[Pycon-openspaces] Open Spaces 2017 Kick Off!

[Brandon Rhodes]

Thank you for all of this work, Anna and Trey — I am very happy, again for
this year, to have an excited and engaged Open Spaces team — this will only
be the second year ever that we have Chairs of Open Spaces, and I look
forward to seeing yet another year of the spaces becoming ever more
valuable to the conference!

I am in San Francisco this week visiting my employer (Dropbox), which
leaves me a bit bandwidth-limited for answering emails, but I look forward
to diving into these ideas late this weekend when I am home again snuggled
up with the cats, and can respond in detail.

Quick question: the staff list currently on the 2017 site (which maybe was
just cut and pasted from last year?) lists Hobson as the co-chair. I assume
that he should now be removed, and that I should add Trey (hi, Trey!) in
that slot for this year?

(If so: then, as the Conference Chair, I am happy to welcome to your new
official volunteer role!)

On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 10:32 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16 at gmx.de> wrote:

> Hello everyone and Happy New Year!
>
> The beginning of the new year means that PyCon is only a little over 4
> months away and it’s time to kick off Open Spaces planning.
>
> First of all I would like to welcome our new Open Spaces co-chair, Trey
> Hunner, again. Trey, I’m so happy to have you on board :)
>
> During our weekly call Trey and I brainstormed a few ideas on how to
> improve the Open Spaces this year. I think we did a pretty great job with
> the Open Spaces last year, they were successful and everything went
> smoothly, but there is always room for improvements. I wanted to summarize
> our ideas here for everyone to read. I also added everything to our Open
> Spaces Trello board.
> Trey, Hobson, and Brandon, you all should have access to the Trello board.
> Ewa, please let me know if you’d like to be added as well.
> Everyone is of course welcome to add their own ideas to the Trello board.
>
> Here’s a summary of what Trey and I discussed:
>
> What worked last year:
>
> * We should add a section about the Open Spaces to the PyCon website.
> There was a section last year but it looks like this hasn’t been
> transferred to this year’s website.
>
> * We should continue tweeting about the Open Spaces using #pyconopenspace.
> Taking a picture of the board a few times day and tweeting it out for
> attendees to see would also be a good idea.
>
> * We should write another blog post about the Open Spaces and maybe try to
> have it added to some popular Python newsletters to gain more visibility.
>
>
> Ideas/To Discuss:
>
> * How can we make the Open Spaces board more visible? The board last year
> was beautiful following the PyCon color scheme but it might have been too
> easy to walk by/not visible enough. Can we make it more visible by getting
> the board printed in brighter colors? Other ideas?
>
> * It might be a good idea to add a small column to the printed hand-out
> schedule indicating the Open Spaces. Attendees could then go ahead and mark
> their schedule with an “X” for the times they are planning on attending an
> Open Space.
>
> * Can we add a column about the Open Spaces to Guidebook? This might be
> useful to make attendees aware of the Open Spaces. We could also add a
> simple section to Guidebook explaining what Open Spaces are and how to
> “sign up”.
>
> * We could ask the registration desk workers to make people aware of the
> Open Spaces board when they register. The board is right next to the
> registration desk.
>
> * In general it might be useful to write a short script for registration
> desk workers indicating what information to forward to attendees,
> specifically things that may not be as obvious like the hallway track, what
> to do in the evenings, PyLadies auction, Open Spaces, etc. This may not be
> possible doing busy times but at least when time allows.
>
> * Can we keep the Open Spaces going during sprints? We could maybe add a
> column to the sprints board letting people add cards for Open Spaces. Maybe
> there is an extra room available. If not we could do it “pick your own
> location”-style.
>
> * We could create a short slideshow targeted at people who are attending
> PyCon for the first time and send it to meetup organizers to be presented
> at their meetups before PyCon. The slide show could include everything
> first time attendees may not be aware of like the Open Spaces, PyLadies
> auction, Education Summit, hallway track, evening activities, etc.
> (Side note: DjangoCon US this year had a 1 hour event for first time
> DjangoCon attendees which took place the afternoon before the talk part of
> the conference started. It was very successful and well received by
> attendees. It was comparable to the introduction to sprints workshop at
> PyCon. It may be worth considering doing something like this at PyCon as
> well.)
>
> I would love to hear your thoughts on all of those ideas and welcome you
> to share your own ideas as well.
>
> I look forward to working with all of you again!
>
> Warm regards,
> Anna
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> You are appreciated.
> You are enough.
> You matter.
> You are not alone.
>
>
>
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>



-- 
Brandon Rhodes
PyCon 2016 Conference Chair
pycon.brandon at gmail.com
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