[EuroPython] EP 2004 decision rather quickly?

[Magnus Lyckå]

At 18:18 2003-07-04 +0200, Tom Deprez wrote:
>As a matter of fact, Denis is already putting resources and money in
>this since before EPC2003. He has contacted lawyers (who have experience
>in the open-source world) for advice. As a matter of fact a lawyer
>already responded, but due to the conference busyness it wasn't possible
>to work further on it.

Is the intent to make this a commercial company or a
non-profit organization? (In Sweden I think it's unheard
of that a lawyer is involved to form a small non-profit
organization, so this sounds a bit odd to me, but maybe
that's just Sweden being unusually uncomplicated in this
regard--or the Swedish people being unusually used to
organizing themselves in clubs and associations.)

To me it would be very odd to make a commercial company
that relies on lots of work by unpaid people.

I would like to know where Europython is heading, or rather,
where Denis wants it to head now.

As I see it, we can have a community conference, much like today,
where people work unpaid, or on salary by their normal employer
if the employer decides to sponsor the event in that way.

Fees basically cover conference rooms, catering and other
direct expenses, but not any salaries to the involved people
from the Python community.

The other option would be an entirely commercial event, where
the fees should cover all the work done by the arrangers. That
will probably raise the conference fee to around 500 euros per
day, at least that's a fairly typical fee here. You all know
these types of things I guess. I think the event would need to
be bigger than today though, and I honestly don't think that
will happen if fees jump up like that.

I've been attending many big community based events, some that
were in the same location every year, and others that rotated
all over Sweden. In all successful cases, there have been some
continuity, with at least partly the same people being involved
over the years. In the case of rotating events, there have been
some central staff that has assisted the local arrangers, and
probably some local members that have done it before (15 years
earlier or so...)

I imagine it might be trickier to rotate it between countries,
and since we don't have any "staff", the local arrangers would
be more left on their own. If the hosts of the event have
prior experience from arranging similar events, this might not
be a problem, but I'm not sure how often we will be able to
find such people. It is very fortunate that both Dario and
several Strakt people have prior (and as I understand completely
independent) experience of arranging these kinds of events at
Chalmers University of Technology.

I don't know how likely it is that we will be able to find such
people in a new spot every year or every other year. Obviously,
an event like Europython consists of several parts. It should
hopefully not be so difficult to get some continuity in things
like taking care of a web site, or chairing a track. I assume
the tricky part will be the local arrangements, with conference
rooms, catering etc etc, since this will have to involve a whole
new set of people when the event moves to a new location. (I
don't think ther will ever be Europython nomads. ;) I suppose
some parts, such as marketing and sponsoring have both local and
"global" aspects.

Hm... I think I've left the subject I started with and ventured
into something else. Again! Oh well, I'll stop here.


--
Magnus Lycka (It's really Lyckå), magnus@thinkware.se
Thinkware AB, Sweden, www.thinkware.se
I code Python ~ The Agile Programming Language