Hi everyone, It is time to gather and make some important decisions about Europython 2005.
I would therefore like to call to a meeting this Tursday, 20 January 2005 at 1700 CET. The place is as usual the #europython channel in the freenode IRC network. If you have anything you want to add to the agenda, send an email to the europython list as soon as possible. If you can't make the meeting, but there is something you really want to be in on, send an email to the list, and we will save it for later. Since I have heard very little on the list after my message of 8 December, I assume that a number of items will be a mere formality to decide. I have listed those first on the agenda. Items that require more discussions come later. 0. Introductions, meeting procedure 1. Dates Monday 27 June - Wednesday 29 June 2005 2. Arrangements Lunches, pub and banquet similar to last year. Laura talks to new caterer for banquet. 3. Rooms VA (150), VB(150), VR (180) and VG (70) to be reserved. (see last years site map) The big auditorium will probably not be available before 1800. I suggest extending the lunch break to 1.5 hours, to make better use of the time. 4. Keynote speakers We invite Guido again. We invite Adele Goldberg. 5. Key points in time This is my proposed timetable. Does anyone want to change anything, or add more time specifics? - 31 January - Call for talks and call for papers opens - 28 February - last day to submit proposals for refereed papers - 15 March - Registration opens - 30 April - last day to submit talk propsals - 15 May - last day of Early-bird registration - 17 June - last day of pre-registration 6. Sponsors I suggest we keep the same sponsorship costs as last year. 7. Track chairs My current list of track chairs looks as follows. Please tell me if your name is not on the list, but should be there, or if it is on the list and shouldn't. As you can see, we still have vacancies in Applications and Zope lightning talks. Tutorials/Neopythes Harald Armin Massa Harald Armin Massa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Python Language Michael Hudson Michael Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Python Frameworks Jeremiah Foster Jeremiah Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Zope/Plone Paul Everitt Paul Everitt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Business John Pinner John Pinner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Applications Vacant Refereed papers Armin Rigo Armin Rigo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Science Nicolas Chauvat Nicolas Chauvat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Social skills/General topics Beatrice Fontaine Beatrice Fontaine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Education Aroldo Souza-Leite "Aroldo Souza-Leite" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Lightning talks Anna Ravenscroft Anna Ravenscroft <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Zope Lightning talks Vacant 8. Breakfast We can get breakfast at the student union for SEK 50/person and day (~5.50 Euro). This would include coffee, tea, juice, yoghurt, cheese sandwich and ham sandwich. Do we want this? If we have to increase our prices remains an open question. We may save enough on cheaper locations. 9. Price structure I suggest we keep the same general structure as last year. I would like to add the following though: - Speakers who pay after the earlybird cutoff pay an extra 10 Euro. - Speakers who pay at the conference pay an extra 50 Euro. Motivation: People paying late add uncertainty and there is no real need for speakers to pay late. People paying at the conference is a real bother and have to pay a steep premium for being that late. There were several speakers paying at the conference last year and they were a hassle. 10. Refunds We did not have a refund policy last year, which was something that bit me.I had controversies with a couple of people. I would like to suggest that we have a policy of refunding everything except an administrative fee of 20 Euro for cancellations more than 30 days before the conference and make no refundds for cancellations later than that. We will allow switches of person attending until the time of arrival at the conference. This is slightly more generous than most other conferences. 11. Cheques Cheques are a big bother. We can either say that we don't accept cheques or we can attach a 100 Euro administrative fee to them. Our bank charges about 50 Euro for cacheing a foreign cheque, and it normally takes an hour of queueing to get to do it at all. 12. Website The website structure should be ready to be filled with contents. We should arrange a short sprint when we get together a number of people and get it done. Suggestions for a suitable time appreciated. 13. Registration system The registration system is ready for demonstration. I intend to hand out demo accounts and give everyone a quick walkthrough before the end of the meeting. You can then do your best to trash the demo system for a few days before we set up the real thing and go live. The registration system still needs to plug into the web payment system, but we have some time before that has to be finished. 14. Budget I still need to make a revised budget. There are some small adjustments that should be made, but I'm actually quite proud of the budget I made last year. We were not badly on the wrong side anywhere and the reason we have money in the bank is mainly because our keynote speakers were a lot cheaper than budgeted, and that we actually had many more people paying at the door than we expected. Since we can't rely on either of those factors, we should not try to make a tighter budget this year. 15. Report on email sent to all of last years attendees I wrote a better script for the mass emails. About 20 emails bounced. I will groom the list. Two volunteers for the Education track showed up. Two people sent messages saying that they wanted to be speakers and were looking forward to registration opening. Cheers Jacob _______________________________________________ EuroPython mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/europython
