[Inpycon] Development Sprints

[Bibhas Ch Debnath]

On Oct 16, 2014 1:54 PM, "Noufal Ibrahim KV" <noufal at nibrahim.net.in> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Oct 16 2014, Rejy M Cyriac wrote:
>
>
> [...]
>
>
> > +1
> >
> > Discouraging first-time speakers is a very negative, selfish, and
> > self-destructive path to follow. Open source is all about
> > inclusiveness.  Competitive we can strive to be, but not exclusive.
>
> [...]
>
> I'm all for inclusiveness and the rest of what you've suggested. All I'm
> saying is that all gatherings/events are not for all audiences.
>
> I wouldn't run a development sprint with a first timer student as a
> mentor. Would you?
>
> I'd go even further. I think that actually discouraging iexperienced
> speakers and trying to get the more experienced folk to present would
> actually help first timers (in the audience) more.
>
> To wit, it's much more valuable for me, as a student, to listen to
> someone who's actually built a production website with, for example,
> flask rather than to listen to my college buddy presenting an "intro to
> flask" talk at a conference that claims to be the "premier Python
> conference in India".

I agree. A first time speaker talking about intro to foo should get much
much lower preference than a first time speaker talking about their
experience and/or lessons from foo. The talk selection team should keep
this in mind. Let's not encourage intro to foo talks. On the submission
form next year, let's mention this explicitly, listed under the title "some
good examples of topics" or something similar.

>
> We, as a community, should make avenues open for first time speakers,
> presenters, programmers etc. I just don't think that these 20 odd talks
> that are selected once a year for which people actually fly down and
> stay in Bangalore should be that avenue.
>
> In any case, I can see that my opinion is not widely held. I don't have
> the energy and time to push against what seems to be a rising tide of
> opposition so I'm going to end my mails on this topic.

I agree with restricting beginner topics that can just be learned from
Internet any given day. But the intermediate/advanced topic speakers then
have to keep in mind that there will be beginners in the audience and
provide few pointers as they go along. Like explain in few sentences what
virtualenv is when talking about deploying python applications on servers.

In 2011, at my first pycon, there were lot of topics that were not for
beginners. I remember sitting through some talks not understanding all the
terms and topics e.g. Lambda, SL4A etc. But I jotted them down anyway, then
either searched them on spot or came home and learned more about them.

I think it's fine if we discourage introductory talks. That might just give
the interested participants some enthusiasm to learn more about advanced
topics.

There will always be people who come to conference just to see what's
happening and take nothing back but the tshirt and complain if they don't
understand few advanced topics and say that we should have more
introductory talks. I believe they are not helping themselves. They wont
get much further even if we decide to help them. Those who want to learn,
will learn themselves. We should make sure, that those people meet more
good people and have great conversations. That's what I value pycon most
for.

I agree that we should try to keep an initial barrier like day of the week
or limited seats and talks that cuts down the unenthusiastic ones.

>
>
> --
> Cordially,
> Noufal
> http://nibrahim.net.in
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