[EuroPython] Sprints

[Laura Creighton]

When I originally proposed this, I thought the conference was going
to have a somewhat different focus -- ie, we were going to invite a
lot of local businesses, and then the business track would show them
Python, and why it is a good idea.  Instead, we have a hackers
conference, where the business track is more about 'teaching hackers
who have any interest in business the things they want to learn'.
At least this is the way I am reading things -- correct me if this
is wrong or merely obsolete -- I know how things change.

The successful Sprint I was involved with in the past was arranged by
hackers who were freelance consultants, with the express purpose of
gfetting us more business.  So we targetted companies we thought would
have busines we wanted and told them to come with the sort of thing
that they thought should take a team of 4 people about 6 hours.  Not
knowing what the hell they were going to propose was part of the
charm.  We got attendees who came because they expected to see us fall
on our faces and wanted to see the blood.  Being able to reject things
out of hand was also a possibility, and one we warned about.  As it
was we rejected one, but I forget why.  Then four teams made open
source solutions to whatever the people wanted.  I only remember what
I did -- a driver for some weird disk thing that was going to be the
next great storage media and which nobody has heard of since.

It worked great.  I got lots of work teaching how to write device
drivers, and other people got work doing the things they wanted to do.

But this conference apears to be a different sort of fish.  If you
plan on having the Sprint before the conference, then I almost
certainly cannot run it.  This notion that some of you have that 'oh
well, people can always come a few days earlier' isn't true for all of
us.  It is not clear to me that people are going to want to go to a
conference _after_ a Sprint -- we wanted the papers first, and then
the Sprint second at any rate.  Falling asleep in the middle of your
paper because you were hacing late all night would never do.  However,
all of this is moot.  While some people want to do a Python-Zope
Sprint, nobody appears to want to do a Python-for-businesses Sprint.
At least as far as I know.

Laura Creighton