[EuroPython] Some general thoughts about EP2014 and future of EP

[Filip Kłębczyk]

Here are my 0.02$ or rather 0.02 EUR to the recent heated discussion. 
Sorry for walls of text.

Early bird sell out and frustrated voices
=========================================

It's usually better idea to provide more than one price level connected 
with early booking a ticket. For example:

300 EUR - 100 tickets or short date period
320 EUR - 100 tickets or short date period
340 EUR - 100 tickets or short date period
360 EUR - 100 tickets or short date period
380 EUR - 100 tickets or short date period

Such approach works good on other conferences. The budget of conference 
wouldn't lost this way and more people would get reduced price of 
ticket. The current 100 EUR gap between early and standard is just too 
much (for example for such price you can get full 3 day PyCon PL 
participation including accommodation and meals... or buy a cheap 
smartphone).

Financial aid programs
======================

Financial aid programs are great, because in theory they allow people 
that wouldn't be able to afford participating in the conference to take 
part in it. In practice also people that could otherwise afford 
attending the conference apply for them and it is really hard to tell 
who deserves aid and in what amount. So it produces quite a lot of 
additional work and sometimes it is better to drop them and just make 
tickets for everyone cheaper. It's worth considering what's better for 
certain conference.

Place, venue, costs, economical situation of Europe
===================================================

I feel a bit sorry for the current EP organizers. They really wanted (in 
their sense) the best - probably it was let's do a superb and shiny 
European Python conference based on our previous experiences from PyCon 
DE. But lets make it more awesome - capital, big and professional venue 
in the center of the city, what would you expect more? Sounds great, 
doesn't it? Well, if you probably live in Germany (and earn as much 
money as they on average earn there) you can easily afford attending and 
it's cheap as beer. But wait a minute, attendees are a bit different 
that on PyCon DE, some of them come from Southern Europe, that is still 
recovering from financial crisis, some live in Central and Eastern 
Europe that in financial terms is still far behind western EU countries. 
I don't know Germany that much, but I guess there are also cheaper than 
Berlin cities in eastern part of Germany with cheaper venues etc. It 
should have been taken into account by organizers (hint: quality of 
venue and location costs sometimes are not the most important factors 
for a successful _community_ conference).

Elite developers conference or community conferences?
=====================================================

Lately I observe some worrying trend that some of the community 
conferences choose more and more prestigious places and venues with 
every new editions. Islands, excellent, top quality food, all-inclusive, 
top hotels etc. The result is that attendees are the ones with big 
pockets/wallets, so we get a meeting of successful people ;).
The downside is that spirit of a community conference, with lots of 
students, newcomers and hobbyists goes away somewhere. I'm not against 
such conferences, they have a lot of value in them and different types 
of conferences are needed. The question is what we actually expect from 
EuroPython? What kind of conference it should be? How well Python 
community is represented in EPS? These are questions that everyone 
should ask themselves. I haven't seen any serious discussion about that.

Regards,
Filip