[Conferences] Organizing PyCon in Spain

[Jesse Noller]

I started to flesh this all out finally, thanks for the kick in the pants diana:  

https://from-python-import-conference.readthedocs.org/en/latest/  


On Tuesday, November 20, 2012 at 12:45 PM, Diana Clarke wrote:

> Hello from Canada!
>  
> We just finished hosting the first PyCon Canada. It was similar in
> size (~275 attendees, ~50 speakers, 2 tracks) to what you're looking
> to host in Spain.
>  
> http://2012.pycon.ca/
>  
> At some point, I should write down our lessons learned, but off the
> top of my head here are some notes:
>  
> 1) We modeled PyCon Canada after PyCon USA. They've been doing this
> for years now, and there's a lot you can just copy. I copied a ton,
> and they didn't seem to mind ;)
>  
> 2) Code of Conduct: PyCon USA has a code of conduct, and so should you
> (in my humble opinion). We modified it a bit; you should feel free to
> do the same (to reflect your local norms and community). Make sure
> your communications (twitter, email, etc) to attendees and speakers
> make your code of conduct well known in advance. Encourage speakers to
> check with your board if they are even a little bit uncertain about
> the content of their slides and talks. You don't want your conference
> to end up on Hacker News for all the wrong reasons (example:
> http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/CouchDB_talk).
>  
> https://us.pycon.org/2012/codeofconduct/
>  
> They even have instructions on how to deal with code of conduct
> incidents, so that you're not caught of guard. Train your volunteers
> before the conference about your code of conduct. Have printed copies
> of these documents on hand for you and your staff at the event.
>  
> https://us.pycon.org/2013/about/code-of-conduct/harassment-incidents-staff/
> https://us.pycon.org/2013/about/code-of-conduct/harassment-incidents/
>  
> 2) Team: PyCon Canada had a board of three that were responsible for
> making decisions. We created a non-profit association, so that we
> could open a business banking account for the conference. Only the
> board members had access to the bank account. In addition to the
> board, we also had a core group of organizers (about 5 people) who
> attended all of our planning meetings. It took months to put together,
> and even then we made mistakes. We met every second week for the first
> few months, every week for the last month, and every day leading up to
> the event. It takes hours and hours of volunteer work to pull a
> conference off. Consider yourself warned! It's worth it though!
>  
> 3) Roles: Each organizer and board member was responsible for
> something: volunteers (we needed about 25 in addition to our team),
> raising money (sponsors), audio/video (check out
> http://nextdayvideo.com/ and the results
> http://pyvideo.org/category/25/pycon-ca-2012), catering (expensive),
> the print schedule and program (also really expensive), the conference
> website (talk submission form, online schedule, etc), internet/wifi at
> the venue, finding a venue (was hard for us), negotiations with the
> conference hotel, registration (we used https://guestlistapp.com/),
> communications (lots of twitter, we also emailed all attendees once a
> week, in the final weeks, with announcements, surprise speakers,
> information about the hotel, code of conduct etc), etc...
>  
> 4) Costs: Everybody pays to attend PyCon USA, even speakers and the
> organizers. We decided to do the same. We set the ticket price low
> ($75), but high enough so that if we didn't end up being able to raise
> money from sponsors, we would be at least able to cover our basic
> costs (renting the venue, renting audio equipment, etc). As we started
> to get sponsors, we added nice-to-haves (free lunch for attendees,
> video, print program, stickers, t-shirts, airfare for invited
> speakers, etc). We didn't do a good job at making sure people knew in
> advance that "everybody pays", which resulted in some awkward email
> exchanges between speakers and organizers after talk selection was
> complete. Whatever you decide, make sure your decision is clear. Some
> PyCons have a "nobody pays" policy, but you might find that people
> scoop up your tickets and then not actually attend.
>  
> http://jessenoller.com/2011/05/25/pycon-everybody-pays/
>  
> 5) Tickets: We doubled the ticket price ($150) for companies that were
> sending employees. Individuals that were paying for themselves paid
> $75. Students paid $25. We also had a start-up ticket price ($350)
> that included some special advertising perks to bolster our local
> start-up scene. We kept announcing on twitter etc how many tickets
> were remaining (75%, 50%, 25%, 10%, 0%) etc to drive early ticket
> sales. We also announced our invited speakers and keynotes in advance
> to drive ticket sales. We sold-out about a month in advance. Knowing
> the number of attendees in advance, rather than having last-minute
> sign-ups, made planning so much easier. If your capacity is limited
> (our was, by fire-code), make sure *everyone* has a ticket, even if
> its just a placeholder for people like media, volunteers,
> photographers, sponsors at their booth (if you decide to have booths),
> etc.
>  
> 6) Sponsors: We created a sponsorship prospectus similar to the PyCon
> USA prospectus. Our top sponsorship slot was $10,000 (much lower than
> the USA number). Most of our sponsorships came from local companies
> that were looking to hire developers or were supporting their
> employees that were attending or speaking at PyCon Canada. Big names
> (like mozilla, google, etc) were also really supportive and generous.
> You'll need to give these larger companies a bit more time to process
> your request for sponsorship. You can also ask the PSF for a donation
> (http://www.python.org/psf/). Our sponsors
> (http://2012.pycon.ca/sponsors) paid us by cheque, and paypal. Like
> PyCon USA, we announced our sponsors on twitter, included their logos
> in our online and print material, and offered our top sponsors a booth
> at the event.
>  
> https://us.pycon.org/2012/sponsors/prospectus/
>  
> 8) Schedule: You and your board are responsible for the curation of
> your schedule. You do not need to stick to a strict voting system
> (which often reinforces the status quo). If you want 25% of your
> speakers to be Spanish: make it happen! If you want 20% of your
> speakers to be female: make it happen! If you want 20% of your talks
> to be academic: make it happen! If you do your homework, hunting down
> great speakers from groups that are otherwise underrepresented in our
> Python community, none of these speakers will be "token" or
> "unworthy". Obviously, you should not just put your friends and
> sponsors up on stage, but otherwise you get to decide as a team what
> your goals are, and then work toward them.
>  
> 7) Diversity: From day one, diversity was one of our goals. Google
> kindly provided us with $500 diversity grants to help more women
> attend PyCon Canada. Google even sent a gift for each of the
> recipients. I strongly encourage you to contact them. When we found
> that very few women were submitting talk proposals, we reached out
> individually to women and encouraged them to submit talks. The PSF,
> PyLadies, etc helped us spread the word about the grants, and
> encouraged women to submit talks. We also made sure that the invited
> keynotes and speakers included women and people working in different
> fields (http://2012.pycon.ca/learn). Oops, that page title should
> really be "Invited Speakers". Anyway, your invited speakers and
> keynotes set the tone for your conference. Diversity is obviously
> about more than just women -- we did our best to offer financial
> assistance to *anyone* that asked (even if it was just a small
> amount). This brought in attendees from India, Argentina, and beyond.
>  
> 8) Talks: People learn in different ways. Some people get a lot out of
> listening to talks, others need a more hands-on approach. We had 5
> minute lightning talks, 20 minute talks, 45 minute talks, tutorials
> (hours long), and sprints (two days, totally hands-on, open source
> work). I wish we had had more tutorials. Two 20 minute talks with a 5
> minute setup break in between worked out well for us. It meant both
> tracks had breaks at the same time (20min + 20min + 5min = 45min). We
> encouraged attendees to commit to both 20 minute talks in the 45
> minute window, and tried to make sure we paired 20 minute talks that
> complimented each other. The 5 minute and 20 minute talks also proved
> to be a good way to increase the diversity of the conference. People
> who were intimidated at the prospect of giving a 45 minute talk and
> would have otherwise said no to us, were more easily convinced to
> speak when given shorter talk options. First time speakers, students,
> people new to Python, speakers who's first language wasn't English,
> were just some of the people these shorter talk slots appealed to.
>  
> 9) Lightning Talks: We confirmed our lightning talks in advance just
> like normal 20 minute and 45 minute talks. Note that PyCon USA does
> not do this. At PyCon USA, there is a lottery for who gets to give
> lightning talks once everyone is already at PyCon. We decided to
> confirm the talks in advance so that a) we were sure people knew what
> made a good lightning talk b) so that we had lightning talks - I was
> terrified we'd have dead air time c) because lightning talks have
> become really popular at PyCon USA and I found that people were really
> disappointed when their name didn't end up being drawn; especially
> after having spent the time preparing the content and slides d) to
> increase the diversity of speakers.
>  
> 10) Conference Site: We decided to build our own conference website.
> In hindsight, this was probably a mistake. And totally my fault (I
> felt like building something just for fun), but running a PyCon has
> very little to do with code: it's management, management, management.
> And email, *so* much email. You'll have enough to worry about, as it
> is. If I were to do it over again, I probably would have used the same
> code PyCon USA uses (https://github.com/pinax/symposion).
>  
> And I could go on and on... it was such an incredible learning experience.
>  
> I apologize if this email isn't very clear -- it was written very
> quickly. I should follow-up with "10 things we did wrong" ;)
>  
> Feel free to ping me with questions.
>  
> Good luck!
>  
> --diana
>  
> PyCon Canada 2012 Chair
>  
> On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 4:37 PM, Juan Luis Cano Rodríguez
> <juanlu001 at gmail.com (mailto:juanlu001 at gmail.com)> wrote:
> > Hello everybody, my name is Juan Luis Cano, I am an engineering student
> > passionate about Python and I am willing to organize the first PyCon in my
> > country, Spain.
> >  
> > Actually it is not the first time someone comes up with this, but in the end
> > the people get tired and this never gets done. I am too enthusiastic, I have
> > been diving into the Python ecosystem more and more and I have the means to
> > achive this goal.
> >  
> > We are thinking of stablishing a formal association country-wide, but if it
> > is too much of a mess we will try to rely on existing non-profit
> > organizations to organize the event.
> >  
> > We expect around 200 people, will to set 2 tracks (basic and advanced) and
> > we intend to celebrate the conference by october-november 2013.
> >  
> > Someone actually had contacted the PSF before so we already have the
> > es.pycon.org (http://es.pycon.org) domain ready for hosting a promotion website.
> >  
> > We are already promoting the upcoming event on Twitter (@Pybonacci,
> > @pycon_es) and working in the mailing list python-es.
> >  
> > I will read carefully the advice given to others in this mailing list (just
> > not to repeat the same questions), but any kind of help will be much
> > appreciated.
> >  
> > Best regards,
> >  
> > Juan Luis Cano
> >  
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