Mailman 3 June 2012 - PyCon-ZA

QA site up!
by Simon Cross June 30, 2012

June 30, 2012

Greetings Euan from Unomena mailed me to say the QA site is up -- http://pycon.qa.unomena.net. Let us know what you think. Euan's given me access to the repo so I can deploy to the za.pycon.org site once we're ready. Schiavo Simon

1 0

Recent PyCon ZA activity
by Simon Cross June 22, 2012

June 22, 2012

Greetings Wendy from Speakers Corner has been hard at work canvassing venues and drawing up a budget for us. Lauren, Sam and I looked at The (BMW) Pavilion this afternoon. It looks like an awesome venue for PyCon and hopefully we'll get a concrete budget and a yes or a no from Gustav over the weekend or early next week. I also want to make everyone aware that some of the plans are being changed to fit the venue and budget requirements. It's nothing too drastic -- I just don't want anyone to be taken by surprise if what we present to the list early next week isn't exactly what's in the planning document. I'd liked to have included more people in the discussions but given now quickly we're trying to get this off the ground, it's not really possible. I've drafted a letter to send to sponsors and we'll also be drafting a letter to send to potential big-name speakers. Expect a flurry of activity on these fronts early next week. Contacting sponsors and speakers is something that people on the list can potentially really help with -- if there's a company or speaker you can help us get hold of -- please shout. Speaking of speakers, obviously budget for flying international speakers here is going to be fairly limited, so we need some sort of decision making process that will allow us to okay this sort of expenditure. I think a small sub-committee (say three people) is sensible way to do this? Euan and Ruan: Could you given us an update on how the website is doing? I know you don't have all the final information yet but I'd like to get your thoughts on how soon after giving you a date and venue the site can go live and whether there's anything else blocking you? Schiavo Simon

2 2

Re: [pycon-za] PyConZA Design Discussion
by Simon Cross June 18, 2012

June 18, 2012

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 9:30 AM, Jonathan McKay <jonathan.mckay(a)praekelt.com> wrote: > Simon, can you chat with Sam and/or Gustav and confirm what info we want to > capture from potential speakers and who that notification should go to? The answer to this depends a bit on what direction Ruan and Euan are taking initially. If the plan is to get something really minimal up first (i.e. just a form which captures somethings and emails them to someone) then we need a very short speaker's biography. The PyCon US site captures: name, email address, one paragraph biography, photo and twitter username. For extra cool points we can probably add GitHub and Bitbucket account names. >From that we could probably drop the photo -- the rest is easy enough to keep. Eventually though we need a simple system for managing speakers and their talks and perhaps allowing reviewers to give feedback. The PyCon US talk descriptions contain: title, kind (tutorial or talk), subject area, audience level, duration (probably not relevant for us because the current plan is to have standard length talks -- we'll need to sort out what that length is though), short description (publicized if talk accepted), abstract (detailed description, used by reviewers to evaluate talk, publicized if talk accepted), additional notes (anything else you like to alert the conferences organizers or reviewers about). If we're just doing an email form at first, I guess speaker information could be emailed to me -- that should be a manageable volume. Suggestions with fewer single-points-of-failure welcomed though. > Same for the 'register your interest' - this is assuming, of course, that > you're managing this???? For 'register your interest' we just need a way to ping the person once there is an actual way to register. So I guess a name and email address. Something we need to consider for both speakers and attendees is the possibility of offering financial assistance. That's heavily budget dependent though. Maybe just a "I'd like to apply for financial assistance" flag would be sufficient? Schiavo Simon

1 0

Revised design from Andrew
by Simon Cross June 15, 2012

June 15, 2012

Greetings I received a revised design from Andrew this morning (see attached). Any last thoughts? Schiavo Simon

4 5

PyConZA splash page design
by Simon Cross June 14, 2012

June 14, 2012

Greetings Andrew Caldwell from Unomena has produced two variations on a design for the PyCON ZA website front page. I quite like the designs but I'd like to get feedback from anyone else with opinions (preferably today). Images of the design attached (assuming the mailing list didn't eat them). Schiavo Simon

6 5

Bank account
by Simon Cross June 8, 2012

June 8, 2012

Greetings Ruan pointed out to me that we're going to need a bank account to sponsorship and registration fees to go into. CTPUG doesn't have one currently. If CTPUG is going to get one, we need to get moving on it fairly fast. Anyone know what is required for an organization like CTPUG to get a bank account? We could probably route sponsorship funds via the Python Software Foundation if needed, but that's likely not an option for registration fees. Would really like advice from someone who has done this kind of thing before or knows something about organizational finance. Schiavo Simon

3 3

Welcome to Euan and Ruan from Unomena
by Simon Cross June 6, 2012

June 6, 2012

Greetings I just wanted to welcome Euan Jonker and Ruan Zeelie from Unomena to the planning mailing list and to introduce them to everyone else. Unomena have very kindly offered to help make za.pycon.org into an awesome conference site. The three of us met at the Unomena offices this afternoon and I just wanted to minute the important outcomes here in case anyone else would like to comment: * Unomena are sponsoring the creation of the conference website. * Euan and Ruan felt more comfortable dropping Symposion and start a fresh Django site. Since Symposion is a bit incomplete and I trust Euan and Ruan's judgement on this, I told them I'm happy with that. * Website deployment will be via a repository that CTPUG will check out to za.pycon.org (so Unomena don't need to worry about or have access to the server). * We can't launch until we have confirmed the venue and the date (and changing the date from the 4 & 5 Oct might mean changing some design elements). * The elements of the site we need at launch are a great front page, a way to register for the conference (or at least pre-register) and a way to submit talk proposals. Schiavo Simon

2 1

Welcome to Jonathan Hitchcock
by Simon Cross June 6, 2012

June 6, 2012

Greetings I just wanted to welcome Jonathan Hitchcock to the mailing list. He ran ScaleConf recently. It was a similar size to what we're aiming for for PyCon ZA and also in Cape Town so I think he'll be able to offer a lot of practical insight. Schiavo Simon

1 0

Sponsor, Speakers and some general ideas
by Graeme Glass June 1, 2012

June 1, 2012

Good day, The company I work for, Go2Africa [1], is keen to sponsor pycon-za. This sponsorship would be in the form of our expertise in helping international and domestic delegates to find appropriate accommodation. Go2Africa would find the best and most cost-effective accommodation, prepare travel plans, and offer travel advice where required. We would also like to offer a fully paid (or seriously discounted) Safari for the keynote speaker. If not fully sponsored, then perhaps pycon-za could pay for the discounted rate as a gift? Then, I trust that you won't mind if I add my 2cents to the planning conversation: In terms of Keynote, I saw that Paul Graham's name was suggested. PG is a fantastic speaker [2], but perhaps consider a speaker who is more involved in core Python development? Tim Peters, Alex Martelli, Raymond Hettinger are all excellent speakers – however, I imagine that the choice all comes down to aligning the speaker with the goal of the conference. I'm sure that these goals include promoting python's use in South African companies and up-skilling people in Python development. I also noticed that you are considering multiple tracks. May I suggest you consider a one-track event, especially for the first Conference? Single-track conferences tend to be easier to organise, and delegates don't have to make difficult choices between the great talks on offer. Have you finalised the venue? See you at CTPUG on Saturday. Have a great day. Best, Graeme [1] http://www.go2africa.com [2] http://blog.metricfire.com/2012/03/paul-graham-consistently-says-um-7-times…

4 5

Good morning everyone
by Maciej Fijalkowski June 1, 2012

June 1, 2012

Hello everyone Inroducing myself - I'm Maciej Fijalkowski and I work on the PyPy project. I can help organizing pycon za with caring for international speakers. I also know quite a few people who we can invite as international speakers, although it would be cool to find out who is interesting and what sort of money we have for flying people in. Cheers, fijal

1 0