I'd actually rather cap the number of attendees than raise prices.

I find this an unfortunate line of though; EuroPython is the *only* explicitly European Python conference. Keeping it artificially small just makes it either less interesting or simply elitist.

EP is one of the cheapest conferences I’ve attended so far (only beaten by RuPy 2012 which is much shorter and took place at an University in a cheap country). Comparing prices from now and *seven* years ago is neither fair nor reasonable. The same goes for attendance numbers: the Python community in 2014 is very different from the one in 2008.

I very much prefer the current approach of growing and giving out grants to people who can’t afford attending on their own than denying the EP–experience to hundreds of people completely.

I think the most interesting people to meet at the conferences in general have a limited budget. The come to the conference on their own tab to tell the
world about the cool things they are doing in their spare time.

I don’t believe such a correlation – or even causality! – exists. If you find their talks more interesting, it falls under “personal preferences” for which it’s important to have a diverse schedule. That said, grants can make sure that such interesting people are able to attend anyway.

We used to be able to pay travel for speakers coming from South America and the Far East. I see this as far more important than having as many attendees
as possible.

I can’t follow this reasoning. I always saw EP as Europe’s premier get-together of Python devotees that was interesting enough to attract a significant crowd from outside. Optimizing a conference called “*Euro*Python” for South American attendees seems rather backward to me (again: grants).

***

The EPS will have to decide whether they just want to be a cheap get-together for a small cabal or Europe’s answer to PyCon US/NA. If it’s the former, I can only hope an alternative will form from within the organizers of the past years. We have enough cheap and small conferences; the hard task is to run a big one in a proper way without ripping people off O’Reilly-style.

—h

P.S. I’m not affiliated with anyone involved in this discussion, this is just my 2 cents as someone who attended all three EPs in Florence as well as other – cheap – conferences.
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