Venue suggestion for PyCon India 2015
Any suggestion for Venue bigger than NIHMANS around 1500 members capacity with good public transportation connectivity ? -- Thanks, Vijay
hyderabad On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 11:33 AM, vijay kumar <vnbang2003@gmail.com> wrote:
Any suggestion for Venue bigger than NIHMANS around 1500 members capacity with good public transportation connectivity ?
-- Thanks, Vijay
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Ahmedabad On 7 Oct 2014 12:11, "Divya Sanghi" <divyasanghi145@gmail.com> wrote:
hyderabad
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 11:33 AM, vijay kumar <vnbang2003@gmail.com> wrote:
Any suggestion for Venue bigger than NIHMANS around 1500 members capacity with good public transportation connectivity ?
-- Thanks, Vijay
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While I'd love to have the conference move out to places other than Bangalore, it's a sad fact that there's not enough of activity or community in any of the other cities to host a conference of this size. If you're interested in moving PyCon India to your city, please try to gather people together and conduct a small event there. That will familiarise you with issues while running a large event. Then send an email here and we can work out how to do it there. Thanks. On Wed, Oct 15 2014, Jaysinh shukla wrote:
Ahmedabad On 7 Oct 2014 12:11, "Divya Sanghi" <divyasanghi145@gmail.com> wrote:
hyderabad
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 11:33 AM, vijay kumar <vnbang2003@gmail.com> wrote:
Any suggestion for Venue bigger than NIHMANS around 1500 members capacity with good public transportation connectivity ?
-- Thanks, Vijay
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-- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in
On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:22 AM, Noufal Ibrahim KV <noufal@nibrahim.net.in> wrote:
While I'd love to have the conference move out to places other than Bangalore, it's a sad fact that there's not enough of activity or community in any of the other cities to host a conference of this size.
Mumbai has probably had more regular python meetups last year then bangalore. Coupled with scipy being hosted every year at IITB. I stay in Bangalore now and don't volunteer in mumpy. Neither am I saying Mumbai should get a chance to host it. It's for the volunteers of mumpy to decide and speak up.
If you're interested in moving PyCon India to your city, please try to gather people together and conduct a small event there. That will familiarise you with issues while running a large event. Then send an email here and we can work out how to do it there.
Thanks.
On Wed, Oct 15 2014, Jaysinh shukla wrote:
Ahmedabad On 7 Oct 2014 12:11, "Divya Sanghi" <divyasanghi145@gmail.com> wrote:
hyderabad
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 11:33 AM, vijay kumar <vnbang2003@gmail.com> wrote:
Any suggestion for Venue bigger than NIHMANS around 1500 members capacity with good public transportation connectivity ?
-- Thanks, Vijay
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* - Any suggestion for Venue bigger than NIHMANS around 1500 members capacity with good public transportation connectivity ? - Vijay * First of all a good thread to kick things off. It was my first time that I attended Pycon India and the experience was truly amazing and NOT to forget the quality of food!! My take is that NIMHANS is perfect for Pycon but I am guessing seating capacity is the issue we can surely check out the following : [http://goo.gl/vHmpyN] : Also one of my friend suggested the following [White Orchid Convention Center in Hebbal]. I have been to this convention center and it's quite spacious. @Jaysinh Shukla I think it's better if we would stick to Bangalore for the next year too. And there are number of reason(s) for the same. Firstly, this year I saw Pycon was extremely well organised reason being volunteers and other people involved are accustomed to Bengaluru. But don't take me wrong if anybody wants to suggest any other city he/she is welcome to do so provided the activity graph related to event(s) related to Python is quite high, pre-run up events etc. p.s This is my personal opinion.
How about a smaller space with capacity for 600-700 people max? A more focused Pycon that isn't trying to be everything for everyone with 1500 people :) I vote for staying at Nimhans but improving the quality of the event for its core audience. Let beginner level sessions and training happen via python express throughout the year. Quite honestly, I'm not sure I will attend if we have 1500 next year :) On Oct 7, 2014 11:34 AM, "vijay kumar" <vnbang2003@gmail.com> wrote:
Any suggestion for Venue bigger than NIHMANS around 1500 members capacity with good public transportation connectivity ?
-- Thanks, Vijay
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On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 2:40 PM, Arvi Krishnaswamy <arvi@alumni.iastate.edu> wrote:
How about a smaller space with capacity for 600-700 people max? A more focused Pycon that isn't trying to be everything for everyone with 1500 people :) I vote for staying at Nimhans but improving the quality of the event for its core audience. Let beginner level sessions and training happen via python express throughout the year. Quite honestly, I'm not sure I will attend if we have 1500 next year :)
am -1 for not having beginners level sessions. I personally think PyCon India should continue with all three level beginners, intermediate and Advance. This is how PyCon India has grown and would like to continue to see same. Just Fyi: This year we had more 60 % first timer.
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, Kavine s wrote:
pycon should b open to all :)
It is. Anyone can buy a ticket. The question on what the focus should be - "Everything for everyone", a project which, in my opinion, is doomed or "Awesome for some people", which, depending on the "some people", will be more useful and a greater achievement. [...] -- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, vijay kumar wrote:
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 2:40 PM, Arvi Krishnaswamy <arvi@alumni.iastate.edu> wrote:
How about a smaller space with capacity for 600-700 people max? A more focused Pycon that isn't trying to be everything for everyone with 1500 people :) I vote for staying at Nimhans but improving the quality of the event for its core audience. Let beginner level sessions and training happen via python express throughout the year. Quite honestly, I'm not sure I will attend if we have 1500 next year :)
am -1 for not having beginners level sessions. I personally think PyCon India should continue with all three level beginners, intermediate and Advance. This is how PyCon India has grown and would like to continue to see same. Just Fyi: This year we had more 60 % first timer.
I'm not particular about the size of the event. If I could sacrifice attendance for talk quality, I'd do it. The main complaint about PyCon India (since the maiden event) has been talk quality. We're aiming to be all things for all people and that doesn't work out. While I think Arvi's work with the program committee has been superb, the effect was limited because we *wanted* to dilute the quality of the talks to satisfy newbies. Now that Python express is there, I'm generally in favour of increasing year round workshops and user group meetings for newbies and making the conference more high end. No more "Introduction to X" style talks which you can easily pick up from a website or a tutorial. The workshops can be introductory but I'm also in favour of lengthening them and reducing the number so that you'll have a few deep workshops instead of lots of shallow ones. Even the talks, I'm completely okay with making it a single track event with only a small number of high quality talks. The kind of talks I'd like to see are - Scaling Django to X users - How we did it at "Awesome startup". - Handling large scale distributed systems in pure python - an adventure with gevent. - Interpreter hacks to sandbox code execution - Stripping down Python to run on a limited memory embedded device. - Why we rewrote a production scale Python app in Go and how we did it. - Reducing technical debt. in large flask projects. - Why the GIL might not be a problem. Things like that where people have actually had experience in dealing with the nitty gritty of solving hard problems and talk about their experiences. These are usually small talks followed by long QA about people experiencing similar problems. If we try to be everything for everyone, we'll end up being nothing. If we announce that PyCon India is for experienced, serious Python developers and live upto the announcement, intermediate and even some beginner people will actually learn something new and improve themselves. Advanced people will have a forum to discuss real problems rather than an audience with 60% first timers. My main concern is that there are more newbies than experienced folk. There are lots of outlets for newbies to learn things. Tutorials on the web, user group meetups, tutorials, classes, python express workshops etc. For advanced people though, there are almost no outlets. I'm in favour of making PyCon India a high quality event. Even by sacrificing number of talks and audience size. Quality over Quantity. [...] -- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in
I'm not particular about the size of the event. If I could sacrifice attendance for talk quality, I'd do it.
The main complaint about PyCon India (since the maiden event) has been talk quality. We're aiming to be all things for all people and that doesn't work out. While I think Arvi's work with the program committee has been superb, the effect was limited because we *wanted* to dilute the quality of the talks to satisfy newbies.
-1 i don't agree
I think name one person in not correct , Program committee was not lead by Arvi for sure. I feel bad to see individual name coming like this more often. We can take offline if more explanation is needed.
If we try to be everything for everyone, we'll end up being nothing. If we announce that PyCon India is for experienced, serious Python developers and live upto the announcement, intermediate and even some beginner people will actually learn something new and improve themselves. Advanced people will have a forum to discuss real problems rather than an audience with 60% first timers.
My main concern is that there are more newbies than experienced folk. There are lots of outlets for newbies to learn things. Tutorials on the web, user group meetups, tutorials, classes, python express workshops etc. For advanced people though, there are almost no outlets. I'm in favour of making PyCon India a high quality event. Even by sacrificing number of talks and audience size. Quality over Quantity.
Do we really have so much advance talk submissions ?
I still think we should have two track beginners and intermediate/advances which solve the problems. In future once our advance talk submission increase we can rethink.
If I'm not wrong the talk was chosen as per the upvotes on the funnel. Which clearly shows the demand and supply model. We can try dedicated track for advance, in this way we might get advance topic proposal. On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 3:53 PM, vijay kumar <vnbang2003@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm not particular about the size of the event. If I could sacrifice attendance for talk quality, I'd do it.
The main complaint about PyCon India (since the maiden event) has been talk quality. We're aiming to be all things for all people and that doesn't work out. While I think Arvi's work with the program committee has been superb, the effect was limited because we *wanted* to dilute the quality of the talks to satisfy newbies.
-1 i don't agree
I think name one person in not correct , Program committee was not lead by Arvi for sure. I feel bad to see individual name coming like this more often. We can take offline if more explanation is needed.
If we try to be everything for everyone, we'll end up being nothing. If we announce that PyCon India is for experienced, serious Python developers and live upto the announcement, intermediate and even some beginner people will actually learn something new and improve themselves. Advanced people will have a forum to discuss real problems rather than an audience with 60% first timers.
My main concern is that there are more newbies than experienced folk. There are lots of outlets for newbies to learn things. Tutorials on the web, user group meetups, tutorials, classes, python express workshops etc. For advanced people though, there are almost no outlets. I'm in favour of making PyCon India a high quality event. Even by sacrificing number of talks and audience size. Quality over Quantity.
Do we really have so much advance talk submissions ?
I still think we should have two track beginners and intermediate/advances which solve the problems. In future once our advance talk submission increase we can rethink.
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On Tue, Oct 07 2014, Mukesh Yadav wrote:
If I'm not wrong the talk was chosen as per the upvotes on the funnel. Which clearly shows the demand and supply model.
Not completely. The upvotes were a small factor in the selection as far as I know. Upvotes from the general public can be gamed and are not really reliable anyway. You'll just get the "most popular" talks rather than "the best" and, if the conference is marketed to a newbie crowd, the popular talks will be the simpler "intro to <topic>" kinds.
We can try dedicated track for advance, in this way we might get advance topic proposal.
We do have a Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced drop down while submitting a talk. So people do explicitly say who they think they're talk caters to. [...] -- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in
Do we really have so much advance talk submissions ?
We won't attract any advanced talk submissions because people who do that kind of thing see PyCon India as a large gathering of newbies with very basic talks. I personally wouldn't submit a talk about anything advanced if I knew that most of the audience were first timers. Why would I? If I knew that the people who were attending are experienced, I'd be willing to put stuff out in front of them to solicit feedback and have interesting discussions. If most of the audience won't understand what I'm saying, why should I submit a talk at all? I know some friends who didn't submit a talk on distributed systems for ,atleast partially, this reason.
I still think we should have two track beginners and intermediate/advances which solve the problems. In future once our advance talk submission increase we can rethink.
Guidelines like - No first time speakers - No talks on topics that you've not personally worked on for a period of time. etc. will reduce the number of talks drastically filter it down to a small pool of high quality talks. I don't agree with your reasoning. If we keep it open like this, the talk quality will dwindle and we'll get more and more low quality talks which we'll filter from. We'll get "the best of the bad" and that'll be the maximum we ever reach. I'm for raising the bar so that submissions are good. In any case, we've gone by the "everything for everyone" approach for 5 years now. I'm saying, let's try the other route and see if it works better. If yes, we'll stick to it, if no, we'll come back to the current approach. No gain without experiment. I'm strident about this because apart from the talk quality, everything is good at the conference. This is the only thing I've heard big complaints about and this, in my opinion, is the way to fix it. I'm not intransingent about this and am perfectly amenable to being argued out of it. I'd just like discussion. I think there must be atleast a few people who agree with my point of view. [...] -- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in
In any case, we've gone by the "everything for everyone" approach for 5 years now. I'm saying, let's try the other route and see if it works better. If yes, we'll stick to it, if no, we'll come back to the current approach. No gain without experiment.
I'm strident about this because apart from the talk quality, everything is good at the conference. This is the only thing I've heard big complaints about and this, in my opinion, is the way to fix it.
I'm not intransingent about this and am perfectly amenable to being argued out of it. I'd just like discussion. I think there must be atleast a few people who agree with my point of view.
if we get more advance talk submissions we can think about it.
This year we just got 2 advance talk and we had selected both of them. We had discussed with all sponsors to request tech lead/Architect of their organisations to submit advance talk during PyCon India. Hope this will work If any other idea please share.
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, vijay kumar wrote: [...]
if we get more advance talk submissions we can think about it. This year we just got 2 advance talk and we had selected both of them. We had discussed with all sponsors to request tech lead/Architect of their organisations to submit advance talk during PyCon India. Hope this will work If any other idea please share. [...]
That might help but I don't think it's enough. The point is to project PyCon India as an event which is for advanced high quality talks. Motivated beginners are welcome but it's not a newbie conference. -- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in
Hi, I had submitted two talk proposals this year. Both of them was not selected :( It would be good if the selection committee gives some feedback in comments. There was no comments in both proposals. Feedback will be really helpful so that those who submit proposal can make it better. http://in.pycon.org/funnel/2014/247-automated-testing-using-pytest http://in.pycon.org/funnel/2014/116-distributing-python-packages-using-setup...
I had submitted two talk proposals this year. Both of them was not selected :( It would be good if the selection committee gives some feedback in comments. There was no comments in both proposals. Feedback will be really helpful so that those who submit proposal can make it better.
Yes this is valuable point.
lot of speaker contacted me asking reason for their talk being dropped.
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 7:05 PM, Baiju M <baiju.m.mail@gmail.com> wrote:
I had submitted two talk proposals this year. Both of them was not selected :( It would be good if the selection committee gives some feedback in comments. There was no comments in both proposals. Feedback will be really helpful so that those who submit proposal can make it better .
Agree completely. Unfortunately, right now its more of a filtering + mentorship model for those who are selected and doesnt do a good enough job of engaging with everyone. At minimum, it is fair to expect some indicative comments with feedback.
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 5:51 PM, Noufal Ibrahim KV <noufal@nibrahim.net.in> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, vijay kumar wrote:
[...]
if we get more advance talk submissions we can think about it. This year we just got 2 advance talk and we had selected both of them. We had discussed with all sponsors to request tech lead/Architect of their organisations to submit advance talk during PyCon India. Hope this will work If any other idea please share. [...]
That might help but I don't think it's enough.
The point is to project PyCon India as an event which is for advanced high quality talks. Motivated beginners are welcome but it's not a newbie conference.
I am still not convinced PyCon 2014 was newbie only conference. Looking at the schedule http://in.pycon.org/2014/schedule.html#schedule_conference there were definitely advanced, intermediate and newbie talks. Is there anything specific you mean by newbie conference ?
-- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in _______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
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On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 5:51 PM, Noufal Ibrahim KV <noufal@nibrahim.net.in> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, vijay kumar wrote:
[...]
if we get more advance talk submissions we can think about it. This year we just got 2 advance talk and we had selected both of them. We had discussed with all sponsors to request tech lead/Architect of their organisations to submit advance talk during PyCon India. Hope this will work If any other idea please share. [...]
That might help but I don't think it's enough.
The point is to project PyCon India as an event which is for advanced high quality talks. Motivated beginners are welcome but it's not a newbie conference.
I agree. I agree to every bit of it. I copy paste this and send it again as my own opinion. Am I the only one who thinks that 60% newbies at a conference is a bad thing? Are we even thinking about why folks who attended last year didn't come this year? I am of the opinion that there are infinite resources out there to learn python fundamentals and PyCon being projected as a place to come and learn how to write Python `hello world` is a bad thing. There are much fewer places to learn how to handle load on a python server after a million users or how bad the GIL really is. Make PyCon a place for people who do real work with Python to come forward and learn and discuss, and not another learning resource. We have among all the things, Python Express for that. The reason why I volunteered for open spaces this year was to make such discussions happen and it sadly eventually led to another whole lot of introduction to X and Y, except one or 2 good ones, which I'm happy about. We had too few talks and discussions about interesting things. I was literally craving for someone to come up with a talk like 'Why stackless is bloody cool'. It didn't happen and I'm sad about it. There was nothing about core python. There was no rip python apart session, or 'this simple library you can contribute to' session showing code. *In my very humble opinion, that is what adds real value to conferences, not teaching python to another 1000 folks, who wont use it themselves ever again*. I'm not making this up, now we are in a situation where experienced folks don't come because its too newbie stuff and newbies don't come because they don't know Python already. Quoting Noufal, I'm all in for making "PyCon India [..] an event which is for advanced high quality talks"
-- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in _______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
-- Regards, Jaseem Abid github.com/jaseemabid
On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 2:16 AM, Jaseem Abid <jaseemabid@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 5:51 PM, Noufal Ibrahim KV <noufal@nibrahim.net.in> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, vijay kumar wrote:
Am I the only one who thinks that 60% newbies at a conference is a bad thing? Are we even thinking about why folks who attended last year didn't come this year?
I was quite surprised at the show of hands during Kushal's keynote. Almost everyone was a first timer! Unless the growth rate of conference is 30%, this means around half the folks didn't come back! The reason why I volunteered for open spaces this year was to make such
discussions happen and it sadly eventually led to another whole lot of
introduction to X and Y, except one or 2 good ones, which I'm happy about. We had too few talks and discussions about interesting things. I was literally craving for someone to come up with a talk like 'Why stackless is bloody cool'. It didn't happen and I'm sad about it. There was nothing about core python. There was no rip python apart session, or 'this simple library you can contribute to' session showing code. *In my very humble opinion, that is what adds real value to conferences, not teaching python to another 1000 folks, who wont use it themselves ever again*. I'm not making this up, now we are in a situation where experienced folks don't come because its too newbie stuff and newbies don't come because they don't know Python already.
Running with the idea of Miniconf, would it help to assign specific themes or tracks to attract quality talks? For example, Python and Computer Science. A talk about writing a quine in Python is perhaps elementary but not something a lot of people are likely to come across on their own. Or a in depth exploration of the sort algorithm as implemented in standard library. Something that students can connect to and something that will be interesting to experts as well. May be mark one of the parallel sessions as Exploring Python and fill it with rapid fire 15 min talks which introduce a topic, a area, a lib and instead of doing examples and basic documentation just provide tons of pointers. The inspiration here is personal. I got introduced to Pycon when I came across a talk someone gave on RML - a markup language to generate PDFs. This can be useful for beginners and others can simply avoid it.
Quoting Noufal, I'm all in for making "PyCon India [..] an event which is for advanced high quality talks"
I remember receiving this advice about my Pycon talk: if in doubt, make it more challenging. If the audience cannot keep up, they can always catch up with you offline but if they feel bored, they are likely to just ignore everything. I think we need to apply this advice to the conference as a whole. It needs to feel more challenging to be engaging and to get people for coming back for more. Regards, Abhaya
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 4:26 PM, Noufal Ibrahim KV <noufal@nibrahim.net.in> wrote:
Do we really have so much advance talk submissions ?
We won't attract any advanced talk submissions because people who do that kind of thing see PyCon India as a large gathering of newbies with very basic talks.
I personally wouldn't submit a talk about anything advanced if I knew that most of the audience were first timers. Why would I? If I knew that the people who were attending are experienced, I'd be willing to put stuff out in front of them to solicit feedback and have interesting discussions. If most of the audience won't understand what I'm saying, why should I submit a talk at all?
If 40% of audience are non newbies, still there is high audience for interaction.
I know some friends who didn't submit a talk on distributed systems for ,atleast partially, this reason.
I still think we should have two track beginners and intermediate/advances which solve the problems. In future once our advance talk submission increase we can rethink.
Guidelines like - No first time speakers
For example we had this rule as part of Talk selection. The talk `Medusa: A much faster Python implementation based on the Dart Virtual Machine ` was given by college student and first timer. It was one of the well received talk and was considered advanced talk. - No talks on topics that you've not personally worked on for a period
of time. etc.
will reduce the number of talks drastically filter it down to a small pool of high quality talks.
I don't agree with your reasoning. If we keep it open like this, the talk quality will dwindle and we'll get more and more low quality talks which we'll filter from. We'll get "the best of the bad" and that'll be the maximum we ever reach. I'm for raising the bar so that submissions are good.
Well people will submit beginner level talks even if the description is advanced level talks. There isn't solution for this. Also this year we were never biased or had quota for beginner level talks. We were allowed to choose what we have.
In any case, we've gone by the "everything for everyone" approach for 5 years now. I'm saying, let's try the other route and see if it works better. If yes, we'll stick to it, if no, we'll come back to the current approach. No gain without experiment.
We can experiment without breaking current momentum. Having outreach program to more people working on interesting stuff may help the community in general. Having advance level talks is good but having only advance level is not great idea.
I'm strident about this because apart from the talk quality, everything is good at the conference. This is the only thing I've heard big complaints about and this, in my opinion, is the way to fix it.
Talk quality != advanced level talks.
I'm not intransingent about this and am perfectly amenable to being argued out of it. I'd just like discussion. I think there must be atleast a few people who agree with my point of view.
[...]
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Hi, On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 7:22 PM, Kracekumar Ramaraju <me@kracekumar.com> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 4:26 PM, Noufal Ibrahim KV <noufal@nibrahim.net.in> wrote:
Do we really have so much advance talk submissions ?
We won't attract any advanced talk submissions because people who do that kind of thing see PyCon India as a large gathering of newbies with very basic talks.
I personally wouldn't submit a talk about anything advanced if I knew that most of the audience were first timers. Why would I? If I knew that the people who were attending are experienced, I'd be willing to put stuff out in front of them to solicit feedback and have interesting discussions. If most of the audience won't understand what I'm saying, why should I submit a talk at all?
If 40% of audience are non newbies, still there is high audience for interaction.
+1, 40% is a good number. And if there are 1000 participants, I would say anything more than 200 should be considered a good crowd to present something serious and get feedback. For example we had this rule as part of Talk selection. The talk `Medusa: A
much faster Python implementation based on the Dart Virtual Machine ` was given by college student and first timer. It was one of the well received talk and was considered advanced talk.
That's a fine example - But there was also another talk(I believe the first one on day one after the keynote in Audi 1) which was not well presented. And those who got seats in the back half couldn't even figure out what the presenter was showing.(agree that slide visibility is a different problem, but way it is presented was also not very good).
I'm strident about this because apart from the talk quality, everything
is good at the conference. This is the only thing I've heard big complaints about and this, in my opinion, is the way to fix it.
Talk quality != advanced level talks.
Agreed - Talk quality and advanced talks are different. But if I understand correct, Noufal is talking about "in depth" content in talks. For eg. "Multi threaded web server in python" might look like a very simple topic. But if they have stuff on how they handle GIL, I would call that an advanced level talk. While we discuss this, I have some feedback on the venue itself(which happens to be the subject of the email :) - Audi 2 is not big enough to accomodate large audience. There were 3 talks in Audi 2 which I had to miss because by the time I switched from Audi 1 to 2, it got filled up and I either had to stand at very back. I don't know a lot of places in Bangalore - But if there is something where one hall can accomodate 1000+ (for the keynote) and the other can accomodate 500-600 that should be good. Otherwise, we get constrained by space. Thanks -- Thank you Balachandran Sivakumar
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 10:28 PM, Balachandran Sivakumar < benignbala@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 7:22 PM, Kracekumar Ramaraju <me@kracekumar.com> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 4:26 PM, Noufal Ibrahim KV <noufal@nibrahim.net.in
wrote:
Do we really have so much advance talk submissions ?
We won't attract any advanced talk submissions because people who do that kind of thing see PyCon India as a large gathering of newbies with very basic talks.
I personally wouldn't submit a talk about anything advanced if I knew that most of the audience were first timers. Why would I? If I knew that the people who were attending are experienced, I'd be willing to put stuff out in front of them to solicit feedback and have interesting discussions. If most of the audience won't understand what I'm saying, why should I submit a talk at all?
If 40% of audience are non newbies, still there is high audience for interaction.
+1, 40% is a good number. And if there are 1000 participants, I would say anything more than 200 should be considered a good crowd to present something serious and get feedback.
For example we had this rule as part of Talk selection. The talk `Medusa:
A much faster Python implementation based on the Dart Virtual Machine ` was given by college student and first timer. It was one of the well received talk and was considered advanced talk.
That's a fine example - But there was also another talk(I believe the first one on day one after the keynote in Audi 1) which was not well presented. And those who got seats in the back half couldn't even figure out what the presenter was showing.(agree that slide visibility is a different problem, but way it is presented was also not very good).
Agreed, we have noted this point. Next year we will send these instructions to presenter.
I'm strident about this because apart from the talk quality, everything
is good at the conference. This is the only thing I've heard big complaints about and this, in my opinion, is the way to fix it.
Talk quality != advanced level talks.
Agreed - Talk quality and advanced talks are different. But if I understand correct, Noufal is talking about "in depth" content in talks. For eg. "Multi threaded web server in python" might look like a very simple topic. But if they have stuff on how they handle GIL, I would call that an advanced level talk.
Didn't I say similar thing in my previous email ? "Having advance level talks is good but having only advance level is not great idea."
While we discuss this, I have some feedback on the venue itself(which happens to be the subject of the email :) - Audi 2 is not big enough to accomodate large audience. There were 3 talks in Audi 2 which I had to miss because by the time I switched from Audi 1 to 2, it got filled up and I either had to stand at very back. I don't know a lot of places in Bangalore - But if there is something where one hall can accomodate 1000+ (for the keynote) and the other can accomodate 500-600 that should be good. Otherwise, we get constrained by space. Thanks
That is disadvantage of NIMHANS, valid point and lot of people have raised this concern.
-- Thank you Balachandran Sivakumar
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-- Regards Kracekumar http://kracekumar.com +91 85530 29521
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, vijay kumar wrote: [...]
I think name one person in not correct , Program committee was not lead by Arvi for sure. I feel bad to see individual name coming like this more often.
Point taken. I'm very sorry about that. I didn't mean to underplay the efforts of all the people involved in talk selection and everything else. I was mostly in touch with Arvi for everything related to talk selection (which was the only thing I was involved in this year) and that's why I said it. It shows my lack of involvement more than anything else that I don't know most of the people who worked on this. My point was that the selection process, with the speaker mentors, the chats between the people, filtering etc. was much more rigourous than before and that's a step forward. Also, this is not the main issue of the thread. The main issue is how we should take PyCon India forward. I've cut out that part of the thread and continued it with the original subject.
We can take offline if more explanation is needed.
No need to. I made a mistake, you pointed it out, I owned upto it and apologise. I'm in favour of discussing *everything* related to the community on the mailing list. We've spoken about this before. :) [...] -- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 4:28 PM, Noufal Ibrahim KV <noufal@nibrahim.net.in> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, vijay kumar wrote:
[...]
I think name one person in not correct , Program committee was not lead by Arvi for sure. I feel bad to see individual name coming like this more often.
Point taken. I'm very sorry about that.
I didn't mean to underplay the efforts of all the people involved in talk selection and everything else.
I was mostly in touch with Arvi for everything related to talk selection (which was the only thing I was involved in this year) and that's why I said it. It shows my lack of involvement more than anything else that I don't know most of the people who worked on this.
My point was that the selection process, with the speaker mentors, the chats between the people, filtering etc. was much more rigourous than before and that's a step forward.
My point was it collective process not individual as it might happen we
don't know exactly what happened. I even have few feedbacks but let me put in improvements notes. There are lot of unsung hero's who need recognition if you ask me. Let make notes on improvement point to take steps forwards.
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, vijay kumar wrote: [...]
My point was it collective process not individual as it might happen we don't know exactly what happened. I even have few feedbacks but let me put in improvements notes.
There are lot of unsung hero's who need recognition if you ask me.
Let make notes on improvement point to take steps forwards.
[...] Completely agree. This was a oversight and mistake on my part. I apologise. -- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 10:32 PM, Noufal Ibrahim KV <noufal@nibrahim.net.in> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, vijay kumar wrote:
[...]
My point was it collective process not individual as it might happen we don't know exactly what happened. I even have few feedbacks but let me put in improvements notes.
There are lot of unsung hero's who need recognition if you ask me.
Let make notes on improvement point to take steps forwards.
[...]
Completely agree. This was a oversight and mistake on my part. I apologise.
Hey no need to apologise. I just tried to provide you information so we all are on same page. At the end we all want community to get better everyday.
I was the second time attendee of Pycon. First time I attended in 2012 and second 2014. I am also disappointed with the quality of workshops and some talks being given. With my watch I can say 2012 workshops in Christ were better than 2014 workshops. Talks on Day 2 were better than Day 1 this year...this was the feedback of some of my friends as well who attended Pycon this year. I agree with Noufal than just for the sake of pulling crowd we should not compromise with the quality. I would tell you honest feedback of mine. Paying 1000 bucks for one workshop and then you come to know that's not worth peanuts . Definitely we should concentrate on quality speakers whether be it for intermediates or experts . On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 3:53 PM, vijay kumar <vnbang2003@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm not particular about the size of the event. If I could sacrifice attendance for talk quality, I'd do it.
The main complaint about PyCon India (since the maiden event) has been talk quality. We're aiming to be all things for all people and that doesn't work out. While I think Arvi's work with the program committee has been superb, the effect was limited because we *wanted* to dilute the quality of the talks to satisfy newbies.
-1 i don't agree
I think name one person in not correct , Program committee was not lead by Arvi for sure. I feel bad to see individual name coming like this more often. We can take offline if more explanation is needed.
If we try to be everything for everyone, we'll end up being nothing. If we announce that PyCon India is for experienced, serious Python developers and live upto the announcement, intermediate and even some beginner people will actually learn something new and improve themselves. Advanced people will have a forum to discuss real problems rather than an audience with 60% first timers.
My main concern is that there are more newbies than experienced folk. There are lots of outlets for newbies to learn things. Tutorials on the web, user group meetups, tutorials, classes, python express workshops etc. For advanced people though, there are almost no outlets. I'm in favour of making PyCon India a high quality event. Even by sacrificing number of talks and audience size. Quality over Quantity.
Do we really have so much advance talk submissions ?
I still think we should have two track beginners and intermediate/advances which solve the problems. In future once our advance talk submission increase we can rethink.
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-- Regards... ---------------------- Sumit Kumar Raj Software Engineer, Yodlee Infotech Pvt. Ltd. Bangalore,India
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, SUMIT KUMAR RAJ wrote:
I was the second time attendee of Pycon. First time I attended in 2012 and second 2014. I am also disappointed with the quality of workshops and some talks being given. With my watch I can say 2012 workshops in Christ were better than 2014 workshops. Talks on Day 2 were better than Day 1 this year...this was the feedback of some of my friends as well who attended Pycon this year. I agree with Noufal than just for the sake of pulling crowd we should not compromise with the quality. I would tell you honest feedback of mine. Paying 1000 bucks for one workshop and then you come to know that's not worth peanuts . Definitely we should concentrate on quality speakers whether be it for intermediates or experts .
[...] Workshops are more complicated since it's an attempt to actually teach rather than to just present an idea. I don't have any concrete thoughts on them. My original thread was focussed on the quality of talks rather than on the workshops. -- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in
Can we have talks upvote or downvote open to only those who have registered for the conf ? This will reduce the fake votes I believe .As I attended one of the talks on Day 2 who got a lot of up-votes but I don't know what shit he was talking. On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Noufal Ibrahim KV <noufal@nibrahim.net.in> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, SUMIT KUMAR RAJ wrote:
I was the second time attendee of Pycon. First time I attended in 2012 and second 2014. I am also disappointed with the quality of workshops and some talks being given. With my watch I can say 2012 workshops in Christ were better than 2014 workshops. Talks on Day 2 were better than Day 1 this year...this was the feedback of some of my friends as well who attended Pycon this year. I agree with Noufal than just for the sake of pulling crowd we should not compromise with the quality. I would tell you honest feedback of mine. Paying 1000 bucks for one workshop and then you come to know that's not worth peanuts . Definitely we should concentrate on quality speakers whether be it for intermediates or experts .
[...]
Workshops are more complicated since it's an attempt to actually teach rather than to just present an idea.
I don't have any concrete thoughts on them. My original thread was focussed on the quality of talks rather than on the workshops.
-- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in _______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
-- Regards... ---------------------- Sumit Kumar Raj Software Engineer, Yodlee Infotech Pvt. Ltd. Bangalore,India
On 07-Oct-2014 4:53 pm, "SUMIT KUMAR RAJ" <sumit786raj@gmail.com> wrote:
Can we have talks upvote or downvote open to only those who have
registered for the conf ?
This will reduce the fake votes I believe .As I attended one of the talks on Day 2 who got a lot of up-votes but I don't know what shit he was talking.
Yes I think its a good idea. Even I was thinking same. Voting rights should only given to attendee.
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Noufal Ibrahim KV <noufal@nibrahim.net.in> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, SUMIT KUMAR RAJ wrote:
I was the second time attendee of Pycon. First time I attended in 2012 and second 2014. I am also disappointed with the quality of workshops and some talks being given. With my watch I can say 2012 workshops in Christ were better than 2014 workshops. Talks on Day 2 were better than Day 1 this year...this was the feedback of some of my friends as well who attended Pycon this year. I agree with Noufal than just for the sake of pulling crowd we should not compromise with the quality. I would tell you honest feedback of mine. Paying 1000 bucks for one workshop and then you come to know that's not worth peanuts . Definitely we should concentrate on quality speakers whether be it for intermediates or experts .
[...]
Workshops are more complicated since it's an attempt to actually teach rather than to just present an idea.
I don't have any concrete thoughts on them. My original thread was focussed on the quality of talks rather than on the workshops.
-- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in _______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
-- Regards... ---------------------- Sumit Kumar Raj Software Engineer, Yodlee Infotech Pvt. Ltd. Bangalore,India
_______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
Cheers, Sanket Saurav [ +91 - 9019 799 247 | sanketsaurav.com ] *Calm down -- it's only ones and zeroes.* On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 4:59 PM, Fasih Ahmad Fakhri < fasihahmadfakhri@gmail.com> wrote:
On 07-Oct-2014 4:53 pm, "SUMIT KUMAR RAJ" <sumit786raj@gmail.com> wrote:
Can we have talks upvote or downvote open to only those who have
registered for the conf ?
This will reduce the fake votes I believe .As I attended one of the talks on Day 2 who got a lot of up-votes but I don't know what shit he was talking.
Yes I think its a good idea. Even I was thinking same. Voting rights should only given to attendee.
Talk selection does not only depend on the number of upvotes in the funnel. The talk selection committee does a scrutiny of the talk proposals and the speakers before selecting them. So, even if someone got fake upvotes, that won't necessarily mean the talk would be selected. Rest assured!
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Noufal Ibrahim KV < noufal@nibrahim.net.in> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, SUMIT KUMAR RAJ wrote:
I was the second time attendee of Pycon. First time I attended in 2012 and second 2014. I am also disappointed with the quality of workshops and some talks being given. With my watch I can say 2012 workshops in Christ were better than 2014 workshops. Talks on Day 2 were better than Day 1 this year...this was the feedback of some of my friends as well who attended Pycon this year. I agree with Noufal than just for the sake of pulling crowd we should not compromise with the quality. I would tell you honest feedback of mine. Paying 1000 bucks for one workshop and then you come to know that's not worth peanuts . Definitely we should concentrate on quality speakers whether be it for intermediates or experts .
[...]
Workshops are more complicated since it's an attempt to actually teach rather than to just present an idea.
I don't have any concrete thoughts on them. My original thread was focussed on the quality of talks rather than on the workshops.
-- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in _______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
-- Regards... ---------------------- Sumit Kumar Raj Software Engineer, Yodlee Infotech Pvt. Ltd. Bangalore,India
_______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
_______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, SUMIT KUMAR RAJ wrote:
Can we have talks upvote or downvote open to only those who have registered for the conf ? This will reduce the fake votes I believe .As I attended one of the talks on Day 2 who got a lot of up-votes but I don't know what shit he was talking.
[...] Maybe but it's still a measure of popularity rather than quality. That might be a good thing but I'm not sure if doing this will increase the *quality* of the talks at the conference. -- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in
At least this will reduce any bogus voting . You guys first pick the quality ..People attending will decide the popularity. Best of best. On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 5:11 PM, Noufal Ibrahim KV <noufal@nibrahim.net.in> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, SUMIT KUMAR RAJ wrote:
Can we have talks upvote or downvote open to only those who have registered for the conf ? This will reduce the fake votes I believe .As I attended one of the talks on Day 2 who got a lot of up-votes but I don't know what shit he was talking.
[...]
Maybe but it's still a measure of popularity rather than quality.
That might be a good thing but I'm not sure if doing this will increase the *quality* of the talks at the conference.
-- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in _______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
-- Regards... ---------------------- Sumit Kumar Raj Software Engineer, Yodlee Infotech Pvt. Ltd. Bangalore,India
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 5:23 PM, SUMIT KUMAR RAJ <sumit786raj@gmail.com> wrote:
At least this will reduce any bogus voting . You guys first pick the quality ..People attending will decide the popularity. Best of best.
Votes do not talk about quality. Kushal -- CPython Core Developer http://fedoraproject.org http://kushaldas.in
I am relating votes with popularity and quality to be checked by you people before the voting is made. On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 5:31 PM, Kushal Das <kushaldas@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 5:23 PM, SUMIT KUMAR RAJ <sumit786raj@gmail.com> wrote:
At least this will reduce any bogus voting . You guys first pick the quality ..People attending will decide the popularity. Best of best.
Votes do not talk about quality.
Kushal -- CPython Core Developer http://fedoraproject.org http://kushaldas.in _______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
-- Regards... ---------------------- Sumit Kumar Raj Software Engineer, Yodlee Infotech Pvt. Ltd. Bangalore,India
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 5:35 PM, SUMIT KUMAR RAJ <sumit786raj@gmail.com> wrote:
I am relating votes with popularity and quality to be checked by you people before the voting is made.
IMHO, that's exactly why votes are detrimental to the talk selection process. Even if we limit the voting the attendees, recognizable individuals within the community and individuals from large corporate cohorts will receive higher votes than a newbie who is trying to submit a proposal for the first time. Why not just have the editorial panel decide all the talks? (In a transparent way like https://github.com/rubyaustralia/rubyconfau-2013-cfp/, where you can still comment and see all proposals, but no voting).
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 5:31 PM, Kushal Das <kushaldas@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 5:23 PM, SUMIT KUMAR RAJ <sumit786raj@gmail.com> wrote:
At least this will reduce any bogus voting . You guys first pick the quality ..People attending will decide the popularity. Best of best.
Votes do not talk about quality.
Kushal -- CPython Core Developer http://fedoraproject.org http://kushaldas.in _______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
-- Regards... ---------------------- Sumit Kumar Raj Software Engineer, Yodlee Infotech Pvt. Ltd. Bangalore,India
_______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 5:35 PM, SUMIT KUMAR RAJ <sumit786raj@gmail.com> wrote:
I am relating votes with popularity and quality to be checked by you people before the voting is made.
Votes do not show popularity either. If you have a good number of friends coming down to the event, with their help you can manipulate any talks as you want. Kushal -- CPython Core Developer http://fedoraproject.org http://kushaldas.in
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 3:30 PM, Noufal Ibrahim KV <noufal@nibrahim.net.in> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, vijay kumar wrote:
I'm not particular about the size of the event. If I could sacrifice attendance for talk quality, I'd do it.
The main complaint about PyCon India (since the maiden event) has been talk quality. We're aiming to be all things for all people and that doesn't work out. While I think Arvi's work with the program committee has been superb, the effect was limited because we *wanted* to dilute the quality of the talks to satisfy newbies.
Talk quality is always a big problem but that does not mean that we should not have beginners talks in the conference. Unless the people who are doing advanced stuff come up with talk proposals, the scenario will not change. Kushal -- CPython Core Developer http://fedoraproject.org http://kushaldas.in
I am with Noufal on this, I would really like to see those talks cause that is what i take away. Some of the talks this time was boring, no offence to any of the speakers but I think that was primarily because of the topics. On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 3:30 PM, Noufal Ibrahim KV <noufal@nibrahim.net.in> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, vijay kumar wrote:
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 2:40 PM, Arvi Krishnaswamy < arvi@alumni.iastate.edu> wrote:
How about a smaller space with capacity for 600-700 people max? A more focused Pycon that isn't trying to be everything for everyone with 1500 people :) I vote for staying at Nimhans but improving the quality of the event for its core audience. Let beginner level sessions and training happen via python express throughout the year. Quite honestly, I'm not sure I will attend if we have 1500 next year :)
am -1 for not having beginners level sessions. I personally think PyCon India should continue with all three level beginners, intermediate and Advance. This is how PyCon India has grown and would like to continue to see same. Just Fyi: This year we had more 60 % first timer.
I'm not particular about the size of the event. If I could sacrifice attendance for talk quality, I'd do it.
The main complaint about PyCon India (since the maiden event) has been talk quality. We're aiming to be all things for all people and that doesn't work out. While I think Arvi's work with the program committee has been superb, the effect was limited because we *wanted* to dilute the quality of the talks to satisfy newbies.
Now that Python express is there, I'm generally in favour of increasing year round workshops and user group meetings for newbies and making the conference more high end. No more "Introduction to X" style talks which you can easily pick up from a website or a tutorial. The workshops can be introductory but I'm also in favour of lengthening them and reducing the number so that you'll have a few deep workshops instead of lots of shallow ones.
Even the talks, I'm completely okay with making it a single track event with only a small number of high quality talks. The kind of talks I'd like to see are
- Scaling Django to X users - How we did it at "Awesome startup". - Handling large scale distributed systems in pure python - an adventure with gevent. - Interpreter hacks to sandbox code execution - Stripping down Python to run on a limited memory embedded device. - Why we rewrote a production scale Python app in Go and how we did it. - Reducing technical debt. in large flask projects. - Why the GIL might not be a problem.
Things like that where people have actually had experience in dealing with the nitty gritty of solving hard problems and talk about their experiences. These are usually small talks followed by long QA about people experiencing similar problems.
If we try to be everything for everyone, we'll end up being nothing. If we announce that PyCon India is for experienced, serious Python developers and live upto the announcement, intermediate and even some beginner people will actually learn something new and improve themselves. Advanced people will have a forum to discuss real problems rather than an audience with 60% first timers.
My main concern is that there are more newbies than experienced folk. There are lots of outlets for newbies to learn things. Tutorials on the web, user group meetups, tutorials, classes, python express workshops etc. For advanced people though, there are almost no outlets. I'm in favour of making PyCon India a high quality event. Even by sacrificing number of talks and audience size. Quality over Quantity.
[...]
-- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in _______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 5:45 PM, Nischal HP <nischal.hp@gmail.com> wrote:
I am with Noufal on this, I would really like to see those talks cause that is what i take away. Some of the talks this time was boring, no offence to any of the speakers but I think that was primarily because of the topics.
Can everyone please read mailing list guidelines from [1] and then reply to any thread? That way we will be able to understand what exactly you want to say. [1] http://www.shakthimaan.com/downloads/glv/presentations/mailing-list-etiquett... Kushal -- CPython Core Developer http://fedoraproject.org http://kushaldas.in
sorry my bad Kushal, will follow them from now on. On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 5:48 PM, Kushal Das <kushaldas@gmail.com> wrote:
I am with Noufal on this, I would really like to see those talks cause
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 5:45 PM, Nischal HP <nischal.hp@gmail.com> wrote: that
is what i take away. Some of the talks this time was boring, no offence to any of the speakers but I think that was primarily because of the topics.
Can everyone please read mailing list guidelines from [1] and then reply to any thread? That way we will be able to understand what exactly you want to say.
[1] http://www.shakthimaan.com/downloads/glv/presentations/mailing-list-etiquett...
Kushal -- CPython Core Developer http://fedoraproject.org http://kushaldas.in _______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 3:30 PM, Noufal Ibrahim KV <noufal@nibrahim.net.in> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 07 2014, vijay kumar wrote:
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 2:40 PM, Arvi Krishnaswamy < arvi@alumni.iastate.edu> wrote:
How about a smaller space with capacity for 600-700 people max? A more focused Pycon that isn't trying to be everything for everyone with 1500 people :) I vote for staying at Nimhans but improving the quality of the event for its core audience. Let beginner level sessions and training happen via python express throughout the year. Quite honestly, I'm not sure I will attend if we have 1500 next year :)
am -1 for not having beginners level sessions. I personally think PyCon India should continue with all three level beginners, intermediate and Advance. This is how PyCon India has grown and would like to continue to see same. Just Fyi: This year we had more 60 % first timer.
I'm not particular about the size of the event. If I could sacrifice attendance for talk quality, I'd do it.
The main complaint about PyCon India (since the maiden event) has been talk quality. We're aiming to be all things for all people and that doesn't work out. While I think Arvi's work with the program committee has been superb, the effect was limited because we *wanted* to dilute the quality of the talks to satisfy newbies.
Well over the years the quality of the talks have improved. If person worked in Python for 3 years continuously he would have learned more, whereas PyCon quality of talks will not be same as his experience. What is advanced for X may not be advanced for Y.
Now that Python express is there, I'm generally in favour of increasing year round workshops and user group meetings for newbies and making the conference more high end. No more "Introduction to X" style talks which you can easily pick up from a website or a tutorial. The workshops can be introductory but I'm also in favour of lengthening them and reducing the number so that you'll have a few deep workshops instead of lots of shallow ones.
Talk selection committee decided not to have "Introduction to X" talks this year. This is not the problem any more.
Even the talks, I'm completely okay with making it a single track event with only a small number of high quality talks. The kind of talks I'd like to see are
- Scaling Django to X users - How we did it at "Awesome startup". - Handling large scale distributed systems in pure python - an adventure with gevent. - Interpreter hacks to sandbox code execution - Stripping down Python to run on a limited memory embedded device.
- Why we rewrote a production scale Python app in Go and how we did it.
- Reducing technical debt. in large flask projects. - Why the GIL might not be a problem.
Conference is for everyone beginner, Intermediate and advanced. As a community we need grow with different skill sets. Also there isn't any problem for submission such talks. Things like that where people have actually had experience in dealing
with the nitty gritty of solving hard problems and talk about their experiences. These are usually small talks followed by long QA about people experiencing similar problems.
+1. I would say focus on original work and disallow people from reading documentation, which we ensured this year.
If we try to be everything for everyone, we'll end up being nothing. If we announce that PyCon India is for experienced, serious Python developers and live upto the announcement, intermediate and even some beginner people will actually learn something new and improve themselves. Advanced people will have a forum to discuss real problems rather than an audience with 60% first timers.
If there are 40% experienced still there is a huge audience for advance topics.
My main concern is that there are more newbies than experienced folk. There are lots of outlets for newbies to learn things. Tutorials on the web, user group meetups, tutorials, classes, python express workshops etc. For advanced people though, there are almost no outlets. I'm in favour of making PyCon India a high quality event. Even by sacrificing number of talks and audience size. Quality over Quantity.
Quality is one thing getting better every year. There are only limited people who do advanced stuff in Python. For various reasons they don't submit the talks. How many user group meetups in India are active apart from BangPypers ? We shouldn't mix user group and conference. User groups has their own agenda and caters for local needs.
[...]
-- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in _______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
-- Regards Kracekumar http://kracekumar.com +91 85530 29521
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 7:06 PM, Kracekumar Ramaraju <me@kracekumar.com> wrote:
Quality is one thing getting better every year. There are only limited people who do advanced stuff in Python. For various reasons they don't submit the talks.
Another problem is not many people are doing new upstream work, which they can actually showcase in a conference like PyCon. Kushal -- CPython Core Developer http://fedoraproject.org http://kushaldas.in
Hi, --- On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 2:40 PM, Arvi Krishnaswamy <arvi@alumni.iastate.edu> wrote: | How about a smaller space with capacity for 600-700 people max? A more | focused Pycon that isn't trying to be everything for everyone with 1500 | people :) | ... | Quite honestly, I'm not sure I will attend if we have 1500 next year :) \-- You just have to pretend that you didn't see the other 800-900 Pythonists :) There are always going to be newbies and first-timers to a conference, and they should have something to take away from the event. SK -- Shakthi Kannan http://www.shakthimaan.com
On 07-Oct-2014 2:40 pm, "Arvi Krishnaswamy" <arvi@alumni.iastate.edu> wrote:
How about a smaller space with capacity for 600-700 people max? A more
focused Pycon that isn't trying to be everything for everyone with 1500 people :) I vote for staying at Nimhans but improving the quality of the event for its core audience. Let beginner level sessions and training happen via python express throughout the year. Quite honestly, I'm not sure I will attend if we have 1500 next year :)
On Oct 7, 2014 11:34 AM, "vijay kumar" <vnbang2003@gmail.com> wrote:
Any suggestion for Venue bigger than NIHMANS around 1500 members
capacity with good public transportation connectivity ?
-- Thanks, Vijay
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_______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
Hi All, I will also vote for NIMHANS, as venue is good for transportation connectivity. Agreed with Arvi, PyCon isn't trying to be everything for everyone. But if possible arrange parallel sessions based on user levels. Thanks Fasih Ahmad Fakhri How about a smaller space with capacity for 600-700 people max? A more focused Pycon that isn't trying to be everything for everyone with 1500 people :) I vote for staying at Nimhans but improving the quality of the event for its core audience. Let beginner level sessions and training happen via python express throughout the year. Quite honestly, I'm not sure I will attend if we have 1500 next year :) On Oct 7, 2014 11:34 AM, "vijay kumar" <vnbang2003@gmail.com> wrote:
Any suggestion for Venue bigger than NIHMANS around 1500 members capacity with good public transportation connectivity ?
-- Thanks, Vijay
_______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
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And i also think what Arvi was trying to say is right, having a big conference to accomodate everyone and all their needs just kills the quality of the event. When the quality of the event goes up and it will only if there are good talks, then we will attract a bigger and better set of audience. And just having sheer "x" number of attendees does not signify anything. IMHO. On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 2:40 PM, Arvi Krishnaswamy <arvi@alumni.iastate.edu> wrote:
How about a smaller space with capacity for 600-700 people max? A more focused Pycon that isn't trying to be everything for everyone with 1500 people :) I vote for staying at Nimhans but improving the quality of the event for its core audience. Let beginner level sessions and training happen via python express throughout the year. Quite honestly, I'm not sure I will attend if we have 1500 next year :) On Oct 7, 2014 11:34 AM, "vijay kumar" <vnbang2003@gmail.com> wrote:
Any suggestion for Venue bigger than NIHMANS around 1500 members capacity with good public transportation connectivity ?
-- Thanks, Vijay
_______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
_______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
On 7 October 2014 14:40, Arvi Krishnaswamy <arvi@alumni.iastate.edu> wrote:
How about a smaller space with capacity for 600-700 people max? A more focused Pycon that isn't trying to be everything for everyone with 1500 people :) I vote for staying at Nimhans but improving the quality of the event for its core audience. Let beginner level sessions and training happen via python express throughout the year. Quite honestly, I'm not sure I will attend if we have 1500 next year :)
From the discussion that has been going on regarding this idea, I think this is the perfect excuse for a well planned, focused MiniConf. While Python Express and Local meetups can cater to the beginner crowd (only to an extent. As it has already been said, local meetup groups have their own growth plans), and the MiniConf can cater to the advanced crowd, PyCon India should be the place where everyone meets.
I believe a MiniConf would make sense for this since we have already seen that the advanced sessions being proposed are less in comparison. As Krace pointed out, advanced talks != talk quality. PyCon India's talk qualities can, and should improve. That does not mean alienating any part of the community, let them be beginners or veterans.
In any case, we've gone by the "everything for everyone" approach for 5 years now. I'm saying, let's try the other route and see if it works better. If yes, we'll stick to it, if no, we'll come back to the current approach. No gain without experiment.
Absolutely. But instead of experimenting on a huge project that has shown consistent improvement over the years, let's take it slow, and try it on a smaller scale to gauge the demand and acceptance. Cheers, -- Haris Ibrahim K. V. http://sosaysharis.wordpress.com @harisibrahimkv
I believe a MiniConf would make sense for this since we have already seen that the advanced sessions being proposed are less in comparison.
Good point , I had forget about it. We need lot of mini-conf to happen.
We need help of local user group members to come forward and plan. This year we got more than 50% of non-bangalore volunteer so i have hope they will come forward to support mini-conf .
On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 5:07 PM, Haris Ibrahim K. V. <blucalvin@gmail.com> wrote:
From the discussion that has been going on regarding this idea, I think this is the perfect excuse for a well planned, focused MiniConf. While Python Express and Local meetups can cater to the beginner crowd (only to an extent. As it has already been said, local meetup groups have their own growth plans), and the MiniConf can cater to the advanced crowd, PyCon India should be the place where everyone meets.
There's definitely room for MiniConfs on some advanced topics, and we should do that. However, from my experience, as you start to dilute the larger conference to focus more on beginners, it will progress towards mostly being about them. Advanced and experienced speakers will stop coming. And then over a period of time, even the intermediate ones will stop (except the ones organizing the event).
From what I've seen across various mobile/cloud meetup groups, this is what tends to happens over time.
They become groups where 80-90% of the audience is beginner, and 60-70% of the audience changes each time. This makes it hard to build a real community that is engaged, active, and interacting with each other over a sustained period of time. As Krace pointed out, advanced talks != talk quality. PyCon India's
talk qualities can, and should improve. That does not mean alienating any part of the community, let them be beginners or veterans .
IMO advanced talks are more than just about talk quality. They elevate the conversations, drive greater collaboration, and create a more vibrant community. This is what seeds a network of experienced people whose learnings can then be spread and shared across the rest of the community via a network effect. What Pycon India is at risk of right now, is a reverse network effect. (Context: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/12/22/reverse-network-effects-why-scale-m... )
In any case, we've gone by the "everything for everyone" approach for 5 years now. I'm saying, let's try the other route and see if it works better. If yes, we'll stick to it, if no, we'll come back to the current approach. No gain without experiment.
Absolutely. But instead of experimenting on a huge project that has shown consistent improvement over the years, let's take it slow, and try it on a smaller scale to gauge the demand and acceptance.
IMO Pycon has grown by accident, not by careful conscious choices that were made. I'm essentially making a plea for us to have a plan, and to make specific choices about what we will do. (IMO) We *must* enable the beginners and help spread Python. I believe the Python Express effort is the best platform for it, and we must invest in it with a longer term commitment to enabling its success. (IMO) We *must* enable diversity, and make deliberate choices towards accommodating and supporting all groups and making it inclusive for them. (IMO) We *must* plan for breakaway miniconfs, and they are great opportunities to dive into specific problem sets in smaller groups. (IMO) We *must* focus on our core audience, and make the event a success for them. And even if that means slowing down our growth in terms of raw numbers for a while, and improving the quality of *conversations* that happen (not just talks), I feel that's that right direction to go. Here's to a great 2015 :) -A
HiTex in Hyderabad near Novtel which held Advantage AP in 2012. Capable of accommodating more than 1500 n good connectivity from any part. On Oct 7, 2014 11:34 AM, "vijay kumar" <vnbang2003@gmail.com> wrote:
Any suggestion for Venue bigger than NIHMANS around 1500 members capacity with good public transportation connectivity ?
-- Thanks, Vijay
_______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 11:33 AM, vijay kumar <vnbang2003@gmail.com> wrote:
Any suggestion for Venue bigger than NIHMANS around 1500 members capacity with good public transportation connectivity ?
I checked out with St. Johns Auditorium, Bangalore. It has only one auditorium with a capacity of 1020. Also, the cost for the auditorium is way too high. -- Sayan Chowdhury Software Developer, HackerEarth
participants (24)
-
Abhaya Agarwal -
Aniket Maithani -
Ankur Gupta -
Arvi Krishnaswamy -
Baiju M -
Balachandran Sivakumar -
Divya Sanghi -
eswar sakamuri -
Fasih Ahmad Fakhri -
Gaurav Dadhania -
Haris Ibrahim K. V. -
Jaseem Abid -
Jaysinh shukla -
Kavine s -
Kracekumar Ramaraju -
Kushal Das -
Mukesh Yadav -
Nischal HP -
Noufal Ibrahim KV -
Sanket Saurav -
Sayan Chowdhury -
Shakthi Kannan -
SUMIT KUMAR RAJ -
vijay kumar