Mailman 3 March 2012 - Inpycon

PyCon 2012 Possible Dates
by Navin Kabra June 5, 2012

June 5, 2012

September 1st/2nd week is a good time for PyCon. The Fri-Sat-Sun in September this year are on 31-Aug/1-2-Sept, 7-8-9 Sept, and 14-15-16. Any of these dates are possible. After that, the ICC T20 World cup starts from 18 Sept onwards, and Ganesh Chaturthi starts from 19 Sept onwards. On 3-5 Sept, there is a "Cube Conference" happening in Pune ( http://www.thecubeconf.com/). This is the first time Cube is happening is Pune, so I have no idea of what kind of audience it will draw, and how much. But since is it not happening on a weekend, we needn't worry about it too much. There don't appear to be any other major religious holidays. No major exams for students in Pune that we are aware of. At this point, let use tentatively say that PyCon 2012 will be around the weekend of 8-9 Sept. Please spend some time checking for possible clashes. We would like to freeze the dates soon.

14 31

PyCon 2012: Venue?
by Navin Kabra March 18, 2012

March 18, 2012

Hi All, Any strong feelings about the venue for PyCon 2012. Basically, should we repeat the same venue or try for another one? The Pros and Cons for last year's venue (Symbiosis Vishwabhavan + Symbiosis Law College) are: Cons: - Infrastructure is a little old and inadequate - especially the power points - 2nd and 3rd hall are smaller than what we would ideally like (especially for tutorial days) Pros: - Free - Centrally Located - With Prof. Harshad Gune part of the PyCon organizing team, it becomes very easy to get things done in this venue. (This advantage is shared by a few other Symbiosis venues in Pune, but not all) - We know this venue - what works, what doesn't. Minimal energy will be spent on most venue related matters, and we can focus on things like speaker/talk quality, getting good wi-fi, sponsorships etc. For any other venue, there will be a new learning curve involved. Please respond to this thread with your thoughts. My personal feeling is that we should use the same venue - its the devil we know... navin.

14 23

PyCon 2012 Planning Meeting Notes - 12 March
by Navin Kabra March 13, 2012

March 13, 2012

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 5:15 PM, Navin Kabra <navin(a)smriti.com> wrote: > Hi All, > The Pune "local" team is meeting early next week to discuss details of > PyCon 2012, the most important agenda item being Venue finalization. We > will keep this mailing list updated with the outcome of our discussions. > We met yesterday. Dhananjay Nene, Harshad Gune, Harshad Oak, Saager Mhatre, Ramakrishna Reddy and Navin Kabra attended. Here are the topics we discussed: Venue: I've posted the relevant section of the discussion in the "PyCon 2012: Venue" thread Sponsorships: Dhananjay will post an update Dates: I've posted the relevant section of the discussion in new thread titled "PyCon 2012 Possible Dates." Please use that thread for all dates related discussion Budget and Ticket Pricing: See Notes Below Number of days and Format: See Notes Below Overall, I think we need to freeze the venue and the sponsorship document within the next few weeks, so please make it a point to respond to those topics in the appropriate threads. Budget and Ticket Pricing: - Last year, we charged Rs. 300 early bird (400 later) for the delegates. The per person variable cost (which includes food, T-shirt, doAttend commission, and some overheads) came to about Rs. 750. In the last few weeks leading up to the conference, our budget was barely covering our costs, and we were in the danger of losing money with each additional registration. Thus, we closed registrations a bit early, and also withdrew our plans for publicizing PyCon amongst Pune colleges. - We would prefer to not be in a similar situation. The cleanest solution is to recover the variable cost from delegates. This time, the variable costs will be slightly higher since we're likely to have a swag bag in addition to the T-shirt. - Hence, it is suggested that this time, we should probably have Rs. 400 early bird (500 later) for students and something like Rs. 1500 early bird (1750 later) for professionals. The total number of cheap tickets (Rs. 400/500 ones) should be capped at a number like 300 or 350, and after those are over, everyone has to buy the more expensive one. - Last year the number of students were probably around 200, but that's because we pulled back from doing student oriented publicity. This time we could substantially increase that number. - Should we charge for tutorials separately? Problems: Enforcement and monitoring would be too of an overhead. This will probably discourage students from attending the main conference. - When should online registrations close - so we have a good headcount? Number of days and format: - Should we have the same format as last year or change something? - Should it be just 2 days instead of 3 days - because attendance drops on Sunday? Last year we probably had a 15% - 20% drop in attendance on Sunday. - The cost also goes down if we have just 2 days. But maybe we should not cut anything in the conference just for cost reasons - we can easily increase our sponsorships to cover costs. - Should we have tutorials on Sunday instead of Friday? - Should we have an semi-independent workshop for Python beginners? This need not necessarily be "Pycon" branded but the intention is to increase the number of students and beginners who can attend Pycon and get something useful out of it. Should this be on Wed/Thu, so out-of-towners can attend, or should it be one or two weekends earlier so that people can attend on a weekend. The former will have low attendance due to it being during working days; the latter will be appropriate only for Pune local people. - Instead of 1 day of "tutorials" (which really turned out to be workshops) and 2 days of the main conference, should we instead split it into "Beginners" and "Advanced"? This will also allow us to split the venue (see detailed discussion in the "PyCon 2012: Venue" thread on this topic.) Thoughts?

6 10

Re: [Inpycon] Keynote speakers
by Dhruv Baldawa March 12, 2012

March 12, 2012

Also, Alex Martelli, "Über Tech Lead" for Google and also has written couple of books on Python. Yesterday, he also gave a talk on "Permission or Forgiveness ?". On Mar 9, 2012, at 7:33 AM, Noufal Ibrahim wrote: > Hello everyone, > I apologise for the rather late email. I'm going to go to the > PyCon in Santa Clara today and was planning to speak to a few people > about being keynote speakers for PyCon India. Nothing concrete and not a > complete invitiation but just to open a thread so that I can follow up > when I'm back in B'lore. > > The list of people I'm planning to approach (in roughly > decreasing order of preference are). > > - Armin R. : Flask > - David Beazley : SWIG, PLY > - Guido van Rossum : Python (although I remember him saying that he > doesn't want to travel) > - Steve Holden : PSF Chairman > - Jacob Kaplan Moss : Django > - Michael Foord : Unittest2, Mock, Iron Python > - Barry Warsaw : Second in command, core libs, mailman > - Holger Krekel : py.test, execnet, tox, pypy infrastructure. > - James Tauber : Pinax, Eldarion > - Zed Shaw : Lots of stuff. > > Any other suggestions who I can approach are welcome. I'm trying > to get people who speak well and who have done some work. The flight > costs are lesser if they're from Europe or, I think, Australia. > > Thanks! > > > > -- > ~noufal > http://nibrahim.net.in > > Everyone writes on the walls except me. -Said to be graffiti seen in > Pompeii > -- Dhruv Baldawa (http://www.dhruvb.com)

5 8

Keynote speakers
by Noufal Ibrahim March 9, 2012

March 9, 2012

Hello everyone, I apologise for the rather late email. I'm going to go to the PyCon in Santa Clara today and was planning to speak to a few people about being keynote speakers for PyCon India. Nothing concrete and not a complete invitiation but just to open a thread so that I can follow up when I'm back in B'lore. The list of people I'm planning to approach (in roughly decreasing order of preference are). - Armin R. : Flask - David Beazley : SWIG, PLY - Guido van Rossum : Python (although I remember him saying that he doesn't want to travel) - Steve Holden : PSF Chairman - Jacob Kaplan Moss : Django - Michael Foord : Unittest2, Mock, Iron Python - Barry Warsaw : Second in command, core libs, mailman - Holger Krekel : py.test, execnet, tox, pypy infrastructure. - James Tauber : Pinax, Eldarion - Zed Shaw : Lots of stuff. Any other suggestions who I can approach are welcome. I'm trying to get people who speak well and who have done some work. The flight costs are lesser if they're from Europe or, I think, Australia. Thanks! -- ~noufal http://nibrahim.net.in Everyone writes on the walls except me. -Said to be graffiti seen in Pompeii

2 1

PyCon 2012: Sponsorships Guidelines
by Navin Kabra March 6, 2012

March 6, 2012

Hi All, Do we want to make any changes to the way we do sponsorships for PyCon? I believe Dhananjay and Noufal have already indicated that they have a bunch of suggested changes in mind - can you please (re-)post your thoughts and that can serve as the starting point for the discussion. Others please jump in your thoughts. navin.

2 2