[EuroPython] Python conference software

[Jacob Hallén]

fredagen den 27 januari 2006 09.36 skrev Jean-Marc Orliaguet:

> FYI, you missed the point.
> My comments were not about the tools; it was about commitment from
> participants.
>
> I have no suggestion whatsoever concerning the tools that are going to
> be used this year:
>
> Participants propose the solutions they like, and once a solution has
> been selected by a common agreement (as it was done on IRC during a
> meething in december las year), the contributors should get in
> "contribution mode", not in the "I-don't-like-the-software" mode or in
> the "I'm-going-to-evalute-the-workflow" mode.
>
> Organizing a conference is not about evaluating or selling software.

My comments were about my experiences from last year. They are of course 
subjective, but I think it was important for the organisers of this years 
conference to know what worked well, what problems I encountered and what 
sort of things they are expected to produce. Having these things show up as 
nasty surprises late in the process is not a good thing. For instance, we had 
to manually make invoices for all people who wanted one at Europython 2004. 
This turned out to be about 200 people and each invoice took about 5 minutes, 
adding up to about 16 hours of staff time at the conference.

Benedikt and the other organisers have to make a decision on what software to 
use. I think they should do so with as much information about the problem to 
solve as well as the alternatives they have in order to be able to make the 
best decision.

From a personal standpoint, my offer to put more work into the CAPS system in 
order to improve on what we had last year still stands, should the organisers 
decide that they want to use this solution. If they go down a different 
route, I will be happy to respond to questions, but I will not not put 
efforts into building another system to suit Europython.

Jacob Hallén