Hi, 2009/10/27 Paul Boddie <[email protected]>: > On Tuesday 27 October 2009 01:40:43 John Pinner wrote: >> >> I'm sorry I've been quiet lately: we are under a lot of pressure at >> work, the good news is that we just heard that we got the contract for >> the Archive Data Management system at Silverstone (the car race track >> that is). > > Congratulations! > > I don't want to reduce your nicely written message too much, but I'd like to > add a few points. > > [Sponsorship] > >> In future I do not think that we should rely on getting sponsorship, >> nor should we spend valuable time chasing it, a simple announcement >> and basic brochure is quite enough. > > I think this probably needs doing in a more timely fashion than it has been. > The sponsorship brochure has been very good in recent years, and if this is > the kind of thing sponsors like to see, then we should just get it to them > sooner.
The sponsorship brochure went out in March. >> We should not rely on sponsorship when budgetting, although if >> sponsors do come forward that would be good. For example we could >> budget for very basic food and increase the food budget nearer the >> event if sponsors come forward. > > Agreed. > >> Sponsorship must be paid before the conference (say two weeks before). >> We do not have time to chase payment afterwards. > > I think this goes for all payment, as far as possible. And I think we should > be very skeptical about offers of things rather than cash from sponsors who > aren't going to represent themselves at the event. > > [Numbers of Delegates] > >> In 2009 we had around 440 delegates (I think 446 was the final >> number), which was more than we expected. The absolute maximum we can >> handle in Birmingham (in facilities we can afford to hire) is 550. If >> we go for more we would need to hire a much more expensive venue. In >> our case this would be the International Conference Centre, but the >> costs would mean that the delegate fees would be a lot higher than >> many people could afford for a community conference. > > I was a bit worried about the number at the Conservatoire, really. It felt > like the place was falling to pieces, and I wondered at one point whether it > would be necessary to leave the venue to find a working toilet. > >> When they moved from Washington DC, PyCon US solved their venue >> problem by using hotel conference centres, which meant that they had >> to guarantee hotel rooms. As long as the conference expanded this was >> OK, but this year the consequences were that PyCon lost, I think, >> around $200000, and are liable for $300000 guarantees for 2010. > > Wow! I thought it was only EuroPython that lost money. ;-) > >> * We cannot afford to risk this. >> * We must not guarantee hotel rooms. >> * We should not be afraid to limit the number of delegates to that >> which the venue can handle. > > Agreed on all counts. I note that the Django conferences have limited their > numbers to great success. > >> Whilst the number of delegates that we might expect at future >> EuroPythons may be 800-900, this number is beyond what (I think) can >> be handled in a community conference: it is too much work for >> volunteers to handle comfortably and rather than go for paid >> organisers we should limit numbers and maintain a 'community >> atmosphere'. An upper limit of 500-600 may be sensible. Given that >> Europe seems to have more 'regional' conferences than the US already, >> this may be OK. > > I think so too. Big conferences are impersonal and inefficient, and EuroPython > shouldn't be aiming to be like some big academic/industry conference, either. > (I notice that PyCon will be having poster areas, too. I'd argue that you'd > only ever do this if you either wanted to waste large areas of the venue's > floorspace or could afford to do so, but that's cynicism for you.) > > [Experience - agreed!] > > [Help] > >> It was quite noticeable that it was the same people doing most of the >> work for the past several EuroPythons, and not always the locals >> either. Several of the UK contingent did help with EP 2008, but this >> was unusual. There was no new blood from outside the UK helping with >> EP2009. > > I continue to advocate a "global" working group for non-local stuff like the > Web site, non-local publicity, registration, scheduling, and all that. This > stuff should be continuously maintained and ready to use actively. Any "let's > design a conference solution" proposals should be ignored until such a time > when those proposing them actually have something which can actually take > over more or less seamlessly. > > [Sprints] > >> At EP 2009 we did not have sufficient advance notice of what sprints >> would be held, nor the numbers of participants. The sprints have a >> considerable impact on the budget, as the sprinters do not pay for >> them (nor should they), and the costs have to come out of the main >> conference budget. >> >> Based on the 2009 experience, for EP 2010 we will not be providing >> dedicated sprint facilities before the conference, but will do >> afterwards. > > Maybe we need better publicity for this. I admit to not pursuing publicity > matters this time, but I wasn't too impressed by the way things were done. The publicity could have been approved, it suffered because our publicity volunteer went awol during the run-up to EP, although the publicity can't have been that bad bearing in mind the number of delegates. There was quite a lot of chasing sprinters, but I guess they have their minds on higher things ;-) > [Number of Talks] > >> We accepted too many talks for EP 2009, at least for the facilities we >> booked. As we accepted more talks we booked more rooms, but these were >> not big enough, and we had too many streams. >> >> For 2010 we plan to have an extra day for the conference talks, that >> is four days instead of three, which means we can have fewer streams >> and bigger rooms. > > I think you'll always get people arguing for more of one thing and less of > another. Certainly, you don't want six tracks or six days, though. > > Again, I'll repeat what I've written above about retaining as much > infrastructure and expertise as possible on a "global" basis. My feeling > about EP2009 was that there were many willing volunteers - which is always > good - some of whom could have spent more time working with the resources we > already had. > > Although it's great to see people learn (and succeed), it's exasperating to > see things redone that could have been kept from before. It's like having the > next guy in a relay race start from the same place as you do, and you have to > wait for *him* to catch *you* up before he takes the baton for the next leg > of the race. > > All this makes for much wasted time which could have been used more wisely. I > also think that overenthusiasm to start some things afresh discourages > previous volunteers whose work ends up being undone/redone as a result. As I > once said to much disdain a few years ago, the Olympic Games don't just take > shape on a continual one-off basis: they're backed by a continuous > organisational activity. Some of EuroPython's activities could operate > similarly. I think that you have the wrong impression, there was very little done afresh: EP2009 used a development of the same booking/registration system as EP2008 and PyCon UK 2008 which was a development of the PyCon UK 2007 one. Likewise the EP2009 talks submission system was a development of PyCon UK 2008/ EP2008. The EP2009 wiki was born out of the EP2008 wiki, with a python.org theme by TheSheep. EP2008 registration was in a separate site to the wiki. For Ep2009 this site became the 'home' site with the static information, and this used the python.org software. So I think there was a good re-use of existing facilities, with evolutionary development rather than revolutionary. John -- _______________________________________________ Europython-improve mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/europython-improve
