[EuroPython] Future of EuroPython discussions

[M.-A. Lemburg]

On 2007-07-28 00:38, Paul Boddie wrote:
> On Friday 27 July 2007 16:29, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
>> I think for most part this was due to the location and people not
>> being aware of how nice Vilnius really is - not so much due to the
>> level of interest declining.
> 
> True enough. People can't use the same excuses next year. ;-)
> 
>> As with all these community conferences, travel costs are way higher
>> than the conference costs, so the decision whether to attend or not
>> is often driven by non-conference factors. Emphasizing the touristic
>> attractions likely helps in that decision.
> 
> Indeed. Getting the details published well in advance might help reduce the 
> travel costs, too.

Right. Booking two months in advance usually pays off. However,
this is only possible if you know that the event is going to
happen and what the major events of interest are, e.g. key notes,
whether the last day is a complete conference day or not, sprints before
or after the conference, etc.

Fixing those key details early on will make both your work as organizer
and attendee decisions easier.

And it doesn't take much: just set the deadline for talk submission
to 4 months before the conference, publish the (preliminary) conference
agenda two weeks later. Then use the talk submissions for PR - after all
that's what people are mostly interested in.

> [...]
> 
>>> the attendance fee might not be the biggest
>>> cost at EuroPython now, but these megaconferences with a ticket price of
>>> 600 EUR or more certainly don't seem compatible with EuroPython to me.
>>> So, although one can look with envy at PyCon's 580 person level of
>>> attendance, I think it's actually something to be worried about as an
>>> organiser.
>> How much difference (apart from the upfront costs) does it make if you
>> have 300 or 400 attendees ?
> 
> I guess from what has been said about PyCon that there isn't that much of a 
> difference between 200 and 400 attendees if the venue is big enough. However, 
> if PyCon grows much bigger, I imagine that it could affect the choice of 
> venue, although I'd have to lurk on the appropriate mailing lists to see how 
> exactly - they seem to have a lot of restrictions on such matters already.
> 
> What I notice about megaconferences is that they seem intent on getting much 
> larger numbers of people, booking presumably very big and expensive venues, 
> and encouraging corporate or organisational participation where larger fees 
> seem like justifiable expenses, even with the complicated sign-up structure 
> and discounts. Perhaps genuine community events can scale to the same level, 
> and I'd be interested to hear of any that have done so, but I'm skeptical 
> about the social effects that would result, anyway.

IMHO, EuroPython still has a lot of room before those issues become
relevant. Note that bigger venues do not necessarily cost a lot
more per attendee, but it's harder to find suitable places.

That said, I like the reasonable size of EPC events :-)

> [...]
> 
>> Indeed. This has been a problem with all EPC events: the organizers
>> should make it clear that the event is indeed going to happen - and
>> do that early on.
> 
> Early EPC events seemed to generate a lot of buzz, with interviews of 
> high-profile participants, and so on. Perhaps we need to do more of that in 
> future.

Those interviews were nice to attract people to the web-site, but
in the end, if you don't have anything else to present on the
site, most importantly a conference program, then you don't
really benefit from the added attention.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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