[Inpycon] Open spaces & Lightning Talks

[Jaseem Abid]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2014 at 2:12 PM, Shrayas rajagopal <shrayasr at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I was watching talks from 2014 Pycon and there is a lightning talk[1]
> where Greg of the aosabook fame talks about how they want people to come
> together in an open space and work on something. I feel that we should make
> way from great discussions like those.
>
> Last year, I do remember that we had open spaces but they were tucked away
> in some corner of the place and it didn't attract too much attention
> (correct me if I am wrong)
>
> What I feel is this time, we should bring more (way more) focus to Open
> spaces and Lighting Talks. It is a great way for people to connect, do
> things together and learn SO much more.
>


There are a few good things worth mentioning about unconferences/open table
discussions/hack spaces.

1. A lot of people (including me) still go to conferences and attend no
talks
   other than the keynote. Either they are there to socialize/hire and an
open
   space is perfect for that. Hacking on something interesting in your own
pace
   with a few similar minded people is a lot more interesting than an
average
   talk. It leads to a lot more interaction among attendees.

2. You can always learn from watching good folks work. We tried Debian
packaging
   at last foss.in and it went really well. I remember a vegetable seller
by day
   keenly observing, asking a million questions and towards the end of the
day
   managing to package a small gem. Those moments give you the feeling that
the
   conference actually have some real world value. Such level of
interaction is
   just not possible in a talk. Learning with a small group is awesome.

3. A lot of folks have ideas they want to share, but its not possible to
make it
   into a polished 30-60m talk. I could talk about interesting ways we use
ZMQ @
   Ideadevice or a 10m demo about the awesome things you can do with
decorators.
   Someone could show me an interesting refactoring technique. Its too hard
to
   make something like this into a talk, but it adds value to a lot of
   not-so-beginner folks. Unconferences/open tables are perfect for that.
I've
   learned quite a bit like that.

Generally all you need is a good wifi and lot of open space for things like
this
to happen. I can help if anything is required of me.



>
> What do y'all feel ?
>
> /Shrayas
>
> [1]
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSLvERZQSok&list=PLLj6w0Thbv02lEXIDVO46kotA_tv_8_us#t=1311
>
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>


-- 
Regards,

Jaseem Abid
github.com/jaseemabid
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