Mailman 3 June 2019 - Inpycon

Chat platform-Zulip for Pycon
by Aditi Prakash July 18, 2019

July 18, 2019

This year for PyCon India, we are planning to have a forum setup for attendees to interact. We are considering Zulip, an open-source chat platform similar to slack. Currently there's only PyCon India mailing list but this includes the organizers and not the attendees. The reason for having this in-place is to connect attendees and we believe it'll be especially useful when planning commute by pooling, accommodation, etc. Zulip allows users to create channels and have topics within channels, for example: "On Road Bangalore" could be a topic under #travel channel. Easy search, better organization of channels and topics. Further, new users can read history and the chat limit is not as bad as Slack. Additionally, we are planning to create a separate channel specifically for women attendees which is sort like community support amongst women. We will also include a channel for announcements that will be linked to PyCon India Twitter account. Any thoughts/suggestions on this are welcome!

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Tickets Open on 3rd June
by Vijay Kumar July 4, 2019

July 4, 2019

Hi Everyone, We are opening the conference tickets on 3rd June, with the ticket slabs provided below: * Early Bird: Rs. 1100 + GST * Regular: Rs. 1600 + GST * Late Bird: Rs. 2000 + GST * Student Tickets: Rs. 1000 + GST * Contributor Tickets: Rs. 5000 + GST Regards, Vijay

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CFP Count Down: 3 Days to Go
by Vijay Kumar June 28, 2019

June 28, 2019

Hi Everyone, CFP closes in 3 days! Let's put the weekend to good use. Shape up your proposal and submit it at https://in.pycon.org/2019/submit-a-proposal.html Regards, Vijay

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Conference Ticket Update
by Vijay Kumar June 26, 2019

June 26, 2019

Hi Everyone, This is a quick update on the conference tickets. Late Bird tickets are open, and there are only 150 tickets left. Regards, Vijay

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Reminder: PyCon India CFP Closes in 7 Days
by Vijay Kumar June 25, 2019

June 25, 2019

Hi Everyone, PyCon India CFP for talks and workshops is closing in 7 days! Hurry up, and submit your proposal at https://in.pycon.org/2019/submit-a-proposal.html For more details about PyCon India, please visit: https://in.pycon.org/ Regards, Vijay

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Inviting nominations for CFP reviewers
by Abhishek Yadav June 18, 2019

June 18, 2019

Hello friends, We need help with setting up a review panel for CFP evaluation. We have reached out to a few experts already, and it will great if you too can pitch in with suggestions. CFP reviewers shall be doing a technical review of the submitted talks, and will also be voting on them. The final list will be based on the aggregate of these votes. Any person with experience in one of the areas of Python usage (Machine Learning, Core-Python, Embedded Systems, Web development etc) will be a good reviewer. Involvement with the Indian Python community will also be good. We have listed out our expectations in more detail here - https://github.com/pythonindia/junction/wiki/CFP-Reviewer. You can use the following form to nominate a reviewer: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/18SG3jgAwyCcbZZdN-HLIWulk0XlzD5DPtz3bEDiz5K… Please limit nominations people who you know personally, who you can vouch for. You can nominate yourself too. Let us know if you have any questions or suggestions. Regards, Abhishek CFP Workgroup, PyCon India 2019

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[RFC] Abolish QA Time
by Vijay Kumar June 17, 2019

June 17, 2019

Hi Everyone, Talks at the conference are generally followed by a QA time. Unfortunately this not used correctly and many questions generally fall into the following categories. * Questions related to a specific project that questioner is working on. And the usual response is "it depends", "I have not used that framework", "need to know more about your project", etc. * Questions are sometimes completely off-topic, because the questioner did not understand what the speaker is talking about. * Questions that can be easily figured out from the related links / documentation. * "Stump the chump" questions, are asked to just prove that the questioner is more knowledge-able than the speaker. * Sometimes they hit the other end of the spectrum, and just try to score brownie points with an influential speaker. Sometimes the questions are genuine, and asks about something the speaker had missed out. But even with the genuine questions we have problems. * My observation is that even knowledge-able and experienced speakers stumble, because a coherent reply needs to be arrived at in real-time, in front of a large crowd. * The question, even though genuine might still not be useful for everyone in the hall. Finally, not many people in the audience feel comfortable asking questions during the QA time, and hence resort to questions offline. You can understand the problem better if you watch the last 5 minutes of the PyCon India 2018 videos which are available on YouTube. Overall the QA time generally results in the following * Stage time wasted due to not so useful questions, or even if the question is genuine, a not so coherent / useful response for all the audience. * Speakers are also forced to confront "Stump the Chump" questions. And not-so-experienced speakers might not be able to handle this well. * There is a hidden problem: many potential speakers might not submit a proposal because of having to face the QA time One solution is to abolish the QA time, and instead provide a space at the back of the hall where the speakers can be reached after the talk. The speakers can then have one-on-one discussions with the people who have questions. This anyway needs to be done, we are just pushing the 4 or 5 questions that will be asked during the QA time to this offline discussion, as well. This has been adopted at PyCascades, see https://www.papercall.io/pycascades-2019 Please note that the intention of this is not remove the responsibility, of taking questions, away from the speaker. It is just to provide a more conducive and friendly environment where meaningful and genuine discussions can happen. Please let me know your thoughts on this. Regards, Vijay

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CFP Closes in 15 Days
by Vijay Kumar June 17, 2019

June 17, 2019

Hi Everyone, Call for talk and workshop proposals is closing in 15 days. Please submit your proposal at the earliest at https://in.pycon.org/2019/submit-a-proposal.html Regards, Vijay

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Votes disabled on CFP website
by Abhishek Yadav June 13, 2019

June 13, 2019

Hello friends, We have disabled voting on proposals in the CFP website recently. And a public view of comments has also been turned off. We did this because quite a few people on Twitter pointed out [1] that this discourages new speakers from participating. We also agreed with the sentiment. Voting was anyway not of much use - we were planning not to use it in determining the outcomes. Let us know you thoughts on this. Regards, Abhishek [1]: https://twitter.com/Captain_Joannah/status/1134844061188284417

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Tickets are Live!
by Vijay Kumar June 12, 2019

June 12, 2019

Hi Everyone, Tickets for PyCon India 2019 are live at https://in.pycon.org/ Regards, Vijay

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