Jacob Hallén <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
On onsdag 06 april 2005 15:54, Harald Armin Massa wrote:
Hello to all the members of the KeyNoteSpeaker recruiting Team (KNSrT)
Who knows anything 'bout
http://www.paulgraham.com/index.html
Paul Graham ???
He wrote "hackers and painters", got a Millionair during dot.com<http://dot.com>bubble, founds startups ..
a) can he speak enthuastically? b) has anyone heard him?
what do you think, could he fit?
Paul Graham spoke at one of the earlier Pycon's. I found him to be a good speaker with some fairly interesting things to say. At Pycon he spoke about the future of programming languages, especially with a view towards Python 3000. His opinions on that matter were fairly far out.
He would surely be interesting.
For some reason, I'm full of names today (something that notably wasn't true yesterday on IRC): Kent Beck, any of the Design Patterns Gang of Four, Richard Gabriel, Peter Norvig, James Gosling. All a bit American, though, and I've no idea how likely any of them would be to accept an invitation. Or if any of them are interesting speakers.
A more off the wall suggestion would be Ken Macleod -- leftie British Sci-Fi author with a bit of a techie streak. Or Iain Banks -- the same, but Scottish and probably a bit less of a geek.
I think keynote speakers are always a problem: there a several 'inspirational' speakers about, but often you think after their talk 'What a great talk, but actually what was it about, what was the message?' On the other hand, if the speaker is not that good a speaker, the message may get lost.
The Pycon keynoters this year were not that impressive. Guido said that his keynotes are always crap, but hey he's Guido and he has important things to say about Python, so he's wrong. The Google keynote told us nothing. Jim Huganin's talk on IronPython at the evil empire was interesting and witty, that would be good for EP, even if there wasn't a deep message.
Of the keynotes we've had at EP before, the ones that stand out in my mind were from Eric Raymond (although I realise that there are reasons why some people might not wish to invite Eric back), and Mark Shuttleworth. Although Mark's talk was largely about his space trip, that was interesting in itself, and he had a very basic and simple message about keeping Python simple and true to its roots which I hope we all remember.
Ideas:
Jim Huganin.
Larry Wall (despite what people say, there is a lot of common ground with PERL, there'd be no harm and maybe a lot of good from the two communities working together).
Steve Holden. Good speaker, long time Python buff and PSF board member. Could be available without too much trouble as he is moving from USA to UK this summer.
RMS if we could get him (would he come?). Some of his opinions might hurt some of the more commercial Python people, but that might provoke good things.
Someone from the FFII? Lots of ignorance about the importance of the patents issue in the Python community, I fear.
Regards,
John ---
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