[Conferences-discuss] Various issues

[Jacob Hallén]

Motivation:
Why do we have a Python conference and why do people attend?
I think there are several reasons. One is that Guido and the PythonLabs 
people need to meet the Python community to get input and to explain 
what is going on. Another is to give people doing cool things in Python 
to show them off to others, thereby helping others to come up with new 
cool ideas, attracting a community around their project or marketing 
themselves. Other reasons are to give people an opportunity to build 
social networks, pick up the vibrations in the community, do business, 
infuence the future development, recruit etc. Finally, there is the 
evangelism aspect. We want to attract more people to the language and we 
want to give people the chance to see where we stand by attending the 
conference.

Personally, I thing that we should have one conference a year where the 
evangelism factor is low. This is the time and place where those who are 
already in the community meet and discuss matters of importance. I think 
it should be a Python only event to reduce the distractions around it 
and to increase the chances of making useful contacts. The OSCON is 
nice, but finding the Python people outside the sessions is well-nigh 
impossible. OSCON may also be a good place to have evangelism type 
talks, because you have a lot of people who are there for other reasons 
and who would enjoy learning more about Python.
For the pure Python conference, I think that the current format, with a 
tutorials day, two conference days and a developers day is rather 
reasonable. However, I would prefer to move the lightning talks t the 
conference day and have a single track on the developers day. Having a 
'hackfest' on the day after the developers day would probably work too. 
People could choose what to attend. One thing that I do question is the 
keynote speakers. From my point of view, the ones we had this year were 
fun to see and hear, but they didn't really add anything useful.

Papers:
I think that having a paper track is useful. At IPC10, it was the track 
that had the highest quality of presentation and the lowest redundancy 
factor.
Getting a quality print is fairly easy. You require the authors submit 
print-ready PDF files. This means that you don't get correct page 
numbers (unless you make a little hack to the PDF, I used to know how to 
do that), but it has a very small cost.
You may want to make the printed papers (and the CD) optional for the 
attendees. If the printing costs $10, give a $5 reduction of the fee. 
Then only the people who really want the papers will request them. You 
get a shorter print run with less lead time, though a slightly higher 
per-copy cost.

Costs:
The IPC10 made a significant dent in the travel budget of my company. We 
had 2 persons there. Since we were travelling from Europe, we decided to 
make as much use of our travelling time and stayed for the full 4 days. 
Conference and hotel set us back a total of $3400. This is way more than 
the actual cost of getting there. Making savings by staying at a cheaper 
hotel would have been a major hassle and would have diminished our 
ability to socialize and make informal contacts.
One thing that amazed me was that Fortec charges a full conference fee 
for attendees who present papers. I think that is biting the hand that 
feeds you.

My impression of the people at the conference was that most of them 
would not mind somewhat more primitive facilities, and I am rather sure 
that quite a few members of the Python community did not attend because 
of cost constraints. The fact that attendance was lower than last year 
while the Python community has grown is an indicator of this.
I don't think a shoestring budget conference is what we need, but I 
think we could bring down the costs for the conference by nearly an 
order of magnitude and reduce hotel costs for people considerably. I 
have experience with arranging 1200 people games conventions with 
volunteer staff (mostly teenagers) and a real shoestring budget (under 
$50/ person for 3 days including venue, food, printed materials and a 
floor to sleep on). By planning well ahead and dividing the work between 
many people, nobody has a big work burden. I am not suggesting that we 
should go to such extremes, just pointing out that if your attendees 
have a very small amount of money, it can be done.

Jacob Hallén