[Inpycon] Minutes of meeting - 4th Oct, 2012 at Khosy

[Vaidik Kapoor]

These are some important points that you guys have covered there. I'd like
to present my on views on the some points and some additional suggestions
because I could not attend meetings in Bangalore since I live in New Delhi.

>  * Minutes of the meeting *
>
>    - Provide certificate to students/ volunteers. This may encourage
>    students to attend tutorials & talks which can be latter produced in
>    college for adjusting attendance of labs if required etc ...
>
>  Call for volunteers should happen very early to get as many volunteers as
possible. +1 for certificates. Also, consider having a volunteers list on
the event website. This way volunteers can show without certificates that
they were volunteering for the event.

>
>    - Send Posters to college in 2 months advance.
>    - Conduct Python workshop during college tech fest as part of
>    spreading awareness of Python through IPSS.
>
> Though this seems like a good way to excite and make students aware, it
gets really difficult to do when a lot of colleges are there in your city.
Instead, dedicated workshops can be organized in one central venue and can
be done multiple times. Also, the issue with doing events in colleges is
that you rely on the college and volunteers from that college to make the
arrangements, which many times are insufficient for a workshop because of
lack of experience.

>
>    - Clearly mention in posters, PyCon India is pure volunteer effort and
>    need volunteers.
>
> +1

>
>    - Shortlist all possible venues in bangalore and compare the price.
>    Venues can be private convention hall, 5 star hotel, College auditorium.
>
> Acoustics must be considered before selecting a venue. The classrooms at
Dharmaram were not as good acoustic-wise.

>
>    - Deadline for venue finalisation is January.
>    - Decide on the sponsor kit.
>    - All volunteers who are coordinating speakers should have all
>    speakers phone no, photo, twitter handle to contact them.
>    - First timers are not allowed to present tutorials.
>
> +1

Tutorials are a good way for people to learn and they attend them and
invest a lot of time in them. If the speakers are not good enough, then the
attendees feel that they are wasting time and money.

>
>    - Process for selecting speakers has to be strict. First short list
>    all speakers and provide two weeks of time for speakers to upload the
>    presentation and finalise the talk.
>
> +1

>
>    - Keep a separate volunteer to take care of lighting talks.
>     - During tutorial day it should be assumed INTERNET is not reliable.
>    Volunteers are supposed to handover few pen drives to speakers for
>    distributing materials.
>
> +1 There should be pen drives available before hand. But, Internet is
still a necessity and a good thing to have at a tech. conference like PyCon.

>
>    - Expectation from volunteer is high, volunteer cannot attend any
>    talks.
>    - Special ticket price for students at early bird ticket.
>    - If possible try to find Indian Keynote speaker, speaker needn't be
>    Python contributor for example PyCon US 2012 keynote speaker was Paul
>    Graham who is known for Y Combinator.
>
> +1

>
>    - If sponsors company strength is less than 20, 50% discount will be
>    given on sponsorship amount.
>    - There is no hard slab in number of gold and silver sponsors.
>    - Lanyards will have * only Python * logo.
>    - Hat or t-shirt will be given to volunteer to distinguish from
>    participants.
>
> In addition to all these points:

   - the website should be up and ready long before the event. For example,
   PyCon US 2013 website was live a couple of months after PyCon US 2012.
   - Type of talks is important. Focus of talks/sessions should not to have
   "another short tutorial" but to discuss concepts, usage, optimization,
   real-world applications, etc. Some tutorials are fine but the idea should
   not be to have tutorials in sessions.
   - *Startup Row* would be very beneficial for the conference. It will be
   amazing to have that next year onwards.

If I have more inputs, I will share on this thread.

Thanks,
Vaidik
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