[Inpycon] Prizes/mentors for newbie track

Tue Jul 20 18:49:57 CEST 2010

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 9:27 PM, renuka prasad <renukaprasadb at gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 8:22 PM, Anand Balachandran Pillai <
> abpillai at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 7:42 PM, Santhosh Divakar <
>> santhosh.divakar at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 7:34 PM, Noufal Ibrahim <noufal at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Anand Balachandran Pillai <abpillai at gmail.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>> > That got me thinking about - will there by any kind of repercussion
>>>> > i.e frustration among regular talk folks ("seniors" so to speak) of
>>>> > not being considered for a similar prize ? Kind of like "being a
>>>> > newbie is an advantage, no point in talking in this conf in the
>>>> > future" feeling ?
>>>>
>>>> That kind of thing is a little immature isn't it? There are many
>>>> speakers who I don't know personally but the ones I do know wouldn't
>>>> consider it like this. Most of them give talks because it's PyCon and
>>>> because they can share their ideas with a larger like minded crowd.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Anand, I believe, has raised a valid point. Yes there is for and against
>>> this point. But we might not want to hear comments like """next time I am
>>> going to present in the newbie section and win a prize rather""".  I am not
>>> talking about speakers of stature of David , but ... .
>>>
>>> Perhaps would not it be good to honour the speakers themselves with
>>> something across the board?. Like waiving off their registration fee or
>>> something?. There is no contesty(sic) thing here, but just as a token of
>>> appreciation?.
>>>
>>
>> I raised this point in the spirit of arguing against one's own
>> opinion - to form a good opinion. I was the person who proposed
>> the newbie track idea in the first place to Noufal, but I thought
>> it is better to think of everything before we announce it.
>>
>> A newbie according to me is one who answers "no" to all
>> the questions below.
>>
>> 1. Have you ever talked in a conference before ? (exclude
>>  talks which you gave in your own college or organization)
>>
>> 2. Have you given the talk you are submitting in a similar
>> or same form anywhere else before ?
>>
>> And he is mostly a student, but need not be one.
>>
>> We don't expect people to cheat on this, but it could still
>> happen and there is no way to find it out for sure.
>>
>> One way to solve all these at one go is to rename "newbie"
>> track as "student" track which resolves many dilemmas
>> in a single go - first of all this reserves the track to students
>> only and we can always identify them (college ID card etc)
>> so no dilemmas w.r.t identifying whether the guy is
>> really a "newbie" or not.
>>
>>  Secondly, it is rather easy to find out a student talk from
>> the submission itself - unless the guy is a guru and has been
>> giving talks from his 2nd yr in college, it always has that
>> "raw" feel to it.  We could always ask the student to get the
>> talk reviewed by one of us before submitting us and he
>> will be willing to do that.
>>
>>
>> Thoughts ?
>>
>>
> all the above wont help in building the community, if you want to know the
> reasons for me saying so read below else skip
>
> ----------------------
> M$ came up with something called - be ".netStudent"  where they made
> ambassadors in each college to promote their products
>
> IBM came up with something called "excellence center", IBM great mind
> challenge , first year there were 20 projects submitted from our college,
> then 4 and this year 0 and never in future
>
> Sun came up with something called "Freedom Contest"  or code for freedom ,
> something i dont remember properly they also had similar to what you people
> are thinking like giving out laptops, ipods etc etc ..( sun used to pay 6k
> per month per ambassador to promote sun products,  )
>
> then Samsung, HCL , etc etc etc ....
>
> even IEEE also is engaged in pushing its chapter in every college to get
> more votes at asia level etc etc and sponsoring 10,000 for each event
> conducted at college level of course for that there are many conditions ...
>
> well all these may look irrelevant, but seeing the students mentality ,
> most of the student whom we depute will go to those events where there are
> monetary benefits and all the above where having two benefits , either some
> gifts + goodies + certificates , which were all done for certificates etc
> etc
>
> well to attract student crowd the simplest way is to just promote the
> normal way as it is done for any other conference, students are matured
> enough , those who are really interested they will come and they will have
> sustained long term relation with any community
>
> if a language has to get popular, if a community has to be built, i
> recommend some of you to spend some time in going to colleges and give
> seminars or conduct a short workshop or any other way to make student
> impressed ( use the amount what you want to give it to students to pay for
> TA + DA / honorarium for those who take sessions, infact you people can
> raise funds also or charge for giving talks or conducting workshop ( a very
> nominal one) .
>
> It takes lot of time to build  community, many of you here have that
> experience , i dont have to remind about these..
>
> if you people go to colleges and give talks and then ask them to attend
> conference, the it will have some impact ... otherwise as far as i see there
> is very little awareness about the language , then how can we expect some
> one to give talk, more over it is vacation time , students are also busy
> with their placement activities , during this time i dont see any activity
> till mid august , even to do any publicity for the conference in colleges (
> i am talking about engineering colleges which are autonomous , there are
> colleges which are under VTU which reopen by august , may be there we may
> get some crowd to talk )
>

+1 . Clearly for the best contribution swag and prizes should not matter. I
agree with Renuka we can have the community grow only through constant
contact and discussions. There are students who find out about such
conferences and make it point to attend but through constant contact and
interaction we can have many students appreciating the language and coming
forward to contribute in any way.

>
> ----------------
>
>>
>>> -Santhosh
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> --Anand
>>
>>
>>
>>
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