We had 150+ people out of 450 sign up for beginner/intro python
tutorials this year at PyCon US 2008.
That does not count the 'intro to XYZ' tutorials discussing a specific
domain (SciPy, OLPC, Django, TG, WxPython, etc).
6 out of the 28 tutorials offered were beginner python tutorials. (3
sessions with part 1 and part 2 actually... )
Granted over 1/2 of our attendance were people who had never been to a
PyCon before, and I would not be suppressed if that held true for the
tutorial attendance as well.
Just an interesting datapoint.
I talked with 3 people who were local to Chicago and stayed for the
sprints because they took the tutorials, went to the conference, and
decided that they were able to contribute after all.
It is harder for people who travel to decide later.
On the sprint attendance we were caught off guard. The counts are all
over the place, but 270 people were fed lunch on Monday, and not all
of the sprinters ate that lunch (but some other hotel guests did...)
That is well over 25% retention for the sprints when we are used to
10-12%. Some sprinters (not many by lunch count), stayed just through
monday, most likely flying home late that evening, or early the next
day. Tuesdays lunch count was around 200+ (another shocker for us).
I do not expect these numbers/ratios to hold for different PyCon's (or
even for the next PyCon US). Location, time of year, and continental
community factors mean greatly different results. The tutorial,
conference, sprint model with the conference on the weekend seems to
hit a sweet spot when looking at multiple years. This allows for the
greatest diversity of attendees.
The tutorials need not be their own day either. One consideration is
having them in the morning before the conference. This has worked well
for other communities. It does mean cutting back on the talks (and in
one example cutting them completely in favor of open space, track, and
lightning talks.) I know of one conference which had the sprints in
the evening. This did not work well from what I heard, but any
information I could give would be 3rd hand at best.
-Doug
On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 7:46 PM, Christian Scholz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi!
>
>
> Paul Boddie wrote:
> > On Wednesday 26 March 2008 20:54:02 Laura Creighton wrote:
> >> In a message of Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:59:51 +0100, Dinu Gherman writes:
> >>> So far, my intuition says, it's going to be similar to last year,
> >>> with the main meat from 7-9 July and sprints thereafter.
> >> We haven't set that in stone yet, but it is always better to have
> >> sprints after, rather than before. That way you give your introduction
> >> once, and then, if some people leave early, that is too bad. The other
> >> way means that you have to introduce the thing every day as people
> >> arrive on various dates, and its a real pain.
> >
> > I think we ought to stick with what works. I assumed that this would be the
> > case when I put up the calendar:
> >
> > http://www.europython.org/community/Calendar
> >
> > Apologies if that wasn't the intention, but I think these things have to be
> > decided quite early if they are going to change fundamentally.
>
> I also think so. Additionally I think that people are used now to
> sprints after the conference and probably planning like that. It also
> makes sense to have them after because then you can introduce some
> project or maybe get an idea during the conference and work on that idea
> afterwards.
>
>
> >> The sticking bit is tutorials / unconference / Teach Me X sessions
> >> a) are we going to have them and b) if so when.
>
> I would suggest to maybe have 1/2 a day unconferencing which maybe is
> not really a lot to make it truely work but given that it's probably a
> new concept to many it might make sense. I would put this on day 2 or 3
> of the actual conference. If this seems to work good or people
> afterwards thought they could have participated we might offer more
> sessions during the sprint time (because you know, many people first
> watch and then notice that it's something they can do, too. This is also
> the reason why people tend to signup for a session only on sunday at a
> barcamp after they've seen it the whole saturday).
>
> For the Plone Conferences we usually had tutorials in front of the
> conferences and there also have been a lot of people new to Plone who
> only attended the actual conference because of those tutorials.
>
> I guess this makes sense. You first learn about what Python actually is
> and then you might understand what the conference is about a bit more.
> Then again it might be different between Plone and Python as the first
> is more some sort of products and thus useful for endusers while Python
> is not.
>
> -- Christian
>
>
> --
> Christian Scholz video blog: http://comlounge.tv
> COM.lounge blog: http://mrtopf.de/blog
> Luetticher Strasse 10 Skype: HerrTopf
> 52064 Aachen Homepage: http://comlounge.net
> Tel: +49 241 400 730 0 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Fax: +49 241 979 00 850 IRC: MrTopf, Tao_T
>
> connect with me: http://mrtopf.de/connect
>
>
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