[EuroPython] conference length

[Martijn Faassen]

On 04/23/2014 11:18 PM, Carl Karsten wrote:
> We all have ideas about what is good.   bottom line: it's complicated.
> There are no unit tests, just personal judgment.
>
> Some group of people plan and run an event = good.
> To this year's team, and really all PyCon's I have been aware of, keep
> up the good work.  I am not aware of any event that should not have
> happened.   People come, they learn, they leave and post about how
> amazing it was.
>
> If some other group of people want to run some different event, that's
> good too.  You will get support and advice from the 100's of us that
> have helped in the past.  And you are welcome to ignore any and all of it.
>
> I see lots of effort into trying to tune a single event to make it
> better.  I think it wold be better if that effort was put into creating
> another event.

I'm trying to understand the intent your email. Are you telling some of 
us to just go away and do our own thing? This isn't an us versus them. 
We're not outsiders barging in; we're old friends. I do count as one of 
the people who has helped organize EuroPython in the past, just like 
you. So does Laura.

Just to be clear: this is intended to be a conversation, not an attack.

And just to be clear again: I'm not suggesting we should change 
EuroPython 2014's schedule; I don't think anybody is. We're talking 
about EuroPython in the future.

We're having a discussion about the conference length. We learn from 
each other's perspectives. I learned a lot more about the motivations to 
make it 5 days and have talks and trainings in parallel. Perhaps someone 
else discovered from this conversation that 5 days of conference proper 
is in fact a bit long for some people, and that historically actually 
EuroPython wasn't a 5 day conference.

I think it's good to learn these things, and it's good to discuss what 
this conference is trying to be once every while.

If we want to learn more to inform future decisions, it makes sense to 
do some kind of survey. Laura is suggesting some ways to get fair 
feedback on this topic. It's human psychology that people who just 
invested time in something will be biased towards being approving of it, 
and it makes sense to take this into account. Her suggestion to try to 
contact past attendees is an interesting idea, I think.

Regards,

Martijn