[Chicago] selecting talks Re: [PyCON-Organizers] Talk slot durations (was: FWD: Re: Pycon disappointment)

[John Melesky]

On Mar 23, 2008, at 12:12 PM, Atul Varma wrote:
> My (admittedly off-the-cuff) impetus for limiting people was to  
> provide some mechanism for actually choosing between lots of really  
> good proposals; for instance, if every single PyCon talk happened to  
> get a "thumbs up" from every single community member, this wouldn't  
> actually help in determining what talks to accept--this isn't really  
> a problem with BARcamp AFAIK because there's always room for more  
> talks, but it is a problem with PyCon.

That sort of outcome is theoretically possible, but profoundly unlikely.

Additionally, some management of the results would be necessary by the  
actual organizers (if only to finalize the schedule), which would  
mediate any such pathological behavior on the part of the community.


> The only real potential downside I see here is if only a certain  
> segment of the Python community ends up voting--for instance, if  
> only veteran Pythonistas vote, then the conference will be largely  
> skewed towards them.

I agree this is the big caution, especially if you limit voters to  
those who have actually registered for the conference. I'm not sure  
what the solution is to that problem.

On the flip side, though, the current committee system suffers from  
that same issue.


-johnnnnnn