[EuroPython] Results from meeting

[Jacob Hallen]

Here are the minutes from the meeting Tursday, 20 January 2005.

I have simply added the decisions to the list of items previously published.

> 1. Dates
> Monday 27 June - Wednesday 29 June 2005

Agreed.

> 2. Arrangements
> Lunches, pub and banquet similar to last year. Laura talks to new caterer
> for banquet.

Agreed.

> 3. Rooms
> VA (150), VB(150), VR (180) and VG (70) to be reserved. (see last years
> site map)
> The big auditorium will probably not be available before 1800. I suggest
> extending the lunch break to 1.5 hours, to make better use of the time.

Agreed. If we have a large increase in attendants, we will swap VG for alarger 
room.

> 4. Keynote speakers
> We invite Guido again.
> We invite Adele Goldberg.

Agreed.

> 5. Key points in time
> This is my proposed timetable. Does anyone want to change anything, or add
> more time specifics?
>
> - 31 January - Call for talks and call for papers opens
>
> - 28 February - last day to submit proposals for refereed papers
>
> - 15 March - Registration opens
>
> - 30 April - last day to submit talk propsals
>
> - 15 May - last day of Early-bird registration
>
> - 17 June - last day of pre-registration

Call for talks and call for papers  delayed. We will plan a mini-sprint to get 
the website done to the extent that it has enough content to handle call for 
proposals. Preliminary date for this: Tuesday 1 February.

Other dates accepted.

> 6. Sponsors
> I suggest we keep the same sponsorship costs as last year.

Agreed.

> 7. Track chairs
> My current list of track chairs looks as follows. Please tell me if your
> name is not on the list, but should be there, or if it is on the list and
> shouldn't.
>
> As you can see, we still have vacancies in Applications and Zope lightning
> talks.
>
> Tutorials/Neopythes
> Harald Armin Massa
> Harald Armin Massa <ghum at gmx.net>
>
> Python Language
> Michael Hudson
> Michael Hudson <mwh at python.net>
>
> Python Frameworks
> Jeremiah Foster
> Jeremiah Foster <jeremiah.foster at gmail.com>
>
> Zope/Plone
> Paul Everitt
> Paul Everitt <paul at zope-europe.org>
>
> Business
> John Pinner
> John Pinner <john at clocksoft.com>
>
> Applications
> Vacant
>
> Refereed papers
> Armin Rigo
> Armin Rigo <arigo at tunes.org>
>
> Science
> Nicolas Chauvat
> Nicolas Chauvat <Nicolas.Chauvat at logilab.fr>
>
> Social skills/General topics
> Beatrice Fontaine
> Beatrice Fontaine <bea at webwitches.com>
>
> Education
> Aroldo Souza-Leite
> "Aroldo Souza-Leite" <asouzaleite at gmx.de>
>
> Lightning talks
> Anna Ravenscroft
> Anna Ravenscroft <rev_anna_r at yahoo.com>
>
> Zope Lightning talks
> Vacant

Michael Hudson is replaced by Samuele Pedroni as the Python Language chair.

> 8. Breakfast
> We can get breakfast at the student union for SEK 50/person and day (~5.50
> Euro). This would include coffee, tea, juice, yoghurt, cheese sandwich and
> ham sandwich. Do we want this? If we have to increase our prices remains an
> open question. We may save enough on cheaper locations.

We will not include breakfast in the conference price. However, we will ask 
the student union to stay open for breakfast, and are willing to post a 
guarantee for minimum turnover.

> 9. Price structure
> I suggest we keep the same general structure as last year. I would like to
> add the following though:
> - Speakers who pay after the earlybird cutoff pay an extra 10 Euro.
> - Speakers who pay at the conference pay an extra 50 Euro.
>
> Motivation: People paying late add uncertainty and there is no real need
> for speakers to pay late. People paying at the conference is a real bother
> and have to pay a steep premium for being that late. There were several
> speakers paying at the conference last year and they were a hassle.

Agreed.

> 10. Refunds
> We did not have a refund policy last year, which was something that bit
> me.I had controversies with a couple of people. I would like to suggest
> that we have a policy of refunding everything except an administrative fee
> of 20 Euro for cancellations more than 30 days before the conference and
> make no refundds for cancellations later than that. We will allow switches
> of person attending until the time of arrival at the conference. This is
> slightly more generous than most other conferences.

Agreed.

> 11. Cheques
> Cheques are a big bother. We can either say that we don't accept cheques or
> we can attach a 100 Euro administrative fee to them. Our bank charges about
> 50 Euro for cacheing a foreign cheque, and it normally takes an hour of
> queueing to get to do it at all.

We will not accept cheques.

> 12. Website
> The website structure should be ready to be filled with contents. We should
> arrange a short sprint when we get together a number of people and get it
> done. Suggestions for a suitable time appreciated.

Comments were made on the picture on the first page taking up too much space.

Sprint to be carried out. More on this later.

> 13. Registration system
> The registration system is ready for demonstration. I intend to hand out
> demo accounts and give everyone a quick walkthrough before the end of the
> meeting. You can then do your best to trash the demo system for a few days
> before we set up the real thing and go live. The registration system still
> needs to plug into the web payment system, but we have some time before
> that has to be finished.

The registration system was presented. Test accounts available for interested 
parties. You can test the registration procedure at 
http://pbf.strakt.com:8080/

Some things need to be fixed/added:
- All the tracks think they are the tutorials track.
- Old data gets put in as defaults
- When you have put in your registration data there will be options for paying 
by credit card, SWIFT/IBAN or to defer payment. In the first case, you will 
be directed to the credit card payment site. In the second case, you get a 
payment code. In the third case, you will get instructions about how you can 
return and pay later. (No, you can't register at early-bird rate, defer and 
pay the lower rate at a later point in time.)

> 14. Budget
> I still need to make a revised budget. There are some small adjustments
> that should be made, but I'm actually quite proud of the budget I made last
> year. We were not badly on the wrong side anywhere and the reason we have
> money in the bank is mainly because our keynote speakers were a lot cheaper
> than budgeted, and that we actually had many more people paying at the door
> than we expected. Since we can't rely on either of those factors, we should
> not try to make a tighter budget this year.

Budget is still an outstanding issue.

> 15. Report on email sent to all of last years attendees
> I wrote a better script for the mass emails. About 20 emails bounced. I
> will groom the list. Two volunteers for the Education track showed up. Two
> people sent messages saying that they wanted to be speakers and were
> looking forward to registration opening.

Some more feedback has come in.

Next meeting will be some time in the first week of February.

Jacob Hallén