[Conferences-discuss] Crackle, crackle, "hello"...

[Andrew Kuchling]

On Wed, Feb 13, 2002 at 08:28:10AM -0500, Steve Holden wrote:
>It was certainly a surprise to me that only 250 or so (my own estimate)
>people turned up to Python 10, but older hands seemed to feel that this
>number is "typical". I suppose post-Sep11 there is some reason for it,

Python9 had 300-something attendees, so Python10 was a bit smaller,
but that's pretty good in the current climate.  Presumably the core
audience is small, but really committed.

>I understand Foretec have organized Python N for recent N. I certainly
>wondered how effective their marketing was, as I don't remember ever
>hearing anything about it on any non-Python channel. While there

Agreed.  Did *anyone* hear about Python10 through a non-Python
channel?  Especially given that the conference had two high-profile
keynote speakers who have name recognition, I was surprised that there
seemed to be so little publicity effort made outside of Python-related
mailing lists and user groups.  Foretec may be used to having a
captive market in the IETF that they don't really need to market to.

I'd suggest leaving the OSCON as the professional conference;
apparently O'Reilly does a reasonable job with them.  (I've never been
to OSCON, so that's just what I've heard.)  We don't need two
professionally run conferences, and instead we should encourage
smaller and cheaper grass-roots conferences, such as a Yet Another
Society conference, or Python tracks in related conferences, as was
done at the upcoming C/C++ Users Conference in Warwick, England.

(The nice thing about trying to encourage Python tracks at other
conferences is that someone else deals with arranging the hotel, food,
projectors, and similar things; we'd just have to worry about getting
programming, and making enough Pythonistas show up to make it worth
the effort for the hosting conference.  That's something of a
chicken-and-egg problem, though.)

--amk                                                  (www.amk.ca)
  "Money's not interesting -- too easy to get hold of."
  "Too many stupid people have it."
    -- Two moviegoers, in Peter Greenaway's _8 1/2 Women_