Hello everyone, Pats on the back all around. The largest PyCon India yet. It's come a long way since the glorified user group meeting back in 2009. I remember feeling quite proud of it back then but compared to what PyCon India has become, it's not much more than an after dinner mint. Like all things growing, PyCon India will have growing pains I'm writing this email to try to list out some of the things where I see scope of improvement and some concrete steps which I think will help. 1. Teams Right now, the general organisation is not very different from 2009/2010 which is one bunch of guys leading everything and talking to volunteers for all the low level tasks. This means that the core bunch is overtaxed and things fall between the cracks. Many decisions are made ad-hoc on personal emails/phone calls which later leads to confusion and sometimes resentment. This works when it's a small event and mostly run by a few people. It's too large for that and the this amount of energy can't be expected from any small group of individuals. The solution, in my opinion, is to split the whole group into semi-autonomous committees (or teams) grouped by topic (e.g. program committee, sponosorship committee etc.) and then to decide how these interact. Once that's done, the "conference chair" can simply act as relay service between these teams and the amount of effort an individual will have to put in is limited. "Things" happen on each aspect of the conference without the other people needing to concerned. A good step forward this year was the program committee headed by Arvi. I think doing something similar to that again next year would be great. 2. Rules There are ad hoc decisions made when the need comes up. Often, these are made off the main list and sometimes over phone calls which has two problems. The short term problem is that different people might say different things to (e.g.) sponsors. The long term problem is that people feel disenfranchised and this damages community cohesion. The solution is to formalise all of this in something written. Anand Pillai has been working on a guidebook for this. Making it as detailed as possible will ensure that all of us present a united front when talking about the conference so that everything is consistent. Exceptions should be discussed openly on the list. 3. Discussions I think that the real backbone of a community run conference is a single "marketplace" where everyone discusses everything. Things might get rowdy now and then and measures might have to be taken but the openness and public discussion of all matters helps new volunteers to pick stuff up, contribute to and later lead the event. inpycon is our marketplace and we need to keep it active and buzzing. 4. Conference mood. This is something that's been debated but I think it's taken a form now. Is PyCon India for beginners or for experienced Python users? I think the talks are the point of contention and my own feeling is that it should be targetted towards a more experienced crowd. Three reasons. 1. Talks like "introduction to foo" which you can read from a book or a website are not really worth the 30 minutes. 2. We have Python express now to cater to beginner audiences and 3. Beginner speakers can cut their teeth on local events. These aren't fully structured but should suggest a general structure which we can build on and make the next conference even better. -- Yours, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in