Hi everyone. It's once again time to begin planning the Python track at the ACCU conference. I should have started this sooner :-)
It's the same place, Randolph in Oxford on 20-23 April 2005. I am sending out a call for papers concurrently with this. I would like to attempt at least a pretence at democracy by running through what we plan now, to let anyone air their views. Call for papers is going out now, and we will try to get some Python-specific web pages together next week. I will be at an ACCU planning meeting today and they will want to start publicising this heavily from 2nd January. Here are some issues I should throw out: 1. Is this the UK Conference? Are there others? Last year some people suggested there should be a UK event which is more community-oriented, elsewhere. If so, that would be great, and if they feel strongly it should take over the title of "UK Python Conference" then I don't want to stand in their way. However, barring howls or concrete plans for another event, I would like to brand this "The UK Python Conference". 2. Committee and Volunteers Two gentlemen kindly volunteered to help at last year's event. If they are on this list, please ping me - I lost your details! If not we will probably find you through a mailing to the attendees. The ACCU normally chooses and solicits talks in committee and insisted on this last year. This year we're doing a Call for Papers for the Python tracks, as you'll see with the concurrent emails. Tim Couper, myself, John Lee, and (if we can find them) the two volunteers will form a committee to look at the talks. If anyone else wants to join, say so. Be warned there will be no financial perks for the committee - if you want to get in free, you have to have a talk accepted. ACCU committee members all follow the 'pay or speak' rule. 4. Format This is largely set. We have 3 days and 3 90 minute slots on each, plus lunch and evening events. Slots can be divided in two. We must therefore aim for a small number of high quality talks of interest to most programmers. We could add a second track if (a) we could demonstrate there were likely to be more than 50 people and we needed to split rooms AND (b) if there were too many great talks. But last year most people really wanted one track to avoid tough choices. 5. Price Not set but expected to be similar to last year (approx £100 per day). This year has 'Security' as the rotating special subject, so we won't have an Open Source track and the corresponding massive crossover with Python. As always it will be cheapest if you join the ACCU. 6. Extra events If people want to hold sprints, open days, tutorials or anything else around the event, let us know soon. It may be possible to find cheaper space within the University before or after the event. The event is provisionally Thu-Fri-Sat which would make sprints or tutorials on Tue-Wed feasible. If lots of people want to show what they are doing and meet up at lower cost, one possibility is a Python community open day on the Tuesday, All comments are welcome Best Regards, Andy Robinson CEO/Chief Architect ReportLab Europe Ltd p.s. I am on holiday this week and getting email sporadically until 8th December. _______________________________________________ python-uk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-uk
