[Inpycon] Future of Pycon India

[Noufal Ibrahim KV]

Hello everyone,
      Pats on the back all around. The largest PyCon India yet. It's
come a long way since the glorified user group meeting back in 2009. I
remember feeling quite proud of it back then but compared to what PyCon
India has become, it's not much more than an after dinner mint.

      Like all things growing, PyCon India will have growing pains I'm
writing this email to try to list out some of the things where I see
scope of improvement and some concrete steps which I think will help.

      1. Teams
      Right now, the general organisation is not very different from
2009/2010 which is one bunch of guys leading everything and talking to
volunteers for all the low level tasks. This means that the core bunch
is overtaxed and things fall between the cracks. Many decisions are made
ad-hoc on personal emails/phone calls which later leads to confusion and
sometimes resentment. 
      This works when it's a small event and mostly run by a few
people. It's too large for that and the this amount of energy can't be
expected from any small group of individuals. 
      The solution, in my opinion, is to split the whole group into
semi-autonomous committees (or teams) grouped by topic (e.g. program
committee, sponosorship committee etc.) and then to decide how these
interact. Once that's done, the "conference chair" can simply act as
relay service between these teams and the amount of effort an individual
will have to put in is limited. "Things" happen on each aspect of the
conference without the other people needing to concerned. 

      A good step forward this year was the program committee headed by
Arvi. I think doing something similar to that again next year would be
great. 

       2. Rules
       There are ad hoc decisions made when the need comes up. Often,
these are made off the main list and sometimes over phone calls which
has two problems. The short term problem is that different people might
say different things to (e.g.) sponsors. The long term problem is that
people feel disenfranchised and this damages community cohesion. 
       The solution is to formalise all of this in something
written. Anand Pillai has been working on a guidebook for this. Making
it as detailed as possible will ensure that all of us present a united
front when talking about the conference so that everything is
consistent. 
       Exceptions should be discussed openly on the list. 

       3. Discussions
       I think that the real backbone of a community run conference is a
single "marketplace" where everyone discusses everything. Things might
get rowdy now and then and measures might have to be taken but the
openness and public discussion of all matters helps new volunteers to
pick stuff up, contribute to and later lead the event. 
       inpycon is our marketplace and we need to keep it active and
buzzing.

       4. Conference mood.
       This is something that's been debated but I think it's taken a
form now. Is PyCon India for beginners or for experienced Python users?
I think the talks are the point of contention and my own feeling is that
it should be targetted towards a more experienced crowd. Three
reasons. 1. Talks like "introduction to foo" which you can read from a
book or a website are not really worth the 30 minutes. 2. We have Python
express now to cater to beginner audiences and 3. Beginner speakers can
cut their teeth on local events. 


These aren't fully structured but should suggest a general structure
which we can build on and make the next conference even better. 


-- 
Yours,
Noufal
http://nibrahim.net.in