[Inpycon] Summary of the PyCon India 2018 Planning Meeting

[Sayan Chowdhury]

Hi All,

We had our first planning meeting on 12th November 2017 at the Cafe
Coffee Day, opposite to the Forum Mall, Koramangala. The meeting had a
attendance of around 20 people. I am posting the summary of the
meeting for those who could not attend the meeting.

* Timeline leading upto PyCon India 2018:
    - PyCon India 2018 is planning to be organized in the month of
August/September.
    - Since this is the 10th year of the event, the plan is to have
the conference on the dates 26th and 27th September, 2018 (As PyCon
India 2009 happened on these dates)
    - Website should be done by beginning of December
    - Reaching out to sponsors would be starting from December/January.
    - CFP would start in mid-Feb and close in May.
    - Schedule should be up by the month of July
    - Tickets would open up in March/April and close 1 month before
the conference.


* Days of the event:
    - Day 1: Python for Kids
        ** We have formed a team at the meeting for the Python for
Kids, and a mail will be sent if someone wants to join can help out.
        ** This team will provide with a detailed report on whether it
is needed to have a separate day for this event. During the meeting it
was discussed that, the event could have a good number of students so
it would need to have a separate day for the event.
        ** Need to reach out to sponsors for Hardware according to the
plan the team sets.
        ** Allocate % sponsorship to procure hardware which will be
given to off to the kids.
        ** The team will reach out to colleges/schools. They would be
divided into different group based of age-groups.
        ** Plan is to start workshops and follow-up workshops in
schools leading up to the event.
    - Day 2: Workshop
    - Day 3 & 4: Conference Days
    - Day 5 & 6: Dev Sprint Days


* Venue Options
- 2015 had a crowd of 1500 people. So we are expecting a crowd of
2000-2500 people at PyCon India 2018.
- We need to check the PyCon India handbook and update wherever necessary.
- The probable venue options are NIMHANS, BIEC, Palace Grounds, MLR-Whitefield.
- Hitesh would check the requirements at Palace Grounds.
- Soumyo would check the venue MLR-Whitefield.


* Keynotes:
  - 8+ Keynotes at the conference from various fields of Computing
(eminent persons from various fields, library authors, core FOSS
developers etc) equally divided from India and outside India.
  - Get suggestion from the community on who could be the good
domains, based on that get suggestion on the good keynotes.

* Content Team
- Build a good content team, for blogs and write ups for the social media team.
- Send out your suggestions if you know someone who would be good for this team.

* Communication channels:
  - Mailing list/IRC to remain the primary communication channel for
all the tasks.
    ** IRC channel is #pyconindia
  - Telegram few days before the event.

-- 
Sayan Chowdhury <https://sayanchowdhury.dgplug.org/>
Senior Software Engineer, Fedora Engineering - Emerging Platform
GPG Fingerprint : 0F16 E841 E517 225C 7D13  AB3C B023 9931 9CD0 5C8B


Proud to work at The Open Organization!