[Inpycon] Necessity of foreign delegates. Was Re: Notes from InPyCon planning meeting of local Pune Team

[Noufal Ibrahim]

On Mon, Feb 21 2011, Dhananjay Nene wrote:


[...]

> a. It is unclear if seasoned pythonista's decision to attend will be
> influenced by the existence of a foreign delegate

Probably not but foreign speakers are not meant to be delegate
magnets. They're meant to improve the quality of the conference in
general.

> b. Part of the foreign delegate's fees are paid for by Pycon India
> whereas the local speakers don't have to, is a dualism that is hard to
> explain. Of course foreign delegates paying for themselves (or fully
> paid for by PSF should be fine).

It's not that hard to explain. Most conferences have the concept of an
invited speaker. Someone who the conference wants to bring over rather
than someone coming of his own will. If a speaker is invited, I think
it's expected that the conference pay for him. 

Also, there's the simple matter of money. Costs for a local person to
come for a conference is not much. Costs for someone to fly in from
abroad is high. We have the sponsorship money to bring someone in. Why
not?

Also, someone actually asking us "Why did you pay for Steve Holden but
not for me" is not something I'd take seriously. 

The presence and contribution of foreign delegates *does* help the local
community. We do this just once a year, we can afford it. Why not?


> c. Anyways it seems we rely on the foreign delegate to provide an
> overall enthusiasm building keynote rather than some hardcore python
> elucidation. So, we don't seem to be wanting to go for some advanced
> python skills that we would otherwise find it hard to get from others
> in India. At the same time there are perhaps some topics that the
> foreign delegate could comment upon which are not otherwise not easily
> understood through at least the python user mailing lists and websites
> (as an eg. perhaps some insights into pypy VM).

My general idea was that we'd ask the speaker (if we selected one) to
give a non-technical/semi-technical *keynote*. Diving into deep waters
at the first hour of the conference doesn't really work well.

In addition to this, if they can give a talk on an area of Python
technology which they specifically are interested in (e.g. Jacob Kaplan
Moss on Django etc.), it would be perfect. 

This is what David did last year - a general "Python in India" kind of
keynote and something on his polyform puzzler on the second day. This is
also what Steve Holden did at APAC last year. A general "state of the
python community" keynote and a talk on metaclasses the second day. 

> d. The opportunity cost of the expenditure. At 1L, we cold imagine
> sponsoring anywhere between 5-10 teams to work on a python summer of
> code during vacations in India (this is a new idea that came to my
> mind as I was thinking through the topic). From an expenditure review
> perspective (how many miles does a rupee go to promote python), I have
> a feeling that such an expenditure could be better suited to
> supporting the growth of python in India.

If we actually setup the infrastructure to conduct these events and
start on it, I think we can balance costs and make decisions. For
example, we had 1 or 1.5L left over from last years event. It wasn't
used for anything for a whole year. We don't do that yet and thinking of
these while we're planning for the conference is not wise. I think this
is substituting something real with something potential.

Given the fact that all we(IPSS) do right now is conduct the conference,
I think we should focus on that and make it good.

In summary, I think
  - We conduct this conference once a year. It's our primary aim and so
    we should do all we can to make it better.
  - If there's an expense we can incur that will improve the conference,
    financial parsimony is misplaced. We should spend.
  - Foreign delegates make a big difference. 
      - The mood of the conference changes when an experienced hand is
        there. This was obvious to me when after our 2009 event when I
        attended RubyConf (the speakers were employees of the company that
        conducted the event but the fact that their presence changed the
        event is without question).
      - We have people locally that work with these people from
        abroad. It's usually prohibitive for these people to meet
        them. We provide a forum for that. 
      - We gradually shift the focus from a "all india python user group
        meeting" into a proper "conference" that people look forward
        to.
  - We don't conduct workshops, sponsoring groups to do python work
    etc. We're a year old and it makes sense to focus on the conference
    right now, make it something people look forward to and then
    diversify into other avenues (just like the PSF did).


I'm heavily +1 for a foreign delegate PSF funding or not. 1L is not much
in the large scheme of things and we can work that into our budget quite
easily I think.

[...]



-- 
~noufal
http://nibrahim.net.in