[Conferences-discuss] EuroPython

[Martijn Faassen]

Hi there,

I was the first instigator of the EuroPython initiative, a Python conference
to be held in Belgium the end of june. I thought it would be a good idea
to have a conference here for some of the same reasons I've
been hearing on the list; IPC is rather far away for Europeans, and
besides the travelling cost also quite expensive. And there's a *lot*
of Python activity going on in Europe. Seeing what happened at the last
Zope meeting (over a 100 people showed up, and there would've been more
if there wasn't a cap to it), the turnout can't be that terrible. So, Europe 
should be able to support a conference. With some luck (which we've been
having; the venue will be sponsored by local authorities, plus of course
all the volunteer activity) we hope to keep the costs relatively low.

We also discussed the option to join an existing meeting (such as LinuxTag
in Germany, or the Libre Software Meeting), and while that's an easy and
cheap option, it doesn't really help Python's profile if there's no
independent conference (but that doesn't exclude Python gatherings at
such events, of course).

So the EuroPython volunteers are just a few months ahead in this process.
We've got a raw wiki with some of our thoughts:

http://www.europython.org/wiki

as well as a currently very active mailing list:

http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/europython

Anyway, there's all this overlap, so I just wanted to speak up. Should
be some synergy there..

Finally, already EuroPython 2002 is likely to be a lot more international than
the International Python Conference ever was. So speaking at a devil's advocate
you all should consider moving the whole IPC to Europe for the next couple
of years. ;)

But-I'm-certainly-not-organizing-the-whole-thing-ly yours,

Martijn