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

[Dhananjay Nene]

On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 11:15 AM, Noufal Ibrahim <noufal at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
I have just one reference point - it being Pycon India 2010. I thought
many local talks were far more informative and I am unclear how the
one talk particularly improved the quality of the conference in
general. YMMV.

>> 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.

Ok. Agreed. We could agree the dualism is traceable to invited vs.
voluntary and close that line of discussion.
>
> 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?
>

High expenditure must deliver high results. There cannot be two
opinions on this matter. Irrespective of whether we have the money to
bring someone in. Perhaps the results are there. Perhaps I didn't see
them, and I am comfortable that we go ahead and invite speakers
expecting high impact from them as well.

[...]
> 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.

A discussion on perhaps one of the biggest expenditure items to be
remotely construed as parsimony is surprising. Treat it as fiscal
expenditure evaluation if you will, but as a larger budget item it
must be discussed.

Dhananjay