On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 7:46 PM, Andrew Beyer <[email protected]> wrote: > Meeting went well. In your absence, you (Mike) and Brian were > appointed "joint grand-poohbahs in charge of decisions", as no one > felt they should speak for the group without some input from either of > you. :)
I spend 8 hours a day with Python and more at home, so attending every meeting and planning events are just too much for me. Let's form an event task force to plan this one and propose other future events. Are there two or three people who would like to take responsibility for organizing it? > We kicked around some general ideas regarding another python day, > some points of which I recall (didn't take any notes): > > * Everyone seemed opposed to a registration fee, if its at all > possible to avoid. Thus seemingly ruling out pgsql and their space at > SCCC, as they are charging $75 (Though apparently donating all or part > of it?). > * In light of the previous point, it would probably be best to stick > to a size and scale similar to the last one. Moving to a larger > conference style venue would be prohibitively expensive without > registration fees. If there's a large majority against registration fees, let's forget about pgsql this time. It was a close deadline anyway, and the only realistic attendeeship would be those who are attending pgsql anyway. I would suggest a day right before or after so that people could attend both, but it's probably too late for people to alter their travel plans. I would like to find another room than the Gates Commons, unless we can rearrange the tables into rows. That big square of tables with a huge empty center is uninviting. It's bad for podium/screen watching, and bad for roundtable discussions. Rows or scattered small tables would be nicer. We don't need to rule out paid spaces entirely. Maybe it'll be cheap enough that a few people can donate to cover it, or the PSF would pick up the tab. And a $10 fee would not be unreasonable. > * People who had attended in Jan felt that the more > informational/educational talks and those for projects actively > seeking contributors were more interesting and useful than the more > demo style ones that just showed off a finished system or closed > source project. OK, we can ask particularly for those. We might have a niche for "help us" talks that are too small for PyCon. > * Suggestion that there be a small (3 person) program committee that > could take responsibility for soliciting/selecting/scheduling talks w/ > a bit more organization than last time, though people did like the > availability of talk proposals on the wiki. The wiki is a convenient way to propose talks and to see what's on offer. Especially for a small event like ours. > a bit of > discussion on the pain that is easy_install, and alternatives (or lack > thereof). Ian Bicking's work on a new one was mentioned...pip, I > think? Ian made a very interesting post today. He laid out future plans for pip and virtualenv, and their integration with Distribute (Tarek Ziade's ambitious replacement for Setuptools). http://groups.google.com/group/python-virtualenv/browse_thread/thread/b6eb057ea4025961?hl=en Currently, pip is more advanced than easy_install and doesn't do those annoying egg directories. But some things only easy_install can do (install from eggs, install precompiled Windows eggs, installing a snapshot of a local directory [as opposed to a live link], and installing pip itself). Whenever I set up an Ubuntu system, I run: sudo apt-get install 'python-setuptools>=0.6c9' sudo apt-get install 'python-virtualenv>=1.3.3' sudo easy_install pip sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper Our Python day could also have talks summarizing big Python issues like this one. We could target, say, 30% of the talks to this. A roundup talk on who's doing Python 3 migration and how well it's proceeding would also be worthwhile. Actually, the big empty square would be perfect for the GIL Interpretive Dance. As Jesse Noller proposed tongue-in-cheek for PyCon: """There will be no 3rd keynote slot. Instead, we will fill it with the Interpretive Dance of the Global Interpreter Lock, wherein a bunch of people stand on the stage, but only one dances at a time and that person is decided through mortal combat between the person wanting to dance, and a tree.""" -- Mike Orr <[email protected]>
