Hello, 2009/3/16 Zeth <[email protected]>: > Hello everyone, > > I have been touring around Europe with my work, so I am just now > catching up with the discussions. So below are some scattered thoughts > from me on what I have read thus far. > > 2009/3/15 Jacob Hallén <[email protected]>: >> - How many people can we have before we run into the limits of the >> facilities? > > I think this would be a nice problem to have. Like John, I don't think > we will. However, if we get a lot more than we expect then at some > point we just declare it closed. Declaring the conference full is not > a bad thing, those that do not get in this year will be chomping at > the bit to get in next year. > > However, there is always a certain amount of cancellations, so anyone > who could not get a ticket can be put on a waiting list to be > reassigned a ticket when one becomes available. > > Due to some costs being variable, others being fixed, and yet others > being semi-fixed until a certain step point; there are a few "sweet > spots" where we might want to close booking. Adding a thousand in > costs to allow one more delegate would not be sensible. Adding it to > allow 50 delegates might make sense. > > The venue itself would handle a large number. Our experience is that > at any point, a significant amount of people will be at no talk at > all, they will be programming in the foyer and bar areas, in the > toilet or out shopping. If one talk is full, then nevermind, people > can go to other talks and get the talk next year, or listen to the > audio later. > > The things that become more difficult as numbers increase are food, > social events, general crowd control and dealing with people's random > problems, more people means more random one of things. Being prepared > on the small things helps with that. At the last PyConUK we had a > secure staff room, having a place to print things and talk privately > this made organisation far easier. > > The tutorial days were also a huge help, as a subsection of the crowd > know what to do by the time the rest of the hordes arrive. The people > who have come to the venue before (presumably those who booked at the > extra early-bird rate) will also have a calming effect as they know > the drill already. > >> söndagen den 15 mars 2009 skrev John Pinner: >>> I closed Extra Early Bird this morning, at this point we had 142 >>> delegates registered. > > It is clear that several of the UK people knew this was coming, they > were expecting it because the two PyConUK events had the same system > of firm deadlines, we have credibility with them. > > Hopefully by the second year here, the other Europeans will be in the > same rhythm. I have some thoughts on what we could do now since I do > not think we get enough delegates by doing nothing. Expecting the same > publicity to hit everyone in Europe in the same way is not realistic, > we need to divide and conquer, focus on some of the things which would > bring us the most delegates: > > * There is no Republic of Ireland in the list yet. We need to contact > Python Ireland, they have good mailing lists and getting from the > Republic of Ireland to Birmingham is very cheap, so we should be able > to get several Irish delegates. PyConUK had several, Europython should > have even more.
The Irish started registering today, after Extra Early Bird. > * Likewise we need to find out what lists exist for the Netherlands. > It is very near and we should particularly focus on them. > * From Germany we have had 20 delegates, but I think we should do > more. A prepared German email should be written. We can then > distributed that email to all those Germans who have currently booked, > and ask them nicely to send it around their friends and colleagues. > There are direct and short flights from various German cities to > Birmingham International. There are many German Python Programmers and > Germany does not have its own conference yet. I think there is, remember Schoene Gruesse an die Deutsche User Gruppe! http://www.pyconuk.org/video/dug_greeting.m4v > * Python Italy have a list of everyone who has gone to their > conference, this is gold dust, as these people have already been > willing to go to a Python conference. We should ask for the list, or > for them to send something to it. I would even consider a (small) > special offer for those who have been to PyCon Italy before, anything > which gets us noticed on the PyCon Italy list. I think Jacob and Laura are going to PyCon IT, maybe they can get some interest, we did send vouchers as a prize last year, but I don't think they were used. > * PyCon France is 30-31 May, which kind of steals our thunder a little > there, it will be difficult to get mindshare with another conference > first. So to make up for it, ideally we would have someone there in > PyCon France at a stall with a laptop to guide people to make bookings > on the spot, perhaps with a special show offer (e.g. £10 off the > standard rate). Nicolas? > Unfortunately, people like me in the UK are the least well placed to > do much of this. But we should try to contact people to help us in > these specific ways. I'd hoped to go to PyCon IT but it's in the middle of payroll yearend chaos, so I doubt that I will. John -- _______________________________________________ Europython-improve mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/europython-improve
