[Inpycon] PyCon India 2020 - The Road Ahead?

[Sayan Chowdhury]

>
> Putting effort into this depends on why PyCon India is being conducted
> in the first place. The "people physically getting together at a
> common place" adds a lot of value to the conference. Since that is
> indubitably not going to happen if we take the online route, then why
> are we putting in the effort for this?

"Hallway Track" is the unofficial part of the conference which all of
us look forward too.
And in no means, this can be replicated in the online one. Why? The
core of "Hallway Track" is fluidity and serendipity. Which I don't
think any of the online platform can replace.

But I've dug into platforms which can help us do that. Obviously, the
hallway track would be replaced by video/audio calls. The closest
match I've found is Hopin[1].

>
> 1. So that the consistent chain of PyCon India conferences that has
> been happening won't break?

It can be indirectly inferred, yes but A lot of people actually look
forward to PyCon India as a place to meet people, talk to people and
listen to wonderful talks. A year of cancellation means another year
of wait. Even if the conference is online, and if we can replicate the
hallway track in its minimalistic form it will a beneficial to a lot
of people. Making it online also increase the reach of the conference
with more people getting to attend the conference.

> 2. What do people get from an "online pycon india" happening that they
> won't be able to get otherwise? I mean that if the focus is the
> "content", then isn't really good content already available that
> people can consume online? What more would they gain?

This would apply to an offline conference as well. Content is indeed
available over the internet so there would be no point of having talks
in online/offline conference but this is not true. The reasons talks
happen:
- Content is scattered. Talks provided an excellent way to aggregate
this into one place. You get to know about new things, get an update
on projects,  trivia and more in one place. You spend a lesser amount
of time to cover more domain.
- Experience: A lot of time these talks provide an excellent way for
the presenter to present their experience, which is not usually
available over the internet. This is one of the ways new content is
created.
- Discussion: Talks provokes ideas and discussion. A good talk can
start a discussion around a topic and work around it. This does not
happen in a silo but happens quite often in the hallway tracks of a
conference.

This year one of our plans is to set up an editorial working group
whose sole responsibility is to find good speakers and topics they can
talk on. This is also in the lines of what Anuvrat had suggested as an
"Advanced Track" in one of the previous PyCon India 2020 emails.

>
> I don't mean this in a discouraging tone, but unless there is a proper
> tangible value that comes out of people attending a conference this
> way, again, "why" do it?

Not at all discouraging. I appreciate the questions which are the
point of the email thread.

>
> > We need to do budgeting for both the options and do some research if
> > we go for the online conference option. The plan is we will closely
> > monitor the situation and make the decision on which option to opt
> > for.
>
> I am not completely aware of the venue booking policies that these
> places have, but since things are in a flux as you've already pointed
> out, and also since no payments and bookings and other formalities
> have been made (or have they been made already?), why not relax the
> October dates as of now and keep it December or so?
>
> Obviously because this would give us more time (2 more months at
> least) to monitor the situation and then make bookings accordingly. A
> lot of conferences already seems to have made this decision around the
> globe.
>
> Do we have any other concerns that force us to stick strictly with the
> October dates? If there are, then maybe prioritize them based on which
> of them we can sacrifice considering this unexpected setback.

We are open to a reschedule. We even talked with the Sheraton hotel
where they said we can reschedule the conference up to 3 months but
that would still be a risky move. Depending on how things turn out we
might move dates to November or December. Under no circumstances, we
will move PyCon India 2020 into next year.

As of now, the first option is to have smaller offline conference, if
that fails then online.

[1] https://hopin.to/




--
Sayan Chowdhury <https://yudocaa.in/>
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