[EuroPython] conference length

[Laura Creighton]

In a message of Wed, 23 Apr 2014 19:13:56 +0200, "M.-A. Lemburg" writes:
<snip>

>We should probably put the question of which format is preferred
>on the conference feedback form and then see whether a change would
>be worthwhile to improve the attendee experience.

--------

You have to be careful with this.  If there is any bias to be found -- and
there may be none, of course - the people who attend a conference can
be assumed to be biased in favour of <feature X> where <feature X> is
something that the conference just did.  After all, they are the people
who just voted with their wallets and their feet.

The people you would like to poll are the people who didn't attend this
years EP, especially those who attended in the past, to find out why it
is that they didn't. If it turns out that they hate <feature X> enough
to stop coming, then the conference organisers will have some hard
decisions to make.

The demands to grow the conference and have more people attending are
fundamentally incompatible with the hatred some people have for large
conferences.  A desire to reach out to new programmers is incompatible
with a desire for many fewer introductory talks.  Organising a
conference is hard work, in part because you have to try to balance
these demands.  But if you ever miss the mark, badly, in your
balancing act it won't be among the people that attended that you will
find out where it was you went wrong.

Laura