Hi Carmen,

Can we access our guide in gears yet? I would love to be able to access to Guidebook promotional material as I am working on printing signs for our conference this week.

Best regards,

Ewa
Director of Operations
Python Software Foundation
Cell: 415-319-5237

All right; that should do it! Attached is the latest version of the data.

The most notable change is of course that all the Markdown has been converted
to HTML. There are a few other things included too:

* New posters: "Building Python with Gradle" and "The Breathing Earth"
* New bios: Gina Schmalzle and Stephen Holsapple
* New sponsor: Heroku
* Updated sponsor logos for Clover Health, PDT, and Keystone
* Several updated talk descriptions and speaker bios

How does it look? Let me know if any of the formatting is causing trouble, and
I'd be happy to tweak it some more. Approximately when could we start playing
around with a preview of the guide? Thanks!

--
Felix

That sounds great; thank you for the info! That's pretty much all the kinds
of formatting Markdown has, so that makes things much easier. I'll work on
this over the next few evenings and have an updated version for you later
this week. Thanks for the help!

--
Felix

Sounds good; I'll switch all newlines to <br>s.

The reason I ask about bold etc. is that currently all descriptions (talks,
speakers, tutorials, all of them) are in a text-based format called Markdown
(but I'd be happy to convert it to whatever works for you).

Markdown looks very much like plain text (it's meant to), but it actually
contains formatting instructions. For example, italics are denoted by
surrounding text in asterisks *like this*, and **double asterisks** mean
bold. There's also stuff like links, and headings, which look like:

### I'm a heading!

You can see some examples of this in the tutorials_schedule.csv file. Check
out the tutorial called "Making an Impact with Python Natural Language
Processing Tools". You can see how it looks online here:
https://us.pycon.org/2016/schedule/presentation/1778/

Note how the description contains text like:
### Python Development Environment
and how that becomes a headline on the web page. There are also links, like
the one that reads: "[Python](http://python.org)". Finally, there's text
that shows up in a fixed-width font using backticks (`), like `virtualenv`.

Those examples would typically be translated into HTML tags like <h3>, <a>,
and <pre> or <code>.

If you can summarize for me what formatting exactly the app can handle, I
can convert everything to use it. For things that aren't supported (like
bold) I'll at least remove the extra stuff, so we don't get silly
double-asterisks in the app text.

Sorry for the mixup; I don't know what formatting the app can use, so I left
everything in Markdown and mentioned it in the original email. I'd be happy
to convert it to whatever works! Cheers,

--
Felix

No problem; I'll get that to you ASAP. Would it be better to use line breaks (<br>) or paragraphs (<p>)? If it doesn't matter I'll likely go with paragraphs.

What about other formatting, like Markdown headings; should they be turned into <h1>s etc? Bolded text that's currently **like this** into <strong> or <b>? Or is everything else fine?

Cheers,

--
Felix

--
Felix

Hi again!

Please find attached the latest version of the data for the guide.

Is there an ETA on when we could start playing around with a rough draft? It
would be helpful even if it's in an incomplete state, since it would let us
figure out what we might be overlooking. Currently I don't see anything for
this year when I log on to https://builder.guidebook.com/#/guides/.

There are a number of changes in this version of the data:
* New sponsors: Flowroute and Netflix.
* Sponsor logo changed: House Canary.
* New/updated sponsor tutorials.
* Schedules now show actual room to be used, not just e.g. "Session A".
* Speaker bios added/updated.

Let me know if you need anything! Cheers,

--
Felix

Hi Carmen,

Please find attached an initial attempt at bundling up all the content
into a usable export. I hope it's workable enough to get things going,
but I'll follow up shortly with whatever is else is needed.

The attached zip file should contain comma-separated (.csv) files with
the details of all the talks, speakers, etc. The first line of each file
has headings describing what each column is. Note that some rows
(particularly speaker bios and talk descriptions) contain embedded
newlines, but all of those entries should additionally be enclosed in
double quotation marks. The files are UTF-8 encoded, and several of the
speakers do have names containing non-ASCII characters like 'Ł', 'é',
etc, so that's worth watching out for. There are also logo images for
all the sponsors in the zip file.

*Talk descriptions are currently exported as raw, unprocessed,
Markdown*. I'm not sure what kind of formatting Guidebook supports, so
I've left that as-is for now. If there's something more useful I can
convert it to, just let me know. I do think we'll want to figure out how
to process that formatting and get it reflected in the app, though.

There's currently nothing in the data export that *links speakers to
their talks*, which I know the app can do. If there's some data format
that can be bulk-imported to your systems to get that automatically,
just let me know and I'd be happy to work on it. In previous years,
however, we just linked them up manually.

Please don't hesitate to *let me know if there's any way I can process
or rework the data* to make it easier for you/your tools to work with --
the nice thing about being a programming conference is we're generally
happy to build our own tools to make things simpler! I would much rather
put in the work on my end to automate whatever data processing you need
to make it possible to bulk-upload changes, instead of having you or me
need to go in and fix things manually one-by-one.

At present, this is the* list of issues/missing data *that I'm aware of
and am working on:
* Keynote speakers are not included in the speaker bios.
* Plenary sessions (e.g. keynotes, opening remarks) are just listed as
"plenary" with no description in the schedule.
* Special events (e.g. PyLadies auction, 5K run, dinners) are not
included in the schedule (special_events_schedule.csv is empty).
* Meals/breaks show up once per track/room, but they really should just
be listed once.
* "Special" pages such as venue information, code of conduct, etc. may
need to be input manually - I don't mind doing it.
* Speaker photos are not included (maybe that's OK -- we didn't have
them last year either).
* As mentioned earlier, some text is in raw Markdown; and I don't know
if that's a format Guidebook can ingest.
* Floor plan map is on its way, and we'll need to link talks to the room
they're in.
* Some general information still TBD; I will get it to you ASAP
(see below).

Finally, here's the *info your requested in in the Guide Basics
spreadsheet*:
Guide Name: PyCon 2016
Guide Start Date: 2016-05-28
Guide End Date: 2016-06-05
Timezone: Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) (UTC -7)
General Information, Venue, Icon, Cover Image, Maps: I will get these to
you ASAP, or just fill them in myself and let you know.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/us.pycon.org
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pycon
YouTube: Not set up yet, will let you know
Photos: No (I think, for now at least)
RSS Feed: http://pycon.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
Homepage: https://us.pycon.org/2016/
Feedback/Surveys: I believe we'll use this, but I don't think the survey
has been designed yet. Will get it to you.
Notifications: Sure, let's have this.
My Schedule: Definitely want this feature.
Notes: Sounds good.
Live polling: I don't think we'll use this.

All right, I think that's most of it for now? Sorry for the enormous
email; I'm trying to be very thorough both to keep everyone in the loop
and to remind myself of exactly what work I still need to do!

Again, please don't hesitate to let me know if I can change or process
the data in any way to make it easier for you, or if anything in the
export looks weird -- it's all automated, so it's entirely possible
something broken snuck through without human review.

Cheers; all the best!

--
Felix

Hi Carmen,

Thank you for checking in!

I am not yet ready to start this yet. I will begin the process on Friday of this week and I will ping you if there are any questions.

Best regards,

Ewa
Director of Operations
Python Software Foundation
Cell: 415-319-5237

Yes, that is my cell phone number. Talk to you tomorrow!

Best regards,

Ewa
Director of Operations
Python Software Foundation
Cell: 415-319-5237

Hi Carmen,

Let's chat at 1pm PT tomorrow.

Have a good afternoon!

Best regards,

Ewa
Director of Operations
Python Software Foundation
Cell: 415-319-5237

Hi Carmen,

Are you available this afternoon? I am available any time now until about 4pm CT.

Best regards,

Ewa
Director of Operations
Python Software Foundation
Cell: 415-319-5237

Hi Ewa,

I would like to introduce you to our awesome guide building team! They are the experts that will handle the data entry for you, and will work to create an easy to use event guide. I have shared your event information with the customer success team, and someone will be contacting you within one business day to get started on your guide. Good luck!

Best,

Katie

--
Katie Herrgesell
Sr. Corporate Account Manager
Office: 650.319.7233 ext 126
Mobile: 216.570.0531
www.guidebook.com