercial
>> entity.
>>
>> --
>> vid ॥ http://svaksha.com ॥
>> _______________________________________________
>> Inpycon mailing list
>> Inpycon at python.org
>> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
>
>
>
> --
> --Anand

PLEASE can you trim your posts and avoid confusing me (and probably others).

-- 
vid ॥ http://svaksha.com ॥