[EuroPython] conference length

[Giovanni Bajo]

Il giorno 17/apr/2014, alle ore 14:29, Martijn Faassen <faassen at startifact.com> ha scritto:

> Hey Carina,
> 
> On 04/17/2014 10:24 AM, Carina.Haupt at dlr.de wrote:
> 
>> This definitely it not a perfect compensation for attending a talk
>> live, but it might help some of you to consider this. I personally
>> use this a lot on conferences which offer streaming and/or
>> recordings. Okay, I now I gave my two cents. But this shall be
>> enough. :)
> 
> That's a good point, of course, thank you.
> 
> I think it would be good to take stock at some point though, and see whether in 2015 and beyond we may want to go back to the previous duration of the conference or make other adjustments.
> 
> As Andreas suggested, we could to some type of survey, though I wouldn't do it *just* at the conference itself, as you'd only catch those willing to show up for 5 days there. :)

On the other hand, asking to people that didn't attend one of the 5-days conferences is not very useful as well. I think the best target would be people that attended both formats.

Thanks for your feedback. I’ll get back to your first message:

> I was told by @europython on Twitter I wasn't required to show up for 5 days of talks. I can make my own, shorter conference. So do I cut off the beginning or the end? I'd prefer the sprints, so I guess I should show up in day 3? What if a talk I submitted gets scheduled to day 2, though? Or if I actually prefer seeing the talks on day 1 and 2? Now I have to make those difficult choices myself.

This quoted part gets to the point. If the conference was 3 days long, it might well be that that specific talk on day 2 wouldn’t make it to the schedule, because the schedule would contain *less* talks, so you wouldn’t get to see that talk anyway. 

Of course, a point could be made that you would get a better selection of talks in only 3 days, but, on the other hand, it would be more likely to have a schedule conflicts between such talks. It’s not an easy cut, and I’m sure we agree that there’s no solution that fits everybody.

At the end of the day, more talks for more days seems like a better overall solution, and people are welcome to consider it a 3-days conference if they feel so. Consider that the submissions far exceed even the current schedule, so it’s not like “anything gets in”.

Notice also that we got lots of positive feedback for the 1-week formula; the hallway track is far better because you have more time to meet people, talk to them, remeet them a second time, schedule a meetup, go out for a dinner or a beer. In a 2-and-a-half conference, it’s much harder, especially at the size of EuroPython. 

I would also account for the fact that almost 900 people joined EuroPython in Florence last year, with more than a 2x boost in 3 years, and the general feedback has been overwhelming positive. Even sponsors found the 1-week format acceptable for the exhibition, though it is obviously not a standard. Once they join, they see that they get to talk to people during the 5 days, it’s not like they have lots of people in the first day and nobody in the following days; and even for sponsors, it’s OK if they join only 3 days if they feel so and they want to keep the budget tight.

As for the trainings: participation in trainings has very much exceeded any previous figures, when the trainings were in separate days. Separate days is a worst solution under any point of view: it requires a different conference pass and for different days, so people need to evaluate whether they want to join more days (= more hotel costs) with an additional cost for the pass, “just” to join 3-4 trainings (maybe). Maybe you really only want a 4-hour dive into *1* specific topic, not 4 of them; would you pay the full training ticket for just 1 or 2 trainings you really care about? Figures say most people don’t. Even in PyCon USA, there is a very large difference between attendance to the conference and attendance to trainings, and that’s a shame. It’s also a big loss for conference organizers, because they have a severely under-used venue; venues are quite expensive and give the best value for the money when they’re almost full (let’s say, at least 80% full). If you use a venue at 30%, it’s a loss of money and you could as well use another venue in those days, and this makes organization more difficult. Making them parallel to the whole conference has been a serious won for everybody. 

So, while I’m personally always open to experimenting new formats and playing with new ideas, I would say that we have an overwhelming majority of positive feedbacks on the new structure, and it incidentally works much better cost-wise. 
-- 
Giovanni Bajo
Python Italia APS
EuroPython Society
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