[Inpycon] Tutorials

[Steve Holden]

[decloaks]

On Apr 18, 2011, at 10:21 PM, Navin Kabra wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 7:34 AM, Kenneth Gonsalves <lawgon at gmail.com> wrote:
> please do not argue for the sake of argument - academic bodies have
> policies. One such policy is that if a venue is given free, no
> 'commercial' activity can take place. They get to define 'commercial'.
> Usually charging a token fee for attending does not come under their
> definition. We just need to find out their policy.
> 
> We will check with the venue about their policies and post here...

Honesty is definitely the best policy here. What a surprise :-)

The rationale behind the "no commercial activity" clause is probably that the venue providing free accommodation can do so (only?) by virtue of its public funding, and that it would therefore be unethical to allow commercial bodies to profit from publicly subsidized assets. Or even non-profits, come to that.

I don't have any problem at all with that. As Kenneth pointed out, such august bodies are governed by policies that mere mortals have little power to change (and metaphors involving gift horses and mouths spring to mind readily here).

Here's another thought: suppose that various organizations with an interest in Python chose to offer tutorials the day before PyCon. Not everyone will be able to afford such tutorials if they are commercially priced (which they should be, because everyone has an interest in establishing high worth for Python education [disclosure: I teach for a living] :-)). So why not say "since this is a community conference, each paid attendance also entitles one other person to attend without paying any fee" [they will still need accommodation]?

The tutorials will not require the same venue: because they are a commercial enterprise, they can use hotel accommodation or find "community" support from a local software house, chamber of commerce or other merciful benefactor. All that can be priced into the budget.

If a surplus still remains even after the provision of 50% free places then I would suggest it be applied to a) rewarding those who have given up their time to preapre and present the sessions, and b) worthy delegates to PyCon whose presence will add to the conference and who may not otherwise be able to attend.

You may find such rabid socialism a little unexpected, in which case I must apologize.

regards
 Steve

PS: Seditious thought: the PSF was able to se funding from Google to encourage more women to attend PyCon US. The same sentiment may get InPyCon some very visible sponsorship. Assuming that would help, of course.

PPS: When is this conference? ;-)
[recloaks]
-- 
Steve Holden
steve at holdenweb.com
chairman at python.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/inpycon/attachments/20110418/acb49705/attachment-0001.html>