[Inpycon] Everybody Pays Policy

Thu Sep 26 11:59:07 CEST 2013

+1 Kiran has said it better than I could.
+1 to Everyone pays.
+100 to the fact almost all money from sponsors should be redirected
towards sponsoring non-Pycon or allied activities such as running satellite
events in other cities, sponsoring Python Month (or similar activities) or
running code sprints (talk is cheap, show us the code). The conference
should not depend on the sponsor for the long-term health of the community.

I would add to the two points that Kiran has made :

1. Value

See the amount of value that you get from being a participant, speaker or
volunteer. You connect with other like-minded people and work with them.
You learn something new or ways of doing things better (something that can
be monetized by doing a job better or raising your skills or just the joy
of hacking). Now factor in the fact that you will be eating food at the
venue (breakfast + lunch + tea).

As a speaker, you get to talk about what you learn and generally the
off-stage conversations are good. You also get recognition from the
community and  put it on your resume. Also there used to be a
speaker/volunteer party (not sure if this happened this year since I was
neither).

If you think that INR 800 is not good enough for it (honestly even students
can afford this - the cost of two movies or two meals in a good
restaurant), maybe you should not come to the event. Don't think of it as a
cost, think of it as vote from a community member for things worth doing.

2. Management overheads

All the sane opinions that I have heard on this thread are from people who
have actually run an event. All of the people running the events have lives
and day-jobs. Time spent on the event is time away from job / family / kids
/ other hobbies / side projects. So time is at a premium. By saying that
you should have special rules for categories of people (which require human
interface to deal with), you are dissing them by implicitly assuming that
their time is less valuable than the participants. It is actually the other
way round. The only difference is that these people are motivated to make a
difference.

IMNSHO, there should be just two categories of tickets
1. Early geek tickets - So that money is paid upfront to fund things that
need upfront capex such as video equipment / RFID cards / Venue booking
cost etc. This should be capped at some %age of venue capacity (such as
30%). Maybe these have a small discount say 10%.
2. Normal tickets - Rest of the tickets.

No refunds but allow people to transfer tickets amongst themselves without
involvement from conf organisers. No on-the-spot registration. Pay only by
card / Debit card etc. This might seem controversial but in today day and
age it is possible to find someone with a card who can pay for you.

Keep it Simple Stupid.

-- Vinayak

On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 1:04 PM, Kiran Jonnalagadda <jace at pobox.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 11:32 AM, atul jha <koolhead17 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> An event with focus on Indian crowd should be handled in Indian way.
>>
>
> I actually think PyCon charging everyone including speakers is a good
> idea. We're mixing up multiple concerns here, so let me try to separate
> them:
>
> *1. The notion that students need subsidy because they can't afford
> commercial rates.*
>
> Any conference the size of PyCon India charging < Rs 2000 per day is not
> at a commercial rate. It's not even at a sustainable rate. For comparison,
> here are some commercially priced events:
>
> Agile India 2014: Rs 10,000 *per day*
> http://booking.agilefaqs.com/agile-india-2014
>
> UX India 2013: Rs 10,000
> http://2013.ux-india.org/pricedetails
>
> JSConf Asia in Manila: PHP 19,500, SGD 560, ~INR 28,000
> http://2013.jsconf.asia/
> The Phillippine peso used to be 1:1 with the Indian rupee until a couple
> years ago and the purchasing power parity is the same, so it's the
> equivalent of spending 28k on a ticket in India.
>
> With prices like these, subsidies make sense. PyCon India tickets sold at
> Rs 800 and complaining about that is honestly shameful. Nobody who has the
> time and inclination to attend PyCon India is so poor they can't afford Rs
> 800 on a ticket. None of these people will complain that the restaurant
> they had lunch at did not sponsor it.
>
> *2. Speakers and crew are paying with their time and effort, so taking
> their cash is charging them extra.*
>
> This is a valid point, but a double edged sword. When you give someone
> free entry and a speaker badge, you mark them as special and above the
> crowd. The speaker-audience divide encourages formality, where speakers are
> announced in advance, their names and talk blurbs are used to sell tickets,
> and schedules are fixed and adhered to.
>
> What you lose is spontaneity. You can't have an open session where anyone
> may speak up because the audience will see it as a gap in the schedule, not
> an opportunity for them to step up and speak (unless it's a single track
> event and there is nowhere else to go for that period).
>
> You can't fix this by selecting flash talks in advance because those
> speakers will expect free tickets too, and free tickets are not free for
> the organizers. The per-head costs still have to be paid for.
>
> Spontaneity is good for a community. Class divisions are not.
>
> *3. PyCon has sponsor money anyway, so why should individuals pay?*
>
> First of all, all money isn't the same. Sponsor money is not a donation.
> Sponsors expect their pound of flesh. If you want to see what a
> sponsor-paid event looks like, look at Directi's HTTPX conference:
>
> http://bigrockhttpx.net/
> http://bigrockhttpx.net/mumbai
> http://bigrockhttpx.net/delhi
>
> These events were free for attendees, but it's incredibly hard to tell
> which session is led by an independent community member and which by a
> sponsor representative. For what's labeled as a "definite event", is there
> anything on the schedule that looks like someone who's pushing the
> boundaries and is there to reveal their work to the world? (Not dissing
> Directi, it is their first attempt and they'll no doubt improve with each
> iteration.)
>
> PyCon has an independent voice because it doesn't have to worry about
> sponsor expectations (one of: recruitment, selling their product, or
> finding new clients). When you give up participant money and become
> dependent on sponsor money, you also make the transition from serving
> participants to instead selling participants to sponsors -- and nobody is
> interested in students who have neither money nor well developed skills, so
> a sponsor-subsidised student-friendly event is actually self-defeating.
>
> PyCon's independence depends on people paying for their tickets. There is
> no way around this.
>
> Second, there is sponsor money coming in anyway, from sponsors who manage
> to benefit without demanding too much. IMHO, this money should not be spent
> on PyCon itself. It should be directed towards supporting the growth of the
> Python community *beyond* PyCon.
>
> *4. Management overheads.*
>
> The more twists you add to the story, the more overhead you'll have in
> explaining this to people. Is your ticket free or not? If you buy a ticket
> and your talk is selected, will your ticket be refunded or not? If you
> didn't buy a ticket and didn't get selected, can you get a discount code to
> buy at the early bird price since you proposed to speak back then? What if
> you spoke in an open session? Do you get a refund? Carrying cash is
> difficult, can you pay by card at the venue? Can PyCon also cover your
> travel and stay since you are a poor student?
>
> Answering questions is a full-time job, sometimes even requiring two
> people. Simple rules go a long way towards eliminating such hidden costs.
>
> My 2b.
>
> Kiran
>
> --
> Kiran Jonnalagadda
> http://jace.zaiki.in
> http://hasgeek.com
>
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