[EuroPython] Honesty in Advertising

[Paul Boddie]

Hello,

I saw just now that the issue of proprietary vs. open source development (and 
whether the things being presented are available for public or even 
source-level perusal or not) had come up with respect to at least one of the 
talks at PyCon [1], and after various similar comments about at least one 
EuroPython talk last year, I was wondering if there should be some kind of 
stipulation that EuroPython talks should advertise the nature of the 
solutions being presented. Various people noted, after one of the EuroPython 
talks, that to sit through 30 minutes of what ultimately proved to be 
advertising virtually amounted to dishonesty on the part of the presenter. If 
getting involved in some interesting technology is a priority for attendees 
(and this is a community conference after all) then some more openness about 
such things is necessary, in my opinion.

Another thing that came to mind was the availability of papers and 
presentations: given that the conferences are a good way of presenting the 
state of the community, should more be done to insist that presenters make 
their materials available to those not attending the conference, and should 
the availability of materials be more widely promoted? There have been 
several occasions where I've referred people to EuroPython talks, mostly 
because those people have been promoting some in-progress solution similar to 
something more complete that was previously presented at EuroPython.

Has anyone any thoughts about improving such matters in advance of this year's 
conference?

Paul

[1] http://wiki.python.org/moin/PyCon2006/Feedback