[EuroPython] Honesty in Advertising

[John Pinner]

Hello Paul,

Food for thought here.

Paul Boddie wrote:
> 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.

I totally agree and suggest that in the call for papers submission form
we have a checkbox for open source, and give priority to those
products/projects which are so.

> 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.

In principle, they should be on the site, but I for one have been
delinquent in making them available due to:

1) Lack of time on my part.
2) The obscurity (to me, maybe I'm thick) of how to publish the papers
on the various sites we've had.

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

Regards,

John
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