On Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 6:04 PM, Paul Boddie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sunday 16 March 2008 21:23:08 Laura Creighton wrote:
> > In a message of Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:45:27 +0100, David Boddie writes:
> > >On Sun Mar 16 17:48:18 CET 2008, Laura Creighton wrote:
> > >> By the way, the selling of Lightning talks to the sponsors, that
> > >> Bruce complained about, is entirely true.
>
> Perhaps Bruce is angling for a keynote at EuroPython. ;-)
>
>
> > >It's sad to hear that, though I think the PyCon organisers were under a
> > >lot of pressure this year, and maybe it was just easier to let this
> > >happen.
> >
> > Oh no. They wanted it this way. I argued against it, and lost.
>
> I think PyCon has tended towards this kind of thing in the past, anyway:
> sponsored keynotes, and so on. Perhaps it just got out of hand.
>
>
> > >In many ways, we're in a fortunate position this year, having had to
> > >say last year that we need more help to organise EuroPython, and also
> > >being able to take this criticism of PyCon and use it to make EuroPython
> > >more what people want.
> >
> > Yes, indeed.
>
> Maybe this is an opportunity to formulate the right kind of sponsorship offer
> which balances community and sponsor interests, although EuroPython has
> always struck a nice, not overly corporate tone in the three years I've been
> there.
>
> Paul
>
> P.S. As I mentioned on IRC, there's a fairly good interview with Doug
> Napoleone available covering PyCon:
>
> http://blog.michaeltrier.com/2008/3/10/this-week-in-django-14-2008-03-09
>
> I think that Doug and his team can be proud to have organised such a huge
> conference, and we should take every opportunity to learn from their
> experiences.
Paul,
Thanks for the kind words.
Friday there were mistakes made RE: lightning talks, and Saturday
there was a communications breakdown and the wrong thing happened.
This can happen some times. It should not have happened, but it did,
and now we have to deal with the fallout. Sponsors should never, ever
bump the community, and as I mentioned in the podcast you link, that
was supposed to expressly NOT happen. With respect to laura, she was
not part of all the discussions and it was NOT supposed to happen as
it did. It will never happen again. In total there were 2.5 hours of
material out of 50 which were the voice of the sponsors when it would
have otherwise been all community; 400 if you include used open space,
tutorials, and parallel talks as hours of information, which our video
people do. And yes that was, at some level, unacceptable. They also
made this $520,000+ conference possible; and one sponsor will be
hosting 150 hours of that video for free.
A formal response has not yet been made, but one will come. We want to
gather all the feedback from the greater community who were present at
PyCon first. If you are on the pycon-organizers list, you already know
this.
I do not appreciate some of the disparaging remarks about the intent
of the organizers. They are inaccurate and undeserved.
In short 'Shit Happens' and the wireless is a much bigger issue than
ill founded rumors of 'selling out'.
DISCLOSURE: I was one of those sponsor lightning talks, and I got a
standing ovation.
-Doug
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