One way I could contribute is to build a twitter bot to maintain a calendar of open space events. The open space bot would: - Receive and parse tweets from open space organizers when they post a proposal on the board - Retweet the proposal at an appropriate schedule based on the openspace schedule (say 15 minutes before the scheduled start time) - Maintain a basic webpage showing that schedule of open spaces which it would link to in its tweets. I'd curate the time/location information in the tweets and its calendar of open spaces, and I could transfer it to any other spreadsheets where you need to maintain an open space schedule for the GuideBook app, etc. Organizers (at their wim) could tweet to the bot if they see an open space proposal go up on the board that they'd like included in the retweet schedule. Since it would only augment the poster board (the official schedule), it shouldn't interfere with your normal workflow and only increase the exposure for open spaces whose organizers decide to use it. And I'd take full responsibility for maintaining it and keeping it from retweeting anything inappropriate. The twitter bot would be pure python, all open source. I've built similar bots in the past. If attendees seem interested, I could hold an open space and/or a lightning talk to describe how it works and help others build similar bots for their organizations. --Hobson (503) 974-6274 On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 10:16 PM, Anna Ossowski wrote:

Oops, I forgot to hit the “reply to all” button. My apologies.

Begin forwarded message:

*From: *Anna Ossowski *Subject: **Re: [Pycon-openspaces] Open Spaces 2017 Kick Off!* *Date: *January 6, 2017 at 7:15:25 AM GMT+1 *To: *Brandon Rhodes

Hey Brandon!

Hobson is still on our team as co-chair this year, which I’m thankful for :) Kinga stepped down and Trey stepped up as our second co-chair so yes it would be great if Trey could be added to the website as well. I didn’t even think about that so thank you for mentioning it!

I look forward to reading your thoughts later this week. Have a great time in sunny San Francisco! (It’s really cold and snowy here in Germany so I’m a little envious :) ) Anna

--------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.

On Jan 6, 2017, at 7:02 AM, Brandon Rhodes wrote:

Thank you for all of this work, Anna and Trey — I am very happy, again for this year, to have an excited and engaged Open Spaces team — this will only be the second year ever that we have Chairs of Open Spaces, and I look forward to seeing yet another year of the spaces becoming ever more valuable to the conference!

I am in San Francisco this week visiting my employer (Dropbox), which leaves me a bit bandwidth-limited for answering emails, but I look forward to diving into these ideas late this weekend when I am home again snuggled up with the cats, and can respond in detail.

Quick question: the staff list currently on the 2017 site (which maybe was just cut and pasted from last year?) lists Hobson as the co-chair. I assume that he should now be removed, and that I should add Trey (hi, Trey!) in that slot for this year?

(If so: then, as the Conference Chair, I am happy to welcome to your new official volunteer role!)

On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 10:32 PM, Anna Ossowski wrote:

...

Hello everyone and Happy New Year!

The beginning of the new year means that PyCon is only a little over 4 months away and it’s time to kick off Open Spaces planning.

First of all I would like to welcome our new Open Spaces co-chair, Trey Hunner, again. Trey, I’m so happy to have you on board :)

During our weekly call Trey and I brainstormed a few ideas on how to improve the Open Spaces this year. I think we did a pretty great job with the Open Spaces last year, they were successful and everything went smoothly, but there is always room for improvements. I wanted to summarize our ideas here for everyone to read. I also added everything to our Open Spaces Trello board. Trey, Hobson, and Brandon, you all should have access to the Trello board. Ewa, please let me know if you’d like to be added as well. Everyone is of course welcome to add their own ideas to the Trello board.

Here’s a summary of what Trey and I discussed:

What worked last year:

* We should add a section about the Open Spaces to the PyCon website. There was a section last year but it looks like this hasn’t been transferred to this year’s website.

* We should continue tweeting about the Open Spaces using #pyconopenspace. Taking a picture of the board a few times day and tweeting it out for attendees to see would also be a good idea.

* We should write another blog post about the Open Spaces and maybe try to have it added to some popular Python newsletters to gain more visibility.

Ideas/To Discuss:

* How can we make the Open Spaces board more visible? The board last year was beautiful following the PyCon color scheme but it might have been too easy to walk by/not visible enough. Can we make it more visible by getting the board printed in brighter colors? Other ideas?

* It might be a good idea to add a small column to the printed hand-out schedule indicating the Open Spaces. Attendees could then go ahead and mark their schedule with an “X” for the times they are planning on attending an Open Space.

* Can we add a column about the Open Spaces to Guidebook? This might be useful to make attendees aware of the Open Spaces. We could also add a simple section to Guidebook explaining what Open Spaces are and how to “sign up”.

* We could ask the registration desk workers to make people aware of the Open Spaces board when they register. The board is right next to the registration desk.

* In general it might be useful to write a short script for registration desk workers indicating what information to forward to attendees, specifically things that may not be as obvious like the hallway track, what to do in the evenings, PyLadies auction, Open Spaces, etc. This may not be possible doing busy times but at least when time allows.

* Can we keep the Open Spaces going during sprints? We could maybe add a column to the sprints board letting people add cards for Open Spaces. Maybe there is an extra room available. If not we could do it “pick your own location”-style.

* We could create a short slideshow targeted at people who are attending PyCon for the first time and send it to meetup organizers to be presented at their meetups before PyCon. The slide show could include everything first time attendees may not be aware of like the Open Spaces, PyLadies auction, Education Summit, hallway track, evening activities, etc. (Side note: DjangoCon US this year had a 1 hour event for first time DjangoCon attendees which took place the afternoon before the talk part of the conference started. It was very successful and well received by attendees. It was comparable to the introduction to sprints workshop at PyCon. It may be worth considering doing something like this at PyCon as well.)

I would love to hear your thoughts on all of those ideas and welcome you to share your own ideas as well.

I look forward to working with all of you again!

Warm regards, Anna

--------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.

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-- Brandon Rhodes PyCon 2016 Conference Chair pycon.brandon@gmail.com

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