Am 21.12.14 um 13:08 schrieb John Pinner: > Hello Rolf, > > On 21 December 2014 at 10:32, Rolf Hemmerling <hemmerl...@gmx.net> wrote: >> Hello, >> >> the Europython 2015 was originally announced to be in Berlin, Germany - Why >> now this move to Bilbao, Spain ? >> >> I was very satisfied on the EuroPython 2014 in Berlin, > > And so was I. > >> both with the organisation, the prices and the user-generated contents ( >> speeches, workshops, networking, evening events,.. ). > > Agreed, the local organisers did a first-class job. I was looking > forward to coming to EP 2015 in Berlin, and this time I'd promised to > take my wife with me. > >> >> I read: >> http://blog.europython.eu/post/105258883217/europython-2015-submitted-proposal >>> >>> The EuroPython Society (EPS) is happy to announce that we have received >>> the amended proposal from the ACPySS team in Spain to hold EuroPython 2015 >>> in Bilbao, Spain. We had been discussing questions with them in the last >>> couple of days. >>> On-site Team Proposal >> >> as news of >> 2014-12-03 and 2014-12-15 on Facebook >> https://www.facebook.com/europython >> >> And I am dissatisfied if there is a break in the rule, that an Europython >> conference is now not taking 2 times at the same place in consequent >> years... > > This was never a rule, but a custom, for example we were only one year at > CERN. > >> >> Especially I did not hear ANYTHING from the German organizers of Europython >> 2014, about the progress or stop of preparation of Europython 2015... > > This became clear at the meeting of the EP Society at EP14, a sad > affair. It became apaprent taht realtions between the head organisers > of EP14 and the board of the EuroPython Society had broken down, the > board wanted new applications to hold EuroPython 2015 and the head > organisers of the 2014 Conference no longer wished to hold the 2015 > event. At the EPS meeting, the attitude of the head organisers came > across as very negative. Note that I say 'head' as far as I could see > the local troops were over-whelmingly positive.
This needs a bit more background. The EPS withdrew the EuroPython 2015 from Berlin in December 2013 and announced the new call in January 2014: https://mail.python.org/pipermail/europython/2014-January/008249.html (This call finally came out on October 31, 2014 on this list.) So it was **not** a wish of the local organizers (LO) but rather a withdrawal by the EPS. This expressed a deep disapproval of what the local organizer did. How can you be motivated by this to spent lots of your little spare time on organizing a conference? Organizing EuroPython takes all the resources. Writing up a new proposal at the same time is simply impossible if you want to keep a 4-hours-per-night sleep minimum. ;) Why use extra energy? What was wrong with the EuroPython 2014 event that justified a withdrawal? Our objective was to have a great conference. I think we achieved this. Looks like that our approach worked out. What was the problem that had to be solved by putting out a new call? The result is what counts in the end. Let the people that do the work use the tools and procedures they think work best. What does one gain trying to force people do things a certain way as long as it works their way? I would have expected some more will for flexible problem solving from the EPS rather than repeating parts of the proposal that were written based on totally different assumptions. Why not be agile and change the original plan if a better one is available? It should not be about who is right or wrong but about the best solution one can get. I missed this attitude when talking with the EPS as an institution. Amazingly, it was very different in personal talks with several EPS members. I don't know where this difference in personal and official opinion comes from, but it did not help to solve the problem. I spent a lot of energy trying to mitigate the differences between the EPS and the LO. While being part of the LO team, I knew (of course I still know ;) ) all EPS members personally. I always try to be open to understand different positions and find a way out that helps both sides. Unfortunately, I was not successful. No idea why, but hours of personal and phone talks did not help. I chaired two EuroSciPy and two PyCon DE conferences before. I never experienced anything even close to this. Of course, people had different opinions. But at the end of the day we could always find a way to solve the problem. Not everybody was always totally happy but the solution was good enough to live with. For some reason I could not pin down yet, why this was different with the relation between EPS and LO. Maybe it has something to do with the general approach. While the LO tried to use a consensus-based way to make decisions, I experienced the EPS relation to the LO as a hierarchical one, just order and the LO has to follow. Maybe my impression is wrong and other people see things differently, but this is how I perceived it. I hope things will change in the future. Unfortunately, it is too late for Berlin 2015. My advise to all involved is to be goal-oriented. Try to have a good conference and put personal opinions and preferences aside if necessary. > That's just how it all came across to me, a former EuroPython > organiser. Subsequently we attempted to hold an online "EuroPython > Reboot" meeting during Pycon UK, attempting to reapir some of the > damage, but technology and restricted bandwidth did not help us. > >> >> ***************** >> I am NOT a member of the "Europython" society, >> but I hereby can just claim my NEGATIVE opinion about not happening the >> Europython 2015 in Berlin. >> ***************** > > I do agree, however we can all be grateful that the Spanish San > Sebastien team have made a fine proposal which will ensure that we > have a fine EuroPython 2015. > > Looking forward to Bilbao! All my best wishes for Bilbao! Mike _______________________________________________ EuroPython-Improve mailing list EuroPython-Improve@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/europython-improve
