From info at pycon.it Wed Jan 11 12:02:26 2012 From: info at pycon.it (info at pycon.it) Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:02:26 -0000 Subject: [EuroPython] The future of Europython Message-ID: <20120111110226.2417.88285@python.it> Europython has become a primary python community event thus some considerations and decisions should be made. We'd like to share our thoughts openly and receive your feedback. ## PREAMBLE In the last 3 years Europython has had a considerable positive trend both by attendees number and public interest. It has grown so much that it's quite hard to organize that kind of event keeping the same service quality and capacity cap that we've all enjoyed recently. **It's not a job for unexpert teams** dealing with their first conference organization experience. Even teams with experience organizing small sized could potentially face many troubles organizing a conference the size of Europython. On the other hand it brings so much positive value that probably nobody inside the Python community would like to loose what Europython has become due to a single year failure or a simple wrong estimate of the event complexity. Europython is **a community conference organized and runned by volunteers** that work on it without any payback during their free time (that they could be spending with their families and friends). As a matter of fact it's not all: **they assume big responsabilities** and are fully responsible for the financial scenario of the conference organization as well. This translates to one simple statement: if things go wrong and there are economic losses they will be responsible for this. This have happened to us (_Python Italia Association_) some years ago during our [local Pycon organization][1]. We did pay and we did learn from our mistakes. Fortunately the numbers were rather different from a conference like Europython and we are still here, organizing conferences and doing a good (at least I hope) job organizing Europython. What I'm trying to highlight at this point is that **Europython is getting big and can probably reach numbers very close to Pycon US** if we all want but, unlike it, Europython is not organized and managed by the PSF ( wich acts just as sponsor ). There's no big organization protecting your back in case of financial losses. The organizers are completely and lonely exposed. I'm not trying to say that Pycon US organizers have any advantages when compared ( on contrary! they have a big responsability to handle and are doing an outstanding job all from volunteers. Every single person within the python community should thank and learn from ) but at least they are not financialy exposed ( as far as i know ). ## THE FUTURE The near future of Europython is quite well known and will take place in July in Florence, once again. It's the second italian edition happenning in Florence. But then what? **Who's willing to organize 2013/2014 editions?** Where will it move to? At the time I'm not aware of any concrete and convincing hosting proposal. To be honest I'm not aware of any proposal as well. As current organizers we are somehow concerned about it. We should have some of the next organizers helping us with the current edition organization, acquiring information and experience for their own that will hopefully help them when organizing 2013 and 2014 editions. ## THE PRESENT With those premises we decided to take a public position towards the future of the Conference. **We would like to publicaly expose our openness to organize and run 2013/2014 edition**. At the moment I didn't hear about any real and concrete proposal that is convincing enough about the fact that we won't have any slowdown in our conference growth, credibility and quality as well as not compromising the work that has been done by many people over the past 10 years. In any case we'd like to send a strong message the community and to all the bidders: we do care about it and we'd like to be completely sure that we are passing the baton to a group of people that care and wish to do great things. ### The Biggest Python European Conference Ever 2011 edition was the biggest Python european conference ever with something like 670 attendees. It could have been more but we decided to put a limit on it. The reasons for that cap limit were mainly related to the venue and lunches. The number of attendees is a topic by itself and should be discussed openly within the community in order to understand if we want to keep this number "managed" in the near future or want just to scale (somehow like Pycon US). **We should be handling around 700 in 2012** and are able to consider scaling a little bit more if needed in 2013/2014. Last year we have delivered a healthy conference. That's one the concepts I'd like to stress the most and that I really care about. **First of all the budget** (yeah, though it's a community no-profit conference ran by volunteers money is still a critical, if not the most, part of whole system). Since the beggining we worked on a strategy to have enough space to provide and scale extra services as we scale on sponsors. _Note:_ I'm not including tickets revenue in this consideration as we decided that we wanted a conference affordable to everybody keeping the prices as low as we could. Thus tickets average revenue was almost 0. But when I talk about healthy environment I'm not talking only about the budget: I mean the whole conference. I'm speaking about caring about social events, delivering pleasant outdoor spaces for the attendees to socialize, caring and promoting diversity topics, deploying handy services for foreign attendees (such as [pre-charged local SIMs][2] or a rich [partners program][3] to enjoy such graceful city like Florence) and last but not least, managing to end up with **a quite positive balance** that we can use to be improve next year conference and reduce any risk. Another topic I'd like to talk about is **sponsors**. Sponsors are essential for a conference that aims to have high quality standards. Sponsors don't knock at your door offering you money just because Python is cool and you are organizing a big european conference. Sponsors need to be found, you need to "sell" your conference (aka your product), convince them that they are not giving their money away to a bunch of people just having fun. You need to convince them that they need it and they are investing their money on an activity that potentialy has big benefits and their investment will payback greatly. I like to think that we do not sell anything but just inform sponsors about possibilities. **I really believe that Europython is a great opportunity for many companies so far.** As I mentioned earlier we had great feedback on our efforts to collect sponsors and work with them to find out the best sponsorship cut for their needs. Almost all sponsors told us that they were very satisfied about the conference and the service we provided. Actualy, many asked us to keep them updated for the next year. I may be biased and maybe wrong but I can't remember so many sponsor and related activities during the last editions so far (and I've been attending Europython for while). ### The Best Python Conference Ever In 2012 we forecast that it'll be even bigger and we have worked on a strategy to handle it fixing also the issues we had in 2011. One thing that we can garantee is that **we are willing to make Europython 2012 the best Python conference ever!** See you in Florence. [1]: http://www.pycon.it/ [2]: http://ep2011.europython.eu/blog/2011/05/07/smartphone-dependent-buy- italian-sim [3]: http://ep2011.europython.eu/blog/2011/04/15/ep2011-partner-program- released -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fabio.pliger at s3srl.com Wed Jan 11 13:50:19 2012 From: fabio.pliger at s3srl.com (Fabio Pliger) Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:50:19 +0100 Subject: [EuroPython] The future of Europython In-Reply-To: <20120111110226.2417.88285@python.it> References: <20120111110226.2417.88285@python.it> Message-ID: The microblog app that forwarded the post to the list didn't append the author name ( me ). Sorry. Fabio Pliger 2012/1/11 > Europython has become a primary python community event thus some > considerations and decisions should be made. We'd like to share our > thoughts openly and receive your feedback. > PREAMBLE > > In the last 3 years Europython has had a considerable positive trend both > by attendees number and public interest. It has grown so much that it's > quite hard to organize that kind of event keeping the same service quality > and capacity cap that we've all enjoyed recently. > > *It's not a job for unexpert teams* dealing with their first conference > organization experience. Even teams with experience organizing small sized > could potentially face many troubles organizing a conference the size of > Europython. On the other hand it brings so much positive value that > probably nobody inside the Python community would like to loose what > Europython has become due to a single year failure or a simple wrong > estimate of the event complexity. > > Europython is *a community conference organized and runned by volunteers*that work on it without any payback during their free time (that they could > be spending with their families and friends). As a matter of fact it's not > all: *they assume big responsabilities* and are fully responsible for the > financial scenario of the conference organization as well. > > This translates to one simple statement: if things go wrong and there are > economic losses they will be responsible for this. This have happened to us > (*Python Italia Association*) some years ago during our local Pycon > organization . We did pay and we did learn from our > mistakes. Fortunately the numbers were rather different from a conference > like Europython and we are still here, organizing conferences and doing a > good (at least I hope) job organizing Europython. > > What I'm trying to highlight at this point is that *Europython is getting > big and can probably reach numbers very close to Pycon US* if we all want > but, unlike it, Europython is not organized and managed by the PSF ( wich > acts just as sponsor ). There's no big organization protecting your back in > case of financial losses. The organizers are completely and lonely exposed. > I'm not trying to say that Pycon US organizers have any advantages when > compared ( on contrary! they have a big responsability to handle and are > doing an outstanding job all from volunteers. Every single person within > the python community should thank and learn from ) but at least they are > not financialy exposed ( as far as i know ). > THE FUTURE > > The near future of Europython is quite well known and will take place in > July in Florence, once again. It's the second italian edition happenning in > Florence. But then what? *Who's willing to organize 2013/2014 editions?*Where will it move to? > > At the time I'm not aware of any concrete and convincing hosting proposal. > To be honest I'm not aware of any proposal as well. As current organizers > we are somehow concerned about it. We should have some of the next > organizers helping us with the current edition organization, acquiring > information and experience for their own that will hopefully help them when > organizing 2013 and 2014 editions. > THE PRESENT > > With those premises we decided to take a public position towards the > future of the Conference. *We would like to publicaly expose our openness > to organize and run 2013/2014 edition*. At the moment I didn't hear about > any real and concrete proposal that is convincing enough about the fact > that we won't have any slowdown in our conference growth, credibility and > quality as well as not compromising the work that has been done by many > people over the past 10 years. > > In any case we'd like to send a strong message the community and to all > the bidders: we do care about it and we'd like to be completely sure that > we are passing the baton to a group of people that care and wish to do > great things. > The Biggest Python European Conference Ever > > 2011 edition was the biggest Python european conference ever with > something like 670 attendees. It could have been more but we decided to put > a limit on it. The reasons for that cap limit were mainly related to the > venue and lunches. The number of attendees is a topic by itself and should > be discussed openly within the community in order to understand if we want > to keep this number "managed" in the near future or want just to scale > (somehow like Pycon US). *We should be handling around 700 in 2012* and > are able to consider scaling a little bit more if needed in 2013/2014. > > Last year we have delivered a healthy conference. That's one the concepts > I'd like to stress the most and that I really care about. > > *First of all the budget* (yeah, though it's a community no-profit > conference ran by volunteers money is still a critical, if not the most, > part of whole system). Since the beggining we worked on a strategy to have > enough space to provide and scale extra services as we scale on sponsors. > > *Note:* I'm not including tickets revenue in this consideration as we > decided that we wanted a conference affordable to everybody keeping the > prices as low as we could. Thus tickets average revenue was almost 0. > > But when I talk about healthy environment I'm not talking only about the > budget: I mean the whole conference. I'm speaking about caring about social > events, delivering pleasant outdoor spaces for the attendees to socialize, > caring and promoting diversity topics, deploying handy services for foreign > attendees (such as pre-charged local SIMsor a rich partners > programto enjoy such graceful city like Florence) and last but not least, managing > to end up with *a quite positive balance* that we can use to be improve > next year conference and reduce any risk. > > Another topic I'd like to talk about is *sponsors*. Sponsors are > essential for a conference that aims to have high quality standards. > Sponsors don't knock at your door offering you money just because Python is > cool and you are organizing a big european conference. Sponsors need to be > found, you need to "sell" your conference (aka your product), convince them > that they are not giving their money away to a bunch of people just having > fun. You need to convince them that they need it and they are investing > their money on an activity that potentialy has big benefits and their > investment will payback greatly. > > I like to think that we do not sell anything but just inform sponsors > about possibilities. *I really believe that Europython is a great > opportunity for many companies so far.* As I mentioned earlier we had > great feedback on our efforts to collect sponsors and work with them to > find out the best sponsorship cut for their needs. Almost all sponsors told > us that they were very satisfied about the conference and the service we > provided. Actualy, many asked us to keep them updated for the next year. I > may be biased and maybe wrong but I can't remember so many sponsor and > related activities during the last editions so far (and I've been attending > Europython for while). > The Best Python Conference Ever > > In 2012 we forecast that it'll be even bigger and we have worked on a > strategy to handle it fixing also the issues we had in 2011. > > One thing that we can garantee is that *we are willing to make Europython > 2012 the best Python conference ever!* > > See you in Florence. > > _______________________________________________ > EuroPython 2011 - Florence June 20-26 > http://ep2011.europython.eu/ > EuroPython mailing list > EuroPython at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/europython > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From work.walter at gmail.com Sun Jan 15 20:00:55 2012 From: work.walter at gmail.com (Walter) Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2012 19:00:55 +0000 Subject: [EuroPython] EuroPython 2012 Message-ID: Hi all, I would like to attend EuroPython this year. To do so I should book my holiday for it asap before one of my colleagues takes the time off before me and then I have no chance to come. Can you please tell me when EuroPython is planned this year? So far I only found a mailing list posts from late December 2011 that the date will be announced early Jan. 2012 but I found nothing so far. Many thanks! Best regards, Walter -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul at boddie.org.uk Sun Jan 15 20:30:45 2012 From: paul at boddie.org.uk (Paul Boddie) Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:30:45 +0100 Subject: [EuroPython] EuroPython 2012 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <201201152030.45539.paul@boddie.org.uk> On Sunday 15 January 2012 20:00:55 Walter wrote: > > I would like to attend EuroPython this year. To do so I should book my > holiday for it asap before one of my colleagues takes the time off before > me and then I have no chance to come. > > Can you please tell me when EuroPython is planned this year? So far I only > found a mailing list posts from late December 2011 that the date will be > announced early Jan. 2012 but I found nothing so far. A few weeks ago, Giovanni wrote that the dates would be "July 2nd-8th 2012". Apparently, we all knew this as long ago as November 2010, but some of us were obviously not paying attention or didn't get that mail. I'm using the latter excuse. ;-) I guess we should all be booking time off as soon as we can... Paul From fabio.pliger at s3srl.com Sun Jan 15 23:02:29 2012 From: fabio.pliger at s3srl.com (Fabio Pliger) Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2012 23:02:29 +0100 Subject: [EuroPython] EuroPython 2012 In-Reply-To: <201201152030.45539.paul@boddie.org.uk> References: <201201152030.45539.paul@boddie.org.uk> Message-ID: 2012/1/15 Paul Boddie > On Sunday 15 January 2012 20:00:55 Walter wrote: > > > > I would like to attend EuroPython this year. To do so I should book my > > holiday for it asap before one of my colleagues takes the time off before > > me and then I have no chance to come. > > > > Can you please tell me when EuroPython is planned this year? So far I > only > > found a mailing list posts from late December 2011 that the date will be > > announced early Jan. 2012 but I found nothing so far. > > A few weeks ago, Giovanni wrote that the dates would be "July 2nd-8th > 2012". > Apparently, we all knew this as long ago as November 2010, but some of us > were obviously not paying attention or didn't get that mail. I'm using the > latter excuse. ;-) > > I guess we should all be booking time off as soon as we can... > > Well... Yes dates *should* be from July 2nd to 8th. We didn't make any annoucements as we didn't have a signed confirmation from the venue. We'll be announcing on the website as soon as we get it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mal at egenix.com Mon Jan 16 21:45:09 2012 From: mal at egenix.com (M.-A. Lemburg) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:45:09 +0100 Subject: [EuroPython] The future of Europython In-Reply-To: <20120111110226.2417.88285@python.it> References: <20120111110226.2417.88285@python.it> Message-ID: <4F148C55.8010406@egenix.com> Hi Fabio, info at pycon.it wrote: > Europython has become a primary python community event thus some > considerations and decisions should be made. We'd like to share our thoughts > openly and receive your feedback. > > ... > > With those premises we decided to take a public position towards the future of > the Conference. **We would like to publicaly expose our openness to organize > and run 2013/2014 edition**. Yeah :-) Thank you very much for making that offer ! > At the moment I didn't hear about any real and > concrete proposal that is convincing enough about the fact that we won't have > any slowdown in our conference growth, credibility and quality as well as not > compromising the work that has been done by many people over the past 10 > years. I haven't heard of any proposal either - I guess the size of the conference is starting to frighten people who would otherwise not have a problem with organizing it. I certainly hope that some day PyCon DE will be able to host EuroPython as well, but there's still a long way ahead. > ... > > _Note:_ I'm not including tickets revenue in this consideration as we decided > that we wanted a conference affordable to everybody keeping the prices as low > as we could. Thus tickets average revenue was almost 0. I think there's still some room to ramp up the tickets prices in order to make the budget look healthier. EuroPython is the second most important Python conference we have, right after PyCon US, so you can safely use their (low) prices are guideline: https://us.pycon.org/2012/registration/ Capping the number of attendees as you've done in 2011 and starting registration early is also a good way to make you feel more secure about the numbers. I also wonder how we could help in getting the number of sponsors bumped up to higher levels. A lot of companies are looking for Python developers, so recruiting is certainly one of the key arguments for sponsors to invest in EuroPython. Another is product announcements and presentation. Perhaps you could make those two aspects (even) more interesting for sponsors in order to attract more sponsors. Another argument I often hear from smaller companies is that manning a booth at the conference is too costly for them (not because of the booth signup fee, but because of the staffing costs). Perhaps having a poster session or some flat panel LCDs in the conference halls for unmanned presentation would help make sponsoring more interesting to those companies ?! Thanks for keeping up the good work, -- Marc-Andre Lemburg eGenix.com Professional Python Services directly from the Source (#1, Jan 16 2012) >>> Python/Zope Consulting and Support ... http://www.egenix.com/ >>> mxODBC.Zope.Database.Adapter ... http://zope.egenix.com/ >>> mxODBC, mxDateTime, mxTextTools ... http://python.egenix.com/ ________________________________________________________________________ ::: Try our new mxODBC.Connect Python Database Interface for free ! :::: eGenix.com Software, Skills and Services GmbH Pastor-Loeh-Str.48 D-40764 Langenfeld, Germany. CEO Dipl.-Math. Marc-Andre Lemburg Registered at Amtsgericht Duesseldorf: HRB 46611 http://www.egenix.com/company/contact/ From work.walter at gmail.com Wed Jan 18 08:26:53 2012 From: work.walter at gmail.com (Walter) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:26:53 +0000 Subject: [EuroPython] EuroPython 2012 Message-ID: Hi all, Some days ago I sent a mail to this mailing list without subscription but I am not sure if it was delivered correctly as I got no reply yet. I would like to attend EuroPython this year. To do so I should book my holiday for it asap before one of my colleagues takes the time off before me and then I would have no chance to come. :( Can you please tell me when EuroPython is planned for 2012? So far I only found a mailing list posts from late December 2011 that the date will be announced early Jan. 2012 but I found nothing so far. Many thanks! Best regards, Walter -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rasky at develer.com Wed Jan 18 11:52:49 2012 From: rasky at develer.com (Giovanni Bajo) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:52:49 +0100 Subject: [EuroPython] EuroPython 2012 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Il giorno 18/gen/2012, alle ore 08:26, Walter ha scritto: > Hi all, > > Some days ago I sent a mail to this mailing list without subscription but I am not sure if it was delivered correctly as I got no reply yet. > > I would like to attend EuroPython this year. To do so I should book my holiday for it asap before one of my colleagues takes the time off before me and then I would have no chance to come. :( > > Can you please tell me when EuroPython is planned for 2012? So far I only found a mailing list posts from late December 2011 that the date will be announced early Jan. 2012 but I found nothing so far. > > Many thanks! Hi Walter, It's July 2nd-8th. The website will be updated as soon as possible. -- Giovanni Bajo :: rasky at develer.com Develer S.r.l. :: http://www.develer.com My Blog: http://giovanni.bajo.it -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 4819 bytes Desc: not available URL: From rasky at develer.com Wed Jan 18 20:03:08 2012 From: rasky at develer.com (Giovanni Bajo) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:03:08 +0100 Subject: [EuroPython] EuroPython 2012 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Il giorno 18/gen/2012, alle ore 11:52, Giovanni Bajo ha scritto: > Il giorno 18/gen/2012, alle ore 08:26, Walter ha scritto: > >> Hi all, >> >> Some days ago I sent a mail to this mailing list without subscription but I am not sure if it was delivered correctly as I got no reply yet. >> >> I would like to attend EuroPython this year. To do so I should book my holiday for it asap before one of my colleagues takes the time off before me and then I would have no chance to come. :( >> >> Can you please tell me when EuroPython is planned for 2012? So far I only found a mailing list posts from late December 2011 that the date will be announced early Jan. 2012 but I found nothing so far. >> >> Many thanks! > > > Hi Walter, > > It's July 2nd-8th. The website will be updated as soon as possible. Just to clarify: that's the central week. We are not 100% sure on the structure of the conference yet (trainings, talks, etc.), so it might slide a couple of days earlier or later, but that's it. -- Giovanni Bajo :: rasky at develer.com Develer S.r.l. :: http://www.develer.com My Blog: http://giovanni.bajo.it -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 4819 bytes Desc: not available URL: From funthyme at gmail.com Fri Jan 27 10:36:51 2012 From: funthyme at gmail.com (John Pinner) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:36:51 +0000 Subject: [EuroPython] One day course : Google App Engine with Python Message-ID: O?Reilly UK and FLOSS UK are offering a new course Hello! I thought that you'd like to know about a one day course being offered by FLOSS UK and o'Reilly. It's one of a regular series of courses organised by FLOSS UK throughout the year see http://flossuk.org. This is an organisation well worth joining and its events have a very high signal to noise ratio. Disclaimer: I am a member! Here are the details: Explore what Google App Engine has to offer web developers, with Paul Barry Intensive Introduction to Google App Engine with Python This course is aimed at web developers looking to learn what Google App Engine brings to the web development table. In addition to exploring Python?s Google App Engine API, course attendees will build, upload and deploy a complete working webapp to Google?s cloud service during this one-day, hands-on session. Course attendees should note that prior knowledge of Python is useful, but not essential. Further information including course content and booking form can be found on: http://www.flossuk.org/Events/Googleapp Venue: Imperial Hotel, Russell Square, London Date: 12th April 2012. Note: The Imperial is very convenient: a brisk 10 minute walk from Euston station. Tutor: Your tutor, Paul Barry, is a lecturer at The Institute of Technology, Carlow in Ireland, where he has taught advanced undergraduate computing courses for the last 15 years. Paul is also a Contributing Editor at Linux Journal, and is a regular speaker at the PyCon Ireland conferences. Paul has a number of technical books to his credit, including his most recent ?Head First Python? (2011), which is part of the hugely popular brain-friendly series of books from O?Reilly Media. Best wishes, John --