Open Spaces 2017 Kick Off!
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.
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 <ossanna16@gmx.de> 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.
_______________________________________________ Pycon-openspaces mailing list Pycon-openspaces@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces
-- Brandon Rhodes PyCon 2016 Conference Chair pycon.brandon@gmail.com
On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 12:02 AM, Brandon Rhodes <pycon.brandon@gmail.com> 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?
It is being updating as changes are made known to me. I will update it to Trey. Trey - please also join: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-staff.
On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 9:32 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote: [clipped]
* 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.
The work flow for the website is once something is ready to launch, we add it to the website. This way things do not get overlooked and go "stale". If you would like to let me know what text you want on it, I can add the page for you. After that you will have edit rights so you can change whatever is needed. Attached is last year's text.
* 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:
[clipped]
* 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.
I'm going to chime in on two points and leave the rest to Brandon. Point 1 is regarding info at registration: having the volunteers verbally mention all of these things will hold up the lines, especially the first day of tutorials and the first day of the conference, which are the two days that almost all people check-in. During the mornings there are super long lines with people trying to get checked in in time for their tutorials and/or the opening plenary. I do not want to strain that process further. Here we have two options to consider: 1. Have a short handout with bulleted FYIs. Open Spaces can be one of them. This handout can be given to each person that checks in. The downside is that it is just another thing that someone gets at registration. Not sure how effective it will be. 2. For those busy check-in times, have a short handout with bulleted FYIs. Open Spaces can be one of them. After the busy times, we can have the people verbally mention it. However, I am not sure how much we retain during that interaction. As an attendee myself (actually going to a conference this following week) I tend to be over stimulated at check-in and don't retain what is verbally said to me. I tend to go back through what was given to me to make sure I did not miss anything. Personally, I think adding it to the printed schedule and to the Guidebook is the best way forward.
* 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.
From what I see, this tends to happen naturally. When Sprinters are onsite and they want to meet with a few people to discuss anything, they find
their own space and it happens. In Portland we have an unusual amount of space available for Sprints, which will not be the case for 2018 and 2019. We can try it in 2017, but I cannot guarantee that I will have enough space in 2018/19 to give to this. For 2017, the D rooms (if you visualize walking to the Portland Ballroom on the lower level, the D rooms were the small rooms on the right) can be used for this effort because in 2016 that section was completely abandoned during Sprints since there was so much space in the Portland Ballrooms. There was no need for people to be so far away from the rest.
On Jan 6, 2017, at 3:46 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org> wrote:
On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 9:32 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote:
[clipped]
* 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.
The work flow for the website is once something is ready to launch, we add it to the website. This way things do not get overlooked and go "stale". If you would like to let me know what text you want on it, I can add the page for you. After that you will have edit rights so you can change whatever is needed. Attached is last year's text.
Thank you for clarifying the work flow, Ewa! I think we can just re-use the text from last year and I will update the little bits that need to be updated for this year as soon as it’s up on the website. Does that work?
* 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:
[clipped]
* 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.
I'm going to chime in on two points and leave the rest to Brandon.
Point 1 is regarding info at registration: having the volunteers verbally mention all of these things will hold up the lines, especially the first day of tutorials and the first day of the conference, which are the two days that almost all people check-in. During the mornings there are super long lines with people trying to get checked in in time for their tutorials and/or the opening plenary. I do not want to strain that process further. Here we have two options to consider:
Agreed!
Have a short handout with bulleted FYIs. Open Spaces can be one of them. This handout can be given to each person that checks in. The downside is that it is just another thing that someone gets at registration. Not sure how effective it will be. For those busy check-in times, have a short handout with bulleted FYIs. Open Spaces can be one of them. After the busy times, we can have the people verbally mention it. However, I am not sure how much we retain during that interaction. As an attendee myself (actually going to a conference this following week) I tend to be over stimulated at check-in and don't retain what is verbally said to me. I tend to go back through what was given to me to make sure I did not miss anything. Personally, I think adding it to the printed schedule and to the Guidebook is the best way forward.
Good points! I agree that adding an FYI section to the printed schedule and Guidebook would work best.
* 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.
From what I see, this tends to happen naturally. When Sprinters are onsite and they want to meet with a few people to discuss anything, they find their own space and it happens. In Portland we have an unusual amount of space available for Sprints, which will not be the case for 2018 and 2019. We can try it in 2017, but I cannot guarantee that I will have enough space in 2018/19 to give to this.
For 2017, the D rooms (if you visualize walking to the Portland Ballroom on the lower level, the D rooms were the small rooms on the right) can be used for this effort because in 2016 that section was completely abandoned during Sprints since there was so much space in the Portland Ballrooms. There was no need for people to be so far away from the rest.
I’d say let’s try it and see how people like it. If there’s no interest or we can’t do it again in following years due to limited space, that’s ok. Would it be possible to have the Open Spaces board up for the sprints too then? Have a good weekend everyone :) Anna
Excellent. That's what I was thinking, Anna. I'll get started. The main challenge will be to avoid getting tricked by spam tweets with that hashtag (getting misled like Tai), so at first I'd manually confirm every tweet before sending, as well as every entry into the schedule before updating the page. I'll try to have it running by April 1 so we can test it thoroughly. This will be fun! On Fri, Jan 6, 2017, 5:33 PM Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
On Jan 6, 2017, at 3:46 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org> wrote:
On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 9:32 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
[clipped]
* 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.
The work flow for the website is once something is ready to launch, we add it to the website. This way things do not get overlooked and go "stale". If you would like to let me know what text you want on it, I can add the page for you. After that you will have edit rights so you can change whatever is needed. Attached is last year's text.
Thank you for clarifying the work flow, Ewa! I think we can just re-use the text from last year and I will update the little bits that need to be updated for this year as soon as it’s up on the website. Does that work?
* 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:
[clipped]
* 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.
I'm going to chime in on two points and leave the rest to Brandon.
Point 1 is regarding info at registration: having the volunteers verbally mention all of these things will hold up the lines, especially the first day of tutorials and the first day of the conference, which are the two days that almost all people check-in. During the mornings there are super long lines with people trying to get checked in in time for their tutorials and/or the opening plenary. I do not want to strain that process further. Here we have two options to consider:
Agreed!
1. Have a short handout with bulleted FYIs. Open Spaces can be one of them. This handout can be given to each person that checks in. The downside is that it is just another thing that someone gets at registration. Not sure how effective it will be. 2. For those busy check-in times, have a short handout with bulleted FYIs. Open Spaces can be one of them. After the busy times, we can have the people verbally mention it. However, I am not sure how much we retain during that interaction. As an attendee myself (actually going to a conference this following week) I tend to be over stimulated at check-in and don't retain what is verbally said to me. I tend to go back through what was given to me to make sure I did not miss anything.
Personally, I think adding it to the printed schedule and to the Guidebook is the best way forward.
Good points! I agree that adding an FYI section to the printed schedule and Guidebook would work best.
* 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.
From what I see, this tends to happen naturally. When Sprinters are onsite and they want to meet with a few people to discuss anything, they find their own space and it happens. In Portland we have an unusual amount of space available for Sprints, which will not be the case for 2018 and 2019. We can try it in 2017, but I cannot guarantee that I will have enough space in 2018/19 to give to this.
For 2017, the D rooms (if you visualize walking to the Portland Ballroom on the lower level, the D rooms were the small rooms on the right) can be used for this effort because in 2016 that section was completely abandoned during Sprints since there was so much space in the Portland Ballrooms. There was no need for people to be so far away from the rest.
I’d say let’s try it and see how people like it. If there’s no interest or we can’t do it again in following years due to limited space, that’s ok. Would it be possible to have the Open Spaces board up for the sprints too then?
Have a good weekend everyone :) Anna
_______________________________________________ Pycon-openspaces mailing list Pycon-openspaces@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces
Hey Hobson, I’d love to hear Ewa’s, Brandon’s, and Trey’s thoughts and get the official go from Brandon before you start working on the bot. I hope that is ok :) April 1 sounds like a great timeline. I can help out with the manual confirmation if you’d like so you can get some breaks. Thank you again for this excellent idea! I’m really excited! Anna --------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 7, 2017, at 3:21 AM, Hobson Lane <hobsonlane@gmail.com> wrote:
Excellent. That's what I was thinking, Anna. I'll get started.
The main challenge will be to avoid getting tricked by spam tweets with that hashtag (getting misled like Tai), so at first I'd manually confirm every tweet before sending, as well as every entry into the schedule before updating the page. I'll try to have it running by April 1 so we can test it thoroughly. This will be fun!
On Fri, Jan 6, 2017, 5:33 PM Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote:
On Jan 6, 2017, at 3:46 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org <mailto:ewa@python.org>> wrote:
On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 9:32 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote:
[clipped]
* 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.
The work flow for the website is once something is ready to launch, we add it to the website. This way things do not get overlooked and go "stale". If you would like to let me know what text you want on it, I can add the page for you. After that you will have edit rights so you can change whatever is needed. Attached is last year's text.
Thank you for clarifying the work flow, Ewa! I think we can just re-use the text from last year and I will update the little bits that need to be updated for this year as soon as it’s up on the website. Does that work?
* 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:
[clipped]
* 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.
I'm going to chime in on two points and leave the rest to Brandon.
Point 1 is regarding info at registration: having the volunteers verbally mention all of these things will hold up the lines, especially the first day of tutorials and the first day of the conference, which are the two days that almost all people check-in. During the mornings there are super long lines with people trying to get checked in in time for their tutorials and/or the opening plenary. I do not want to strain that process further. Here we have two options to consider:
Agreed!
Have a short handout with bulleted FYIs. Open Spaces can be one of them. This handout can be given to each person that checks in. The downside is that it is just another thing that someone gets at registration. Not sure how effective it will be. For those busy check-in times, have a short handout with bulleted FYIs. Open Spaces can be one of them. After the busy times, we can have the people verbally mention it. However, I am not sure how much we retain during that interaction. As an attendee myself (actually going to a conference this following week) I tend to be over stimulated at check-in and don't retain what is verbally said to me. I tend to go back through what was given to me to make sure I did not miss anything. Personally, I think adding it to the printed schedule and to the Guidebook is the best way forward.
Good points! I agree that adding an FYI section to the printed schedule and Guidebook would work best.
* 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.
From what I see, this tends to happen naturally. When Sprinters are onsite and they want to meet with a few people to discuss anything, they find their own space and it happens. In Portland we have an unusual amount of space available for Sprints, which will not be the case for 2018 and 2019. We can try it in 2017, but I cannot guarantee that I will have enough space in 2018/19 to give to this.
For 2017, the D rooms (if you visualize walking to the Portland Ballroom on the lower level, the D rooms were the small rooms on the right) can be used for this effort because in 2016 that section was completely abandoned during Sprints since there was so much space in the Portland Ballrooms. There was no need for people to be so far away from the rest.
I’d say let’s try it and see how people like it. If there’s no interest or we can’t do it again in following years due to limited space, that’s ok. Would it be possible to have the Open Spaces board up for the sprints too then?
Have a good weekend everyone :) Anna
_______________________________________________ Pycon-openspaces mailing list Pycon-openspaces@python.org <mailto:Pycon-openspaces@python.org> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces <https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces>
On Jan 6 2017, at 6:21 pm, Hobson Lane <hobsonlane@gmail.com> wrote:
Excellent. That's what I was thinking, Anna. I'll get started.
The main challenge will be to avoid getting tricked by spam tweets with that hashtag (getting misled like Tai), so at first I'd manually confirm every tweet before sending, as well as every entry into the schedule before updating
the page. I'll try to have it running by April 1 so we can test it thoroughly. This will be fun! Hey Hobson! That Twitter bot sounds like it might be more engineering than necessary, but I'm not opposed to that. That does sound like it could be helpful for semi-automating our process. I just wouldn't want you to spend a lot of time on it unless you find that work personally fulfilling. If you do end up making it, I'd prefer to err on the side of semi-automation rather than full automation just to play it safe and not accidentally retweet/promote things we'd prefer not to. \-- Trey Hunner Python and Django trainer [http://truthful.technology](http://truthful.technology/)
Totally. We think alike. Building chatbots is what gets me excited on the weekends, so definitely not too much hassel. On Sat, Jan 7, 2017, 5:43 PM Trey Hunner <trey@truthful.technology> wrote:
On Jan 6 2017, at 6:21 pm, Hobson Lane <hobsonlane@gmail.com> wrote:
Excellent. That's what I was thinking, Anna. I'll get started.
The main challenge will be to avoid getting tricked by spam tweets with that hashtag (getting misled like Tai), so at first I'd manually confirm every tweet before sending, as well as every entry into the schedule before updating the page. I'll try to have it running by April 1 so we can test it thoroughly. This will be fun!
Hey Hobson!
That Twitter bot sounds like it might be more engineering than necessary, but I'm not opposed to that.
That does sound like it could be helpful for semi-automating our process. I just wouldn't want you to spend a lot of time on it unless you find that work personally fulfilling.
If you do end up making it, I'd prefer to err on the side of semi-automation rather than full automation just to play it safe and not accidentally retweet/promote things we'd prefer not to.
-- Trey Hunner Python and Django trainer http://truthful.technology
Hey Trey and Hobson! My one concern about the bot is how much time we’ll spend approving tweets etc. during the conference. We are Open Spaces chairs but we are also attendees and I wouldn’t want us to worry about being on our laptops and “feeding” the bot the whole time. What are your thoughts on this? Thank you! Anna
On Jan 8, 2017, at 2:43 AM, Trey Hunner <trey@truthful.technology> wrote:
On Jan 6 2017, at 6:21 pm, Hobson Lane <hobsonlane@gmail.com> wrote: Excellent. That's what I was thinking, Anna. I'll get started.
The main challenge will be to avoid getting tricked by spam tweets with that hashtag (getting misled like Tai), so at first I'd manually confirm every tweet before sending, as well as every entry into the schedule before updating the page. I'll try to have it running by April 1 so we can test it thoroughly. This will be fun!
Hey Hobson!
That Twitter bot sounds like it might be more engineering than necessary, but I'm not opposed to that.
That does sound like it could be helpful for semi-automating our process. I just wouldn't want you to spend a lot of time on it unless you find that work personally fulfilling.
If you do end up making it, I'd prefer to err on the side of semi-automation rather than full automation just to play it safe and not accidentally retweet/promote things we'd prefer not to.
-- Trey Hunner Python and Django trainer http://truthful.technology <http://truthful.technology/>
Hi all! Thanks for the welcome Brandon. Nice to meet you Hobson. Ewa, I just requested to join the pycon-staff list. Thanks for the reminder! I replied inline below. On Jan 6 2017, at 5:33 pm, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote: > > >> On Jan 6, 2017, at 3:46 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <[ewa@python.org](mailto:ewa@python.org)> wrote: >> >> >> >> On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 9:32 PM, Anna Ossowski <[ossanna16@gmx.de](mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de)> wrote: >> >> >> >> [clipped] >> >>> * 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. >> >> >> >> The work flow for the website is once something is ready to launch, we add it to the website. This way things do not get overlooked and go "stale". If you would like to let me know what text you want on it, I can add the page for you. After that you will have edit rights so you can change whatever is needed. Attached is last year's text. > > > > Thank you for clarifying the work flow, Ewa! I think we can just re-use the text from last year and I will update the little bits that need to be updated for this year as soon as it’s up on the website. Does that work? Two ideas I had that differ from what we had last year: * I wonder whether we should list an empty schedule-like thing on the open spaces page that lists room numbers and time slots... something that explains/conveys the fact that there is a schedule but we make it ourselves. Open Source Bridge does something like this for their "Birds of a Feather" day on the last day of their conference schedule on their website. * Should we move the Open Spaces page from Events to Schedule? I see open spaces as parallel to the main talk schedule and I missed them entirely my first year at PyCon because I thought they were one-off after hour events like the auction, dinners, 5k run, etc. > > > * 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: >> >> [clipped] >> >>> * 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. >> >> >> >> I'm going to chime in on two points and leave the rest to Brandon. >> >> >> >> Point 1 is regarding info at registration: having the volunteers verbally mention all of these things will hold up the lines, especially the first day of tutorials and the first day of the conference, which are the two days that almost all people check-in. During the mornings there are super long lines with people trying to get checked in in time for their tutorials and/or the opening plenary. I do not want to strain that process further. Here we have two options to consider: > > > > Agreed! > >> 1. Have a short handout with bulleted FYIs. Open Spaces can be one of them. This handout can be given to each person that checks in. The downside is that it is just another thing that someone gets at registration. Not sure how effective it will be. >> 2. For those busy check-in times, have a short handout with bulleted FYIs. Open Spaces can be one of them. After the busy times, we can have the people verbally mention it. However, I am not sure how much we retain during that interaction. As an attendee myself (actually going to a conference this following week) I tend to be over stimulated at check-in and don't retain what is verbally said to me. I tend to go back through what was given to me to make sure I did not miss anything. >> >> Personally, I think adding it to the printed schedule and to the Guidebook is the best way forward. > > > > Good points! I agree that adding an FYI section to the printed schedule and Guidebook would work best. Yes keeping folks at the reg desk informed is great, but I also agree that most folks are going to get through registration quickly and benefit most from an informational section in the printed schedule. A one-page "PyCon cheatsheet" aimed at first time or newer PyCon attendees could be helpful. Or maybe a very small grid representation of the empty open space board on the schedule print out (if it fits)? > > > * 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. >> >> >> >> From what I see, this tends to happen naturally. When Sprinters are onsite and they want to meet with a few people to discuss anything, they find their own space and it happens. In Portland we have an unusual amount of space available for Sprints, which will not be the case for 2018 and 2019. We can try it in 2017, but I cannot guarantee that I will have enough space in 2018/19 to give to this. >> >> >> >> For 2017, the D rooms (if you visualize walking to the Portland Ballroom on the lower level, the D rooms were the small rooms on the right) can be used for this effort because in 2016 that section was completely abandoned during Sprints since there was so much space in the Portland Ballrooms. There was no need for people to be so far away from the rest. > > > > I’d say let’s try it and see how people like it. If there’s no interest or we can’t do it again in following years due to limited space, that’s ok. Would it be possible to have the Open Spaces board up for the sprints too then? Yeah. Maybe this is a conversation maybe we could coordinate with the sprint board coordinators?
Good point, Anna. I'll focus on a similar bot for another application for now. I can definitely use your help curating tweets. Thank you! If we do go ahead with it, you'll have direct control over the tweets: to turn them off, require approval/editting by you, or me, or both, and/or anyone else you designate. On Sat, Jan 7, 2017, 3:58 PM Trey Hunner <trey@truthful.technology> wrote:
Hi all!
Thanks for the welcome Brandon. Nice to meet you Hobson. Ewa, I just requested to join the pycon-staff list. Thanks for the reminder!
I replied inline below.
On Jan 6 2017, at 5:33 pm, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
On Jan 6, 2017, at 3:46 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org> wrote:
On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 9:32 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
[clipped]
* 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.
The work flow for the website is once something is ready to launch, we add it to the website. This way things do not get overlooked and go "stale". If you would like to let me know what text you want on it, I can add the page for you. After that you will have edit rights so you can change whatever is needed. Attached is last year's text.
Thank you for clarifying the work flow, Ewa! I think we can just re-use the text from last year and I will update the little bits that need to be updated for this year as soon as it’s up on the website. Does that work?
Two ideas I had that differ from what we had last year:
- I wonder whether we should list an empty schedule-like thing on the open spaces page that lists room numbers and time slots... something that explains/conveys the fact that there is a schedule but we make it ourselves. Open Source Bridge does something like this for their "Birds of a Feather" day on the last day of their conference schedule on their website. - Should we move the Open Spaces page from Events to Schedule? I see open spaces as parallel to the main talk schedule and I missed them entirely my first year at PyCon because I thought they were one-off after hour events like the auction, dinners, 5k run, etc.
* 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:
[clipped]
* 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.
I'm going to chime in on two points and leave the rest to Brandon.
Point 1 is regarding info at registration: having the volunteers verbally mention all of these things will hold up the lines, especially the first day of tutorials and the first day of the conference, which are the two days that almost all people check-in. During the mornings there are super long lines with people trying to get checked in in time for their tutorials and/or the opening plenary. I do not want to strain that process further. Here we have two options to consider:
Agreed!
1. Have a short handout with bulleted FYIs. Open Spaces can be one of them. This handout can be given to each person that checks in. The downside is that it is just another thing that someone gets at registration. Not sure how effective it will be. 2. For those busy check-in times, have a short handout with bulleted FYIs. Open Spaces can be one of them. After the busy times, we can have the people verbally mention it. However, I am not sure how much we retain during that interaction. As an attendee myself (actually going to a conference this following week) I tend to be over stimulated at check-in and don't retain what is verbally said to me. I tend to go back through what was given to me to make sure I did not miss anything.
Personally, I think adding it to the printed schedule and to the Guidebook is the best way forward.
Good points! I agree that adding an FYI section to the printed schedule and Guidebook would work best.
Yes keeping folks at the reg desk informed is great, but I also agree that most folks are going to get through registration quickly and benefit most from an informational section in the printed schedule. A one-page "PyCon cheatsheet" aimed at first time or newer PyCon attendees could be helpful. Or maybe a very small grid representation of the empty open space board on the schedule print out (if it fits)?
* 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.
From what I see, this tends to happen naturally. When Sprinters are onsite and they want to meet with a few people to discuss anything, they find their own space and it happens. In Portland we have an unusual amount of space available for Sprints, which will not be the case for 2018 and 2019. We can try it in 2017, but I cannot guarantee that I will have enough space in 2018/19 to give to this.
For 2017, the D rooms (if you visualize walking to the Portland Ballroom on the lower level, the D rooms were the small rooms on the right) can be used for this effort because in 2016 that section was completely abandoned during Sprints since there was so much space in the Portland Ballrooms. There was no need for people to be so far away from the rest.
I’d say let’s try it and see how people like it. If there’s no interest or we can’t do it again in following years due to limited space, that’s ok. Would it be possible to have the Open Spaces board up for the sprints too then?
Yeah. Maybe this is a conversation maybe we could coordinate with the sprint board coordinators? _______________________________________________ Pycon-openspaces mailing list Pycon-openspaces@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces
I support Trey’s idea of making more prominent on the website that the Open Spaces are an event that takes place parallel to the talks and isn’t an evening event like the PyLadies auction and the PyCon dinners for example. Adding a grid to the Open Spaces page, as well as moving the Open Spaces page from the Events to the Schedule tab, are both great ideas. Ewa and Brandon, I would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you! Anna
On Jan 8, 2017, at 12:57 AM, Trey Hunner <trey@truthful.technology> wrote:
Hi all!
Thanks for the welcome Brandon. Nice to meet you Hobson. Ewa, I just requested to join the pycon-staff list. Thanks for the reminder!
I replied inline below.
On Jan 6 2017, at 5:33 pm, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
On Jan 6, 2017, at 3:46 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org <mailto:ewa@python.org>> wrote:
On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 9:32 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote:
[clipped]
* 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.
The work flow for the website is once something is ready to launch, we add it to the website. This way things do not get overlooked and go "stale". If you would like to let me know what text you want on it, I can add the page for you. After that you will have edit rights so you can change whatever is needed. Attached is last year's text.
Thank you for clarifying the work flow, Ewa! I think we can just re-use the text from last year and I will update the little bits that need to be updated for this year as soon as it’s up on the website. Does that work?
Two ideas I had that differ from what we had last year:
I wonder whether we should list an empty schedule-like thing on the open spaces page that lists room numbers and time slots... something that explains/conveys the fact that there is a schedule but we make it ourselves. Open Source Bridge does something like this for their "Birds of a Feather" day on the last day of their conference schedule on their website. Should we move the Open Spaces page from Events to Schedule? I see open spaces as parallel to the main talk schedule and I missed them entirely my first year at PyCon because I thought they were one-off after hour events like the auction, dinners, 5k run, etc.
* 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:
[clipped]
* 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.
I'm going to chime in on two points and leave the rest to Brandon.
Point 1 is regarding info at registration: having the volunteers verbally mention all of these things will hold up the lines, especially the first day of tutorials and the first day of the conference, which are the two days that almost all people check-in. During the mornings there are super long lines with people trying to get checked in in time for their tutorials and/or the opening plenary. I do not want to strain that process further. Here we have two options to consider:
Agreed!
Have a short handout with bulleted FYIs. Open Spaces can be one of them. This handout can be given to each person that checks in. The downside is that it is just another thing that someone gets at registration. Not sure how effective it will be. For those busy check-in times, have a short handout with bulleted FYIs. Open Spaces can be one of them. After the busy times, we can have the people verbally mention it. However, I am not sure how much we retain during that interaction. As an attendee myself (actually going to a conference this following week) I tend to be over stimulated at check-in and don't retain what is verbally said to me. I tend to go back through what was given to me to make sure I did not miss anything. Personally, I think adding it to the printed schedule and to the Guidebook is the best way forward.
Good points! I agree that adding an FYI section to the printed schedule and Guidebook would work best.
Yes keeping folks at the reg desk informed is great, but I also agree that most folks are going to get through registration quickly and benefit most from an informational section in the printed schedule. A one-page "PyCon cheatsheet" aimed at first time or newer PyCon attendees could be helpful. Or maybe a very small grid representation of the empty open space board on the schedule print out (if it fits)?
* 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.
From what I see, this tends to happen naturally. When Sprinters are onsite and they want to meet with a few people to discuss anything, they find their own space and it happens. In Portland we have an unusual amount of space available for Sprints, which will not be the case for 2018 and 2019. We can try it in 2017, but I cannot guarantee that I will have enough space in 2018/19 to give to this.
For 2017, the D rooms (if you visualize walking to the Portland Ballroom on the lower level, the D rooms were the small rooms on the right) can be used for this effort because in 2016 that section was completely abandoned during Sprints since there was so much space in the Portland Ballrooms. There was no need for people to be so far away from the rest.
I’d say let’s try it and see how people like it. If there’s no interest or we can’t do it again in following years due to limited space, that’s ok. Would it be possible to have the Open Spaces board up for the sprints too then?
Yeah. Maybe this is a conversation maybe we could coordinate with the sprint board coordinators?
I agree with Anna about the bot. I don't want you all to take on a work load that will make you uncomfortable onsite. On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 6:15 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
I support Trey’s idea of making more prominent on the website that the Open Spaces are an event that takes place parallel to the talks and isn’t an evening event like the PyLadies auction and the PyCon dinners for example. Adding a grid to the Open Spaces page, as well as moving the Open Spaces page from the Events to the Schedule tab, are both great ideas.
I think this makes perfect sense and I can help with that. Once you have a grid up and it looks like a schedule, I can definitely move it over to the Schedule tab.
Maybe there is a way to automate this as much as possible and keep monitoring of the bot at a minimum but still make sure we don’t get a bunch of spammy or CoC violating tweets. Would love to hear Hobson’s and Trey’s thoughts on this. Trey, would you have time to help with the grid or could you let me know what the best way to do this is so I can create it myself? Thank you! Anna --------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 10, 2017, at 4:36 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org> wrote:
I agree with Anna about the bot. I don't want you all to take on a work load that will make you uncomfortable onsite.
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 6:15 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote:
I support Trey’s idea of making more prominent on the website that the Open Spaces are an event that takes place parallel to the talks and isn’t an evening event like the PyLadies auction and the PyCon dinners for example. Adding a grid to the Open Spaces page, as well as moving the Open Spaces page from the Events to the Schedule tab, are both great ideas.
I think this makes perfect sense and I can help with that. Once you have a grid up and it looks like a schedule, I can definitely move it over to the Schedule tab.
I have given Trey edit privileges on CMS pages just in case that is needed. Best regards, Ewa Director of Operations Python Software Foundation Cell: 415-319-5237 On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 10:17 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
Maybe there is a way to automate this as much as possible and keep monitoring of the bot at a minimum but still make sure we don’t get a bunch of spammy or CoC violating tweets. Would love to hear Hobson’s and Trey’s thoughts on this.
Trey, would you have time to help with the grid or could you let me know what the best way to do this is so I can create it myself?
Thank you! Anna
--------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 10, 2017, at 4:36 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org> wrote:
I agree with Anna about the bot. I don't want you all to take on a work load that will make you uncomfortable onsite.
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 6:15 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
I support Trey’s idea of making more prominent on the website that the Open Spaces are an event that takes place parallel to the talks and isn’t an evening event like the PyLadies auction and the PyCon dinners for example. Adding a grid to the Open Spaces page, as well as moving the Open Spaces page from the Events to the Schedule tab, are both great ideas.
I think this makes perfect sense and I can help with that. Once you have a grid up and it looks like a schedule, I can definitely move it over to the Schedule tab.
Thank you, Ewa :) --------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 11, 2017, at 4:27 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org> wrote:
I have given Trey edit privileges on CMS pages just in case that is needed.
Best regards,
Ewa Director of Operations Python Software Foundation Cell: 415-319-5237
On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 10:17 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote: Maybe there is a way to automate this as much as possible and keep monitoring of the bot at a minimum but still make sure we don’t get a bunch of spammy or CoC violating tweets. Would love to hear Hobson’s and Trey’s thoughts on this.
Trey, would you have time to help with the grid or could you let me know what the best way to do this is so I can create it myself?
Thank you! Anna
--------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 10, 2017, at 4:36 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org <mailto:ewa@python.org>> wrote:
I agree with Anna about the bot. I don't want you all to take on a work load that will make you uncomfortable onsite.
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 6:15 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote:
I support Trey’s idea of making more prominent on the website that the Open Spaces are an event that takes place parallel to the talks and isn’t an evening event like the PyLadies auction and the PyCon dinners for example. Adding a grid to the Open Spaces page, as well as moving the Open Spaces page from the Events to the Schedule tab, are both great ideas.
I think this makes perfect sense and I can help with that. Once you have a grid up and it looks like a schedule, I can definitely move it over to the Schedule tab.
Good evening, everyone! I am finally caught up after my whirlwind of holiday travel, and am now happily ensconced at home for the winter where I can now keep abreast of things and watch the weather forecast for snowstorms. In no particular order, here are some responses to all of the great ideas that you have generated on this thread over the past week: - I like the idea of having Guidebook make people aware of the Open Spaces! I am not exactly sure how that would fit into the app because I do not have enough experience of it to have a clear idea of how its navigation works, but I am happy that your committee will be looking into where Open Spaces will fit. - A blog post is a great idea! We should aim for fairly close to the conference, since Open Spaces can't be scheduled far in advance — last year we did an April blog post, and that feels about right for this year as well. - I agree that the printed schedule this year should somehow, if room permits, show that the Open Spaces happen in parallel with the talks. When we design the brochure, we'll show you the result and let you know whether it wound up fitting. And using the printed schedule will, I agree, be a more feasible approach than trying to have the registration people deliver the information to people who are busy registering and probably wouldn't absorb it anyway. - Open Spaces can indeed continue during sprints; I have no problem with them overlapping. - I agree that attendees need an introduction to the conference, and that the introduction should introduce Open Spaces! Last year I tried mentioning Open Spaces in my half-hour introduction to the conference, designed to let people know how to get the most out of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckW1xuGVpug Fast forward to about 19:00 for the segment on Open Spaces. For 2017, I hope to do something similar, because I think that a reminder of everything that goes on at the conference is good for everyone, not just the smaller self-selected audience we would get if we only gave this information at a for-beginners event. Please let me know how the Open Spaces segment can be improved to provide more context and to better situate them in attendees' minds as things that go on at the same time as the main talks schedule. - I did wish last year that there was someone, or a group of volunteers instead of just one, who would tweet 15 minutes before every hour about what Open Spaces are happening. “Coming up in 15 minutes, Open Spaces on: Astronomy; SciPy; Hardware; Diversity” or something like that, based on walking by the board and reading the cards. I am not sure whether subscribers wlil want to hear N tweets about the N events per hour, and I am not sure that organizers will want to have to issue a tweet about their event (do they all even have Twitter?) in addition to getting a card up on the board. But I am not going to insist on any particular approach; there are lots of ways that Twitter and the Open Spaces could interact, and as long as it doesn't involve lots of tweets from the main conference Twitter account, I'm happy to have y'all on the committee experiment with whatever idea interests you most. - I am not sure we should add a blank Open Spaces schedule to the Schedule drop-down on the site. (1) It would make organizers think they can sign up ahead of time, but they can't. (2) People would see it blank in the days before the conference and conclude that something was wrong, or that Open Spaces weren't really going to happen, because generally conferences only have schedule grids up because they have data to put in them. I will, however, definitely plan to re-post my https://us.pycon.org/2016/events/ “Overview” page again this year as we release the schedule and, as you can see, it (probably similarly to what you were thinking about the printed brochure?) depicts the Open Spaces as happening simultaneously with the Talks. - The problem with a Twitter hashtag is that people might think they're supposed to subscribe to it if they're interested in Open Spaces, but you can't control the amount of abuse that is delivered by people who figure that out, because Twitter doesn't let you control what's tweeted under a hashtag. There, I think that covers the main points that have been raised so far? Feel free to make further comments on any of these matters, and I'll try to respond with a much shorter ping time now that I'm home and back in the loop! Thanks again for all of your thoughtful work to make Open Spaces ever more awesome. :) On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 10:58 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
Thank you, Ewa :)
--------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 11, 2017, at 4:27 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org> wrote:
I have given Trey edit privileges on CMS pages just in case that is needed.
Best regards,
Ewa Director of Operations Python Software Foundation Cell: 415-319-5237 <(415)%20319-5237>
On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 10:17 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
Maybe there is a way to automate this as much as possible and keep monitoring of the bot at a minimum but still make sure we don’t get a bunch of spammy or CoC violating tweets. Would love to hear Hobson’s and Trey’s thoughts on this.
Trey, would you have time to help with the grid or could you let me know what the best way to do this is so I can create it myself?
Thank you! Anna
--------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 10, 2017, at 4:36 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org> wrote:
I agree with Anna about the bot. I don't want you all to take on a work load that will make you uncomfortable onsite.
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 6:15 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
I support Trey’s idea of making more prominent on the website that the Open Spaces are an event that takes place parallel to the talks and isn’t an evening event like the PyLadies auction and the PyCon dinners for example. Adding a grid to the Open Spaces page, as well as moving the Open Spaces page from the Events to the Schedule tab, are both great ideas.
I think this makes perfect sense and I can help with that. Once you have a grid up and it looks like a schedule, I can definitely move it over to the Schedule tab.
_______________________________________________ Pycon-openspaces mailing list Pycon-openspaces@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces
-- Brandon Rhodes PyCon 2016 Conference Chair pycon.brandon@gmail.com
Hello Brandon! Thank you for your thoughtful reply! I’m glad you made it back home safely. I’m a little bit short on time at the moment but I wanted to reply right away so we can keep the conversation going. My apologies for my response being a little brief.
On Jan 16, 2017, at 1:51 AM, Brandon Rhodes <pycon.brandon@gmail.com> wrote:
Good evening, everyone! I am finally caught up after my whirlwind of holiday travel, and am now happily ensconced at home for the winter where I can now keep abreast of things and watch the weather forecast for snowstorms.
In no particular order, here are some responses to all of the great ideas that you have generated on this thread over the past week: I like the idea of having Guidebook make people aware of the Open Spaces! I am not exactly sure how that would fit into the app because I do not have enough experience of it to have a clear idea of how its navigation works, but I am happy that your committee will be looking into where Open Spaces will fit. Who is responsible for the PyCon US Guidebook; i.e. who should we reach out to about this?
A blog post is a great idea! We should aim for fairly close to the conference, since Open Spaces can't be scheduled far in advance — last year we did an April blog post, and that feels about right for this year as well.
That sounds good! Marked on my schedule to tackle this the beginning of April. Do you think we could reuse part of last year’s blog post since the information we want to present is mostly the same, or should we work on a completely new blog post?
I agree that the printed schedule this year should somehow, if room permits, show that the Open Spaces happen in parallel with the talks. When we design the brochure, we'll show you the result and let you know whether it wound up fitting. And using the printed schedule will, I agree, be a more feasible approach than trying to have the registration people deliver the information to people who are busy registering and probably wouldn't absorb it anyway.
That sounds good! Thank you!
Open Spaces can indeed continue during sprints; I have no problem with them overlapping.
👍
I agree that attendees need an introduction to the conference, and that the introduction should introduce Open Spaces! Last year I tried mentioning Open Spaces in my half-hour introduction to the conference, designed to let people know how to get the most out of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckW1xuGVpug <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckW1xuGVpug>
Fast forward to about 19:00 for the segment on Open Spaces. For 2017, I hope to do something similar, because I think that a reminder of everything that goes on at the conference is good for everyone, not just the smaller self-selected audience we would get if we only gave this information at a for-beginners event.
Please let me know how the Open Spaces segment can be improved to provide more context and to better situate them in attendees' minds as things that go on at the same time as the main talks schedule.
I remember you mentioning the Open Spaces in your opening remarks last year and also in your morning remarks during the other two conference days (?), which was great! I added a note to our Trello board to discuss how we could potentially improve that segment.
I did wish last year that there was someone, or a group of volunteers instead of just one, who would tweet 15 minutes before every hour about what Open Spaces are happening. “Coming up in 15 minutes, Open Spaces on: Astronomy; SciPy; Hardware; Diversity” or something like that, based on walking by the board and reading the cards. I am not sure whether subscribers wlil want to hear N tweets about the N events per hour, and I am not sure that organizers will want to have to issue a tweet about their event (do they all even have Twitter?) in addition to getting a card up on the board. But I am not going to insist on any particular approach; there are lots of ways that Twitter and the Open Spaces could interact, and as long as it doesn't involve lots of tweets from the main conference Twitter account, I'm happy to have y'all on the committee experiment with whatever idea interests you most.
I agree that this would indeed be awesome! However, I think this would be quite an effort to organize and coordinate to make it go smoothly. We would have to find a group of responsible volunteers who would be willing to do this in 2 or 3 hour shifts. Additionally we would have to make sure that all of them have access to either the PyCon (probably not the preferred way to do this) or a PyCon Open Spaces Twitter account. They could simply tweet from their personal Twitter accounts but then we’d be running into the “What if they don’t have Twitter” problem again, and for announcements like these I think it might be best to tweet them from one account instead of just asking each volunteer to tweet from their personal account using our hashtag. You definitely mention good points we’ll have to think about regarding the bot. If I was an organizer and I’d want for people to show up to my Open Space, I wouldn’t mind writing one tweet about it, but that may not be the case for everyone. Also I believe that a lot of people these days do have Twitter accounts but not all of them do. I would still like to give the bot a try. We’d have to clarify that the bot won’t provide a full summary of all Open Spaces but is just functioning as a tool to help promote those Open Spaces more whose organizers tweet about it (then we are technically discriminating against people who don’t have Twitter but I don’t now how to solve the problem in this context.) Maybe we could somehow have the bot tweet out summaries of which Open Spaces are coming up instead of simple retweets in order to keep the amount of tweets the bot sends out relatively low? Any ideas, Hobson? Neither of the two approaches are 100% ideal but the bot would at least offer some amount of “official” promotion and definitely an improvement to last year. I guess it’s all a matter of trial and error. If we see that the bot isn’t as successful this year as we were hoping it would be, we can always try the more hands-on volunteer approach next year.
I am not sure we should add a blank Open Spaces schedule to the Schedule drop-down on the site. (1) It would make organizers think they can sign up ahead of time, but they can't. (2) People would see it blank in the days before the conference and conclude that something was wrong, or that Open Spaces weren't really going to happen, because generally conferences only have schedule grids up because they have data to put in them.
I will, however, definitely plan to re-post my https://us.pycon.org/2016/events/ <https://us.pycon.org/2016/events/> “Overview” page again this year as we release the schedule and, as you can see, it (probably similarly to what you were thinking about the printed brochure?) depicts the Open Spaces as happening simultaneously with the Talks.
Trey, you mentioned Open Source bridge providing an empty schedule on their website. Do you think you could comment on Brandon’s concerns regarding if Open Source bridge face any of these problems, etc.?
The problem with a Twitter hashtag is that people might think they're supposed to subscribe to it if they're interested in Open Spaces, but you can't control the amount of abuse that is delivered by people who figure that out, because Twitter doesn't let you control what's tweeted under a hashtag.
Agreed. Hobson, do you have any ideas on how to prevent abuse as much as possible? Could we use something which is more reliable than a Twitter hashtag for filtering the tweets?
There, I think that covers the main points that have been raised so far? Feel free to make further comments on any of these matters, and I'll try to respond with a much shorter ping time now that I'm home and back in the loop! Thanks again for all of your thoughtful work to make Open Spaces ever more awesome. :)
Thanks again Brandon! I always appreciate reading your input :) Anna
On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 10:58 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote: Thank you, Ewa :)
--------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 11, 2017, at 4:27 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org <mailto:ewa@python.org>> wrote:
I have given Trey edit privileges on CMS pages just in case that is needed.
Best regards,
Ewa Director of Operations Python Software Foundation Cell: 415-319-5237 <tel:(415)%20319-5237> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 10:17 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote: Maybe there is a way to automate this as much as possible and keep monitoring of the bot at a minimum but still make sure we don’t get a bunch of spammy or CoC violating tweets. Would love to hear Hobson’s and Trey’s thoughts on this.
Trey, would you have time to help with the grid or could you let me know what the best way to do this is so I can create it myself?
Thank you! Anna
--------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 10, 2017, at 4:36 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org <mailto:ewa@python.org>> wrote:
I agree with Anna about the bot. I don't want you all to take on a work load that will make you uncomfortable onsite.
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 6:15 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote:
I support Trey’s idea of making more prominent on the website that the Open Spaces are an event that takes place parallel to the talks and isn’t an evening event like the PyLadies auction and the PyCon dinners for example. Adding a grid to the Open Spaces page, as well as moving the Open Spaces page from the Events to the Schedule tab, are both great ideas.
I think this makes perfect sense and I can help with that. Once you have a grid up and it looks like a schedule, I can definitely move it over to the Schedule tab.
_______________________________________________ Pycon-openspaces mailing list Pycon-openspaces@python.org <mailto:Pycon-openspaces@python.org> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces <https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces>
-- Brandon Rhodes PyCon 2016 Conference Chair pycon.brandon@gmail.com <mailto:pycon.brandon@gmail.com>
Hi Anna, Good idea on the schedule summarizer. It's definitely straightforward for the twitter buffer to summarize several upcoming Open Spaces events with single tweet to reduce the tweet volume/rate. All tweets from the bot can include a link to its schedule of upcoming openspaces and an image of the latest Open Spaces poster. --Hobson (503) 974-6274 gh <https://github.com/hobson/> twtr <https://twitter.com/hobsonlane> li <https://www.linkedin.com/in/hobsonlane> g+ <http://plus.google.com/+HobsonLane/> so <http://stackoverflow.com/users/623735/hobs> On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 10:17 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
Hello Brandon!
Thank you for your thoughtful reply! I’m glad you made it back home safely. I’m a little bit short on time at the moment but I wanted to reply right away so we can keep the conversation going. My apologies for my response being a little brief.
On Jan 16, 2017, at 1:51 AM, Brandon Rhodes <pycon.brandon@gmail.com> wrote:
Good evening, everyone! I am finally caught up after my whirlwind of holiday travel, and am now happily ensconced at home for the winter where I can now keep abreast of things and watch the weather forecast for snowstorms.
In no particular order, here are some responses to all of the great ideas that you have generated on this thread over the past week:
- I like the idea of having Guidebook make people aware of the Open Spaces! I am not exactly sure how that would fit into the app because I do not have enough experience of it to have a clear idea of how its navigation works, but I am happy that your committee will be looking into where Open Spaces will fit.
Who is responsible for the PyCon US Guidebook; i.e. who should we reach out to about this?
- A blog post is a great idea! We should aim for fairly close to the conference, since Open Spaces can't be scheduled far in advance — last year we did an April blog post, and that feels about right for this year as well.
That sounds good! Marked on my schedule to tackle this the beginning of April. Do you think we could reuse part of last year’s blog post since the information we want to present is mostly the same, or should we work on a completely new blog post?
- I agree that the printed schedule this year should somehow, if room permits, show that the Open Spaces happen in parallel with the talks. When we design the brochure, we'll show you the result and let you know whether it wound up fitting. And using the printed schedule will, I agree, be a more feasible approach than trying to have the registration people deliver the information to people who are busy registering and probably wouldn't absorb it anyway.
That sounds good! Thank you!
- Open Spaces can indeed continue during sprints; I have no problem with them overlapping.
👍
- I agree that attendees need an introduction to the conference, and that the introduction should introduce Open Spaces! Last year I tried mentioning Open Spaces in my half-hour introduction to the conference, designed to let people know how to get the most out of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckW1xuGVpug
Fast forward to about 19:00 for the segment on Open Spaces. For 2017, I hope to do something similar, because I think that a reminder of everything that goes on at the conference is good for everyone, not just the smaller self-selected audience we would get if we only gave this information at a for-beginners event.
Please let me know how the Open Spaces segment can be improved to provide more context and to better situate them in attendees' minds as things that go on at the same time as the main talks schedule.
I remember you mentioning the Open Spaces in your opening remarks last year and also in your morning remarks during the other two conference days (?), which was great! I added a note to our Trello board to discuss how we could potentially improve that segment.
- I did wish last year that there was someone, or a group of volunteers instead of just one, who would tweet 15 minutes before every hour about what Open Spaces are happening. “Coming up in 15 minutes, Open Spaces on: Astronomy; SciPy; Hardware; Diversity” or something like that, based on walking by the board and reading the cards. I am not sure whether subscribers wlil want to hear N tweets about the N events per hour, and I am not sure that organizers will want to have to issue a tweet about their event (do they all even have Twitter?) in addition to getting a card up on the board. But I am not going to insist on any particular approach; there are lots of ways that Twitter and the Open Spaces could interact, and as long as it doesn't involve lots of tweets from the main conference Twitter account, I'm happy to have y'all on the committee experiment with whatever idea interests you most.
I agree that this would indeed be awesome! However, I think this would be quite an effort to organize and coordinate to make it go smoothly. We would have to find a group of responsible volunteers who would be willing to do this in 2 or 3 hour shifts. Additionally we would have to make sure that all of them have access to either the PyCon (probably not the preferred way to do this) or a PyCon Open Spaces Twitter account. They could simply tweet from their personal Twitter accounts but then we’d be running into the “What if they don’t have Twitter” problem again, and for announcements like these I think it might be best to tweet them from one account instead of just asking each volunteer to tweet from their personal account using our hashtag.
You definitely mention good points we’ll have to think about regarding the bot. If I was an organizer and I’d want for people to show up to my Open Space, I wouldn’t mind writing one tweet about it, but that may not be the case for everyone. Also I believe that a lot of people these days do have Twitter accounts but not all of them do. I would still like to give the bot a try. We’d have to clarify that the bot won’t provide a full summary of all Open Spaces but is just functioning as a tool to help promote those Open Spaces more whose organizers tweet about it (then we are technically discriminating against people who don’t have Twitter but I don’t now how to solve the problem in this context.) Maybe we could somehow have the bot tweet out summaries of which Open Spaces are coming up instead of simple retweets in order to keep the amount of tweets the bot sends out relatively low? Any ideas, Hobson?
Neither of the two approaches are 100% ideal but the bot would at least offer some amount of “official” promotion and definitely an improvement to last year. I guess it’s all a matter of trial and error. If we see that the bot isn’t as successful this year as we were hoping it would be, we can always try the more hands-on volunteer approach next year.
- I am not sure we should add a blank Open Spaces schedule to the Schedule drop-down on the site. (1) It would make organizers think they can sign up ahead of time, but they can't. (2) People would see it blank in the days before the conference and conclude that something was wrong, or that Open Spaces weren't really going to happen, because generally conferences only have schedule grids up because they have data to put in them.
I will, however, definitely plan to re-post my https://us.pycon.org/2016/events/ <https://us.pycon.org/2016/events/> “Overview” page again this year as we release the schedule and, as you can see, it (probably similarly to what you were thinking about the printed brochure?) depicts the Open Spaces as happening simultaneously with the Talks.
Trey, you mentioned Open Source bridge providing an empty schedule on their website. Do you think you could comment on Brandon’s concerns regarding if Open Source bridge face any of these problems, etc.?
- The problem with a Twitter hashtag is that people might think they're supposed to subscribe to it if they're interested in Open Spaces, but you can't control the amount of abuse that is delivered by people who figure that out, because Twitter doesn't let you control what's tweeted under a hashtag.
Agreed. Hobson, do you have any ideas on how to prevent abuse as much as possible? Could we use something which is more reliable than a Twitter hashtag for filtering the tweets?
There, I think that covers the main points that have been raised so far? Feel free to make further comments on any of these matters, and I'll try to respond with a much shorter ping time now that I'm home and back in the loop! Thanks again for all of your thoughtful work to make Open Spaces ever more awesome. :)
Thanks again Brandon! I always appreciate reading your input :) Anna
On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 10:58 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
Thank you, Ewa :)
--------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 11, 2017, at 4:27 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org> wrote:
I have given Trey edit privileges on CMS pages just in case that is needed.
Best regards,
Ewa Director of Operations Python Software Foundation Cell: 415-319-5237 <(415)%20319-5237>
On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 10:17 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
Maybe there is a way to automate this as much as possible and keep monitoring of the bot at a minimum but still make sure we don’t get a bunch of spammy or CoC violating tweets. Would love to hear Hobson’s and Trey’s thoughts on this.
Trey, would you have time to help with the grid or could you let me know what the best way to do this is so I can create it myself?
Thank you! Anna
--------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 10, 2017, at 4:36 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org> wrote:
I agree with Anna about the bot. I don't want you all to take on a work load that will make you uncomfortable onsite.
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 6:15 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
I support Trey’s idea of making more prominent on the website that the Open Spaces are an event that takes place parallel to the talks and isn’t an evening event like the PyLadies auction and the PyCon dinners for example. Adding a grid to the Open Spaces page, as well as moving the Open Spaces page from the Events to the Schedule tab, are both great ideas.
I think this makes perfect sense and I can help with that. Once you have a grid up and it looks like a schedule, I can definitely move it over to the Schedule tab.
_______________________________________________ Pycon-openspaces mailing list Pycon-openspaces@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces
-- Brandon Rhodes PyCon 2016 Conference Chair pycon.brandon@gmail.com
_______________________________________________ Pycon-openspaces mailing list Pycon-openspaces@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces
That sounds great, Hobson! 👍 --------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 16, 2017, at 7:34 PM, Hobson Lane <hobsonlane@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Anna,
Good idea on the schedule summarizer. It's definitely straightforward for the twitter buffer to summarize several upcoming Open Spaces events with single tweet to reduce the tweet volume/rate. All tweets from the bot can include a link to its schedule of upcoming openspaces and an image of the latest Open Spaces poster.
--Hobson (503) 974-6274 gh <https://github.com/hobson/> twtr <https://twitter.com/hobsonlane> li <https://www.linkedin.com/in/hobsonlane> g+ <http://plus.google.com/+HobsonLane/> so <http://stackoverflow.com/users/623735/hobs> On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 10:17 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote: Hello Brandon!
Thank you for your thoughtful reply! I’m glad you made it back home safely. I’m a little bit short on time at the moment but I wanted to reply right away so we can keep the conversation going. My apologies for my response being a little brief.
On Jan 16, 2017, at 1:51 AM, Brandon Rhodes <pycon.brandon@gmail.com <mailto:pycon.brandon@gmail.com>> wrote:
Good evening, everyone! I am finally caught up after my whirlwind of holiday travel, and am now happily ensconced at home for the winter where I can now keep abreast of things and watch the weather forecast for snowstorms.
In no particular order, here are some responses to all of the great ideas that you have generated on this thread over the past week: I like the idea of having Guidebook make people aware of the Open Spaces! I am not exactly sure how that would fit into the app because I do not have enough experience of it to have a clear idea of how its navigation works, but I am happy that your committee will be looking into where Open Spaces will fit. Who is responsible for the PyCon US Guidebook; i.e. who should we reach out to about this?
A blog post is a great idea! We should aim for fairly close to the conference, since Open Spaces can't be scheduled far in advance — last year we did an April blog post, and that feels about right for this year as well.
That sounds good! Marked on my schedule to tackle this the beginning of April. Do you think we could reuse part of last year’s blog post since the information we want to present is mostly the same, or should we work on a completely new blog post?
I agree that the printed schedule this year should somehow, if room permits, show that the Open Spaces happen in parallel with the talks. When we design the brochure, we'll show you the result and let you know whether it wound up fitting. And using the printed schedule will, I agree, be a more feasible approach than trying to have the registration people deliver the information to people who are busy registering and probably wouldn't absorb it anyway.
That sounds good! Thank you!
Open Spaces can indeed continue during sprints; I have no problem with them overlapping.
👍
I agree that attendees need an introduction to the conference, and that the introduction should introduce Open Spaces! Last year I tried mentioning Open Spaces in my half-hour introduction to the conference, designed to let people know how to get the most out of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckW1xuGVpug <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckW1xuGVpug>
Fast forward to about 19:00 for the segment on Open Spaces. For 2017, I hope to do something similar, because I think that a reminder of everything that goes on at the conference is good for everyone, not just the smaller self-selected audience we would get if we only gave this information at a for-beginners event.
Please let me know how the Open Spaces segment can be improved to provide more context and to better situate them in attendees' minds as things that go on at the same time as the main talks schedule.
I remember you mentioning the Open Spaces in your opening remarks last year and also in your morning remarks during the other two conference days (?), which was great! I added a note to our Trello board to discuss how we could potentially improve that segment.
I did wish last year that there was someone, or a group of volunteers instead of just one, who would tweet 15 minutes before every hour about what Open Spaces are happening. “Coming up in 15 minutes, Open Spaces on: Astronomy; SciPy; Hardware; Diversity” or something like that, based on walking by the board and reading the cards. I am not sure whether subscribers wlil want to hear N tweets about the N events per hour, and I am not sure that organizers will want to have to issue a tweet about their event (do they all even have Twitter?) in addition to getting a card up on the board. But I am not going to insist on any particular approach; there are lots of ways that Twitter and the Open Spaces could interact, and as long as it doesn't involve lots of tweets from the main conference Twitter account, I'm happy to have y'all on the committee experiment with whatever idea interests you most.
I agree that this would indeed be awesome! However, I think this would be quite an effort to organize and coordinate to make it go smoothly. We would have to find a group of responsible volunteers who would be willing to do this in 2 or 3 hour shifts. Additionally we would have to make sure that all of them have access to either the PyCon (probably not the preferred way to do this) or a PyCon Open Spaces Twitter account. They could simply tweet from their personal Twitter accounts but then we’d be running into the “What if they don’t have Twitter” problem again, and for announcements like these I think it might be best to tweet them from one account instead of just asking each volunteer to tweet from their personal account using our hashtag.
You definitely mention good points we’ll have to think about regarding the bot. If I was an organizer and I’d want for people to show up to my Open Space, I wouldn’t mind writing one tweet about it, but that may not be the case for everyone. Also I believe that a lot of people these days do have Twitter accounts but not all of them do. I would still like to give the bot a try. We’d have to clarify that the bot won’t provide a full summary of all Open Spaces but is just functioning as a tool to help promote those Open Spaces more whose organizers tweet about it (then we are technically discriminating against people who don’t have Twitter but I don’t now how to solve the problem in this context.) Maybe we could somehow have the bot tweet out summaries of which Open Spaces are coming up instead of simple retweets in order to keep the amount of tweets the bot sends out relatively low? Any ideas, Hobson?
Neither of the two approaches are 100% ideal but the bot would at least offer some amount of “official” promotion and definitely an improvement to last year. I guess it’s all a matter of trial and error. If we see that the bot isn’t as successful this year as we were hoping it would be, we can always try the more hands-on volunteer approach next year.
I am not sure we should add a blank Open Spaces schedule to the Schedule drop-down on the site. (1) It would make organizers think they can sign up ahead of time, but they can't. (2) People would see it blank in the days before the conference and conclude that something was wrong, or that Open Spaces weren't really going to happen, because generally conferences only have schedule grids up because they have data to put in them.
I will, however, definitely plan to re-post my https://us.pycon.org/2016/events/ <https://us.pycon.org/2016/events/> “Overview” page again this year as we release the schedule and, as you can see, it (probably similarly to what you were thinking about the printed brochure?) depicts the Open Spaces as happening simultaneously with the Talks.
Trey, you mentioned Open Source bridge providing an empty schedule on their website. Do you think you could comment on Brandon’s concerns regarding if Open Source bridge face any of these problems, etc.?
The problem with a Twitter hashtag is that people might think they're supposed to subscribe to it if they're interested in Open Spaces, but you can't control the amount of abuse that is delivered by people who figure that out, because Twitter doesn't let you control what's tweeted under a hashtag.
Agreed. Hobson, do you have any ideas on how to prevent abuse as much as possible? Could we use something which is more reliable than a Twitter hashtag for filtering the tweets?
There, I think that covers the main points that have been raised so far? Feel free to make further comments on any of these matters, and I'll try to respond with a much shorter ping time now that I'm home and back in the loop! Thanks again for all of your thoughtful work to make Open Spaces ever more awesome. :)
Thanks again Brandon! I always appreciate reading your input :) Anna
On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 10:58 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote: Thank you, Ewa :)
--------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 11, 2017, at 4:27 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org <mailto:ewa@python.org>> wrote:
I have given Trey edit privileges on CMS pages just in case that is needed.
Best regards,
Ewa Director of Operations Python Software Foundation Cell: 415-319-5237 <tel:(415)%20319-5237> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 10:17 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote: Maybe there is a way to automate this as much as possible and keep monitoring of the bot at a minimum but still make sure we don’t get a bunch of spammy or CoC violating tweets. Would love to hear Hobson’s and Trey’s thoughts on this.
Trey, would you have time to help with the grid or could you let me know what the best way to do this is so I can create it myself?
Thank you! Anna
--------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 10, 2017, at 4:36 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org <mailto:ewa@python.org>> wrote:
I agree with Anna about the bot. I don't want you all to take on a work load that will make you uncomfortable onsite.
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 6:15 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote:
I support Trey’s idea of making more prominent on the website that the Open Spaces are an event that takes place parallel to the talks and isn’t an evening event like the PyLadies auction and the PyCon dinners for example. Adding a grid to the Open Spaces page, as well as moving the Open Spaces page from the Events to the Schedule tab, are both great ideas.
I think this makes perfect sense and I can help with that. Once you have a grid up and it looks like a schedule, I can definitely move it over to the Schedule tab.
_______________________________________________ Pycon-openspaces mailing list Pycon-openspaces@python.org <mailto:Pycon-openspaces@python.org> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces <https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces>
-- Brandon Rhodes PyCon 2016 Conference Chair pycon.brandon@gmail.com <mailto:pycon.brandon@gmail.com>
_______________________________________________ Pycon-openspaces mailing list Pycon-openspaces@python.org <mailto:Pycon-openspaces@python.org> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces <https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces>
On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 12:17 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote: [clipped]
- Who is responsible for the PyCon US Guidebook; i.e. who should we reach out to about this?
It is usually something I manage with the help of volunteers. You can email any requests to the ML: pycon-mobile-guide@python.org. We will begin working on it after all of the schedules are released.
Thank you, Ewa! :) --------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 16, 2017, at 8:11 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org> wrote:
On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 12:17 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote:
[clipped]
Who is responsible for the PyCon US Guidebook; i.e. who should we reach out to about this?
It is usually something I manage with the help of volunteers. You can email any requests to the ML: pycon-mobile-guide@python.org <mailto:pycon-mobile-guide@python.org>. We will begin working on it after all of the schedules are released.
Regarding the tweeter: * Open spaces organizers will have a throttle to limit the tweet rate/volume * Organizers will control a spam prefilter to minimize their curation effort * Anna is monitoring the development effort, helping to incorporate features suggested by PyCon organizers * We can tweet from whatever account pycon organizers would like Deciding a tweet-from account is important, but doesn't have to be made until after PyCon organziers have had a chance to test the tweeter on a private slack channel over an extended period of time, including pen testing the bot with spam/hack DMs on twitter. Possibilities for the twitter username include @pyconopenspaces or a name completely unassocciated with PyCon publicly, but completely under PyCon organizer control. And depending on the address, the tweets would be taylored to that account's content plan and would be under that account maintainer's control. --Hobson (503) 974-6274 gh <https://github.com/hobson/> twtr <https://twitter.com/hobsonlane> li <https://www.linkedin.com/in/hobsonlane> g+ <http://plus.google.com/+HobsonLane/> so <http://stackoverflow.com/users/623735/hobs> On Sun, Jan 15, 2017 at 4:51 PM, Brandon Rhodes <pycon.brandon@gmail.com> wrote:
Good evening, everyone! I am finally caught up after my whirlwind of holiday travel, and am now happily ensconced at home for the winter where I can now keep abreast of things and watch the weather forecast for snowstorms.
In no particular order, here are some responses to all of the great ideas that you have generated on this thread over the past week:
- I like the idea of having Guidebook make people aware of the Open Spaces! I am not exactly sure how that would fit into the app because I do not have enough experience of it to have a clear idea of how its navigation works, but I am happy that your committee will be looking into where Open Spaces will fit.
- A blog post is a great idea! We should aim for fairly close to the conference, since Open Spaces can't be scheduled far in advance — last year we did an April blog post, and that feels about right for this year as well.
- I agree that the printed schedule this year should somehow, if room permits, show that the Open Spaces happen in parallel with the talks. When we design the brochure, we'll show you the result and let you know whether it wound up fitting. And using the printed schedule will, I agree, be a more feasible approach than trying to have the registration people deliver the information to people who are busy registering and probably wouldn't absorb it anyway.
- Open Spaces can indeed continue during sprints; I have no problem with them overlapping.
- I agree that attendees need an introduction to the conference, and that the introduction should introduce Open Spaces! Last year I tried mentioning Open Spaces in my half-hour introduction to the conference, designed to let people know how to get the most out of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckW1xuGVpug
Fast forward to about 19:00 for the segment on Open Spaces. For 2017, I hope to do something similar, because I think that a reminder of everything that goes on at the conference is good for everyone, not just the smaller self-selected audience we would get if we only gave this information at a for-beginners event.
Please let me know how the Open Spaces segment can be improved to provide more context and to better situate them in attendees' minds as things that go on at the same time as the main talks schedule.
- I did wish last year that there was someone, or a group of volunteers instead of just one, who would tweet 15 minutes before every hour about what Open Spaces are happening. “Coming up in 15 minutes, Open Spaces on: Astronomy; SciPy; Hardware; Diversity” or something like that, based on walking by the board and reading the cards. I am not sure whether subscribers wlil want to hear N tweets about the N events per hour, and I am not sure that organizers will want to have to issue a tweet about their event (do they all even have Twitter?) in addition to getting a card up on the board. But I am not going to insist on any particular approach; there are lots of ways that Twitter and the Open Spaces could interact, and as long as it doesn't involve lots of tweets from the main conference Twitter account, I'm happy to have y'all on the committee experiment with whatever idea interests you most.
- I am not sure we should add a blank Open Spaces schedule to the Schedule drop-down on the site. (1) It would make organizers think they can sign up ahead of time, but they can't. (2) People would see it blank in the days before the conference and conclude that something was wrong, or that Open Spaces weren't really going to happen, because generally conferences only have schedule grids up because they have data to put in them.
I will, however, definitely plan to re-post my https://us.pycon.org/2016/events/ <https://us.pycon.org/2016/events/> “Overview” page again this year as we release the schedule and, as you can see, it (probably similarly to what you were thinking about the printed brochure?) depicts the Open Spaces as happening simultaneously with the Talks.
- The problem with a Twitter hashtag is that people might think they're supposed to subscribe to it if they're interested in Open Spaces, but you can't control the amount of abuse that is delivered by people who figure that out, because Twitter doesn't let you control what's tweeted under a hashtag.
There, I think that covers the main points that have been raised so far? Feel free to make further comments on any of these matters, and I'll try to respond with a much shorter ping time now that I'm home and back in the loop! Thanks again for all of your thoughtful work to make Open Spaces ever more awesome. :)
On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 10:58 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
Thank you, Ewa :)
--------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 11, 2017, at 4:27 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org> wrote:
I have given Trey edit privileges on CMS pages just in case that is needed.
Best regards,
Ewa Director of Operations Python Software Foundation Cell: 415-319-5237 <(415)%20319-5237>
On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 10:17 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
Maybe there is a way to automate this as much as possible and keep monitoring of the bot at a minimum but still make sure we don’t get a bunch of spammy or CoC violating tweets. Would love to hear Hobson’s and Trey’s thoughts on this.
Trey, would you have time to help with the grid or could you let me know what the best way to do this is so I can create it myself?
Thank you! Anna
--------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 10, 2017, at 4:36 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org> wrote:
I agree with Anna about the bot. I don't want you all to take on a work load that will make you uncomfortable onsite.
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 6:15 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
I support Trey’s idea of making more prominent on the website that the Open Spaces are an event that takes place parallel to the talks and isn’t an evening event like the PyLadies auction and the PyCon dinners for example. Adding a grid to the Open Spaces page, as well as moving the Open Spaces page from the Events to the Schedule tab, are both great ideas.
I think this makes perfect sense and I can help with that. Once you have a grid up and it looks like a schedule, I can definitely move it over to the Schedule tab.
_______________________________________________ Pycon-openspaces mailing list Pycon-openspaces@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces
-- Brandon Rhodes PyCon 2016 Conference Chair pycon.brandon@gmail.com
_______________________________________________ Pycon-openspaces mailing list Pycon-openspaces@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces
Thank you, Hobson!
On Jan 16, 2017, at 7:24 PM, Hobson Lane <hobsonlane@gmail.com> wrote:
Regarding the tweeter:
* Open spaces organizers will have a throttle to limit the tweet rate/volume * Organizers will control a spam prefilter to minimize their curation effort * Anna is monitoring the development effort, helping to incorporate features suggested by PyCon organizers * We can tweet from whatever account pycon organizers would like
Deciding a tweet-from account is important, but doesn't have to be made until after PyCon organziers have had a chance to test the tweeter on a private slack channel over an extended period of time, including pen testing the bot with spam/hack DMs on twitter. Possibilities for the twitter username include @pyconopenspaces or a name completely unassocciated with PyCon publicly, but completely under PyCon organizer control. And depending on the address, the tweets would be taylored to that account's content plan and would be under that account maintainer's control.
--Hobson (503) 974-6274 gh <https://github.com/hobson/> twtr <https://twitter.com/hobsonlane> li <https://www.linkedin.com/in/hobsonlane> g+ <http://plus.google.com/+HobsonLane/> so <http://stackoverflow.com/users/623735/hobs> On Sun, Jan 15, 2017 at 4:51 PM, Brandon Rhodes <pycon.brandon@gmail.com <mailto:pycon.brandon@gmail.com>> wrote: Good evening, everyone! I am finally caught up after my whirlwind of holiday travel, and am now happily ensconced at home for the winter where I can now keep abreast of things and watch the weather forecast for snowstorms.
In no particular order, here are some responses to all of the great ideas that you have generated on this thread over the past week: I like the idea of having Guidebook make people aware of the Open Spaces! I am not exactly sure how that would fit into the app because I do not have enough experience of it to have a clear idea of how its navigation works, but I am happy that your committee will be looking into where Open Spaces will fit.
A blog post is a great idea! We should aim for fairly close to the conference, since Open Spaces can't be scheduled far in advance — last year we did an April blog post, and that feels about right for this year as well.
I agree that the printed schedule this year should somehow, if room permits, show that the Open Spaces happen in parallel with the talks. When we design the brochure, we'll show you the result and let you know whether it wound up fitting. And using the printed schedule will, I agree, be a more feasible approach than trying to have the registration people deliver the information to people who are busy registering and probably wouldn't absorb it anyway.
Open Spaces can indeed continue during sprints; I have no problem with them overlapping.
I agree that attendees need an introduction to the conference, and that the introduction should introduce Open Spaces! Last year I tried mentioning Open Spaces in my half-hour introduction to the conference, designed to let people know how to get the most out of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckW1xuGVpug <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckW1xuGVpug>
Fast forward to about 19:00 for the segment on Open Spaces. For 2017, I hope to do something similar, because I think that a reminder of everything that goes on at the conference is good for everyone, not just the smaller self-selected audience we would get if we only gave this information at a for-beginners event.
Please let me know how the Open Spaces segment can be improved to provide more context and to better situate them in attendees' minds as things that go on at the same time as the main talks schedule.
I did wish last year that there was someone, or a group of volunteers instead of just one, who would tweet 15 minutes before every hour about what Open Spaces are happening. “Coming up in 15 minutes, Open Spaces on: Astronomy; SciPy; Hardware; Diversity” or something like that, based on walking by the board and reading the cards. I am not sure whether subscribers wlil want to hear N tweets about the N events per hour, and I am not sure that organizers will want to have to issue a tweet about their event (do they all even have Twitter?) in addition to getting a card up on the board. But I am not going to insist on any particular approach; there are lots of ways that Twitter and the Open Spaces could interact, and as long as it doesn't involve lots of tweets from the main conference Twitter account, I'm happy to have y'all on the committee experiment with whatever idea interests you most.
I am not sure we should add a blank Open Spaces schedule to the Schedule drop-down on the site. (1) It would make organizers think they can sign up ahead of time, but they can't. (2) People would see it blank in the days before the conference and conclude that something was wrong, or that Open Spaces weren't really going to happen, because generally conferences only have schedule grids up because they have data to put in them.
I will, however, definitely plan to re-post my https://us.pycon.org/2016/events/ <https://us.pycon.org/2016/events/> “Overview” page again this year as we release the schedule and, as you can see, it (probably similarly to what you were thinking about the printed brochure?) depicts the Open Spaces as happening simultaneously with the Talks.
The problem with a Twitter hashtag is that people might think they're supposed to subscribe to it if they're interested in Open Spaces, but you can't control the amount of abuse that is delivered by people who figure that out, because Twitter doesn't let you control what's tweeted under a hashtag. There, I think that covers the main points that have been raised so far? Feel free to make further comments on any of these matters, and I'll try to respond with a much shorter ping time now that I'm home and back in the loop! Thanks again for all of your thoughtful work to make Open Spaces ever more awesome. :)
On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 10:58 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote: Thank you, Ewa :)
--------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 11, 2017, at 4:27 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org <mailto:ewa@python.org>> wrote:
I have given Trey edit privileges on CMS pages just in case that is needed.
Best regards,
Ewa Director of Operations Python Software Foundation Cell: 415-319-5237 <tel:(415)%20319-5237> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 10:17 AM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote: Maybe there is a way to automate this as much as possible and keep monitoring of the bot at a minimum but still make sure we don’t get a bunch of spammy or CoC violating tweets. Would love to hear Hobson’s and Trey’s thoughts on this.
Trey, would you have time to help with the grid or could you let me know what the best way to do this is so I can create it myself?
Thank you! Anna
--------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 10, 2017, at 4:36 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org <mailto:ewa@python.org>> wrote:
I agree with Anna about the bot. I don't want you all to take on a work load that will make you uncomfortable onsite.
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 6:15 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote:
I support Trey’s idea of making more prominent on the website that the Open Spaces are an event that takes place parallel to the talks and isn’t an evening event like the PyLadies auction and the PyCon dinners for example. Adding a grid to the Open Spaces page, as well as moving the Open Spaces page from the Events to the Schedule tab, are both great ideas.
I think this makes perfect sense and I can help with that. Once you have a grid up and it looks like a schedule, I can definitely move it over to the Schedule tab.
_______________________________________________ Pycon-openspaces mailing list Pycon-openspaces@python.org <mailto:Pycon-openspaces@python.org> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces <https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces>
-- Brandon Rhodes PyCon 2016 Conference Chair pycon.brandon@gmail.com <mailto:pycon.brandon@gmail.com> _______________________________________________ Pycon-openspaces mailing list Pycon-openspaces@python.org <mailto:Pycon-openspaces@python.org> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces <https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pycon-openspaces>
On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 7:33 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
On Jan 6, 2017, at 3:46 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org> wrote:
On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 9:32 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de> wrote:
[clipped]
* 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.
The work flow for the website is once something is ready to launch, we add it to the website. This way things do not get overlooked and go "stale". If you would like to let me know what text you want on it, I can add the page for you. After that you will have edit rights so you can change whatever is needed. Attached is last year's text.
Thank you for clarifying the work flow, Ewa! I think we can just re-use the text from last year and I will update the little bits that need to be updated for this year as soon as it’s up on the website. Does that work?
I have added the text from 2016, but just edited the dates and removed the open spaces listed from 2016: https://us.pycon.org/2017/events/open-spaces/. It may take a few minutes for it to appear in the nav. [clipped]
I’d say let’s try it and see how people like it. If there’s no interest or we can’t do it again in following years due to limited space, that’s ok. Would it be possible to have the Open Spaces board up for the sprints too then?
Yes, we can keep the board for Monday-Thursday.
Thank you, Ewa! --------------------------------- You are appreciated. You are enough. You matter. You are not alone.
On Jan 9, 2017, at 4:30 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org> wrote:
On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 7:33 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote:
On Jan 6, 2017, at 3:46 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa@python.org <mailto:ewa@python.org>> wrote:
On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 9:32 PM, Anna Ossowski <ossanna16@gmx.de <mailto:ossanna16@gmx.de>> wrote:
[clipped]
* 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.
The work flow for the website is once something is ready to launch, we add it to the website. This way things do not get overlooked and go "stale". If you would like to let me know what text you want on it, I can add the page for you. After that you will have edit rights so you can change whatever is needed. Attached is last year's text.
Thank you for clarifying the work flow, Ewa! I think we can just re-use the text from last year and I will update the little bits that need to be updated for this year as soon as it’s up on the website. Does that work?
I have added the text from 2016, but just edited the dates and removed the open spaces listed from 2016: https://us.pycon.org/2017/events/open-spaces/ <https://us.pycon.org/2017/events/open-spaces/>. It may take a few minutes for it to appear in the nav.
[clipped]
I’d say let’s try it and see how people like it. If there’s no interest or we can’t do it again in following years due to limited space, that’s ok. Would it be possible to have the Open Spaces board up for the sprints too then?
Yes, we can keep the board for Monday-Thursday.
participants (5)
-
Anna Ossowski -
Brandon Rhodes -
Ewa Jodlowska -
Hobson Lane -
Trey Hunner