The problem was definition of the sponsorships without carefully
limiting
the benefits that would get out of hand when 3X as many sponsorships
were
sold as expected (which is what happened).

To be fair, I'm not sure I would have foreseen this either.

But, yes, lightning talks are also a critical part of the conf, and
would be a terrible loss.

Tschö,
Torsten.

This sounds like an example of the editorial-content/advertising dilemma
that publishers have wrestled with for a long time. It's basically
impossible for anybody, even for seasoned professionals, to both sell
advertising and set editorial content without bias. In the publishing
business, it is a very big no-no for the same people to both sell
advertising and also set editorial content. When you go high enough in an
organization, it's harder to do, but still a goal.

Perhaps the organizers can therefore learn from the experience of
publishers:

1) Keep the folks who sell things in an "advertising department". They need
to be different people from the folks who book keynotes and such.

2) Keep the folks who book keynotes and such in a "content department". They
need to be different people from the folks who sell things.

It's hard to say whether the conference is reaching everyone it
should, given the composition of attendees:

http://www.europython.org/community/Planning/Projections

But without anyone to pursue a particular cause, and with decisions
needing to be made within certain timeframes (which is often a
struggle, anyway), things often get preserved as they are rather than
being improved. I live in a European country which is either number
one or two on the price scale (depending on whether you include
alcohol prices or not), and I can't say what the right fee level
should be (other than "possibly lower than it is") - it's up to others
to weigh in and give their opinion, I think.

But the vast majority of the vendor lightning talks were a waste of
time, I agree.

--
Jarek Zgoda
Skype: jzgoda | GTalk: zg...@jabber.aster.pl | voice: +48228430101

It is absolutely critical to the long-term success of PyCon as a
volunteer-run community conference that each attendee take responsibility
for their experience.  Science fiction fandom -- the part that holds
volunteer-run events such as Worldcon -- has lots of experience with this
model.  It is one reason why such cons make a fuss about attendees being
"members", compared to "purchasing a ticket" (which is what you do for a
commercialized Star Trek con).
--
Aahz (a...@pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

Somebody not involved in organising was not happy with the Con.  You
may take the criticism or leave it.  The criticism may be justified
or not.  But saying that it is "his fault" is useless in my opinion,
it even discourages feedback.  It think it's okay to evaluate
something that you didn't help coming into existence.  A good point
is a good point no matter who makes it.

Tschö,
Torsten.

I can't speak to your issues with the normal sessions, but your bad
experience with the lightning talks was my fault. And, in apologizing to
you, I hope that all the others on this thread who have expressed
similar sentiments hear me too.

Ultimately, we miscalculated in certain respects. It wasn't any
particular thing, but rather there were a couple of issues that came
together here:

1 - We had an incredible amount of sponsorship. Higher than expected by
anyone. This wasn't bad in itself (I think it was very good!), but it
set the stage for some of the issues later.

2 - As part of the sponsor package, we promised the sponsors priority
for a lightning talk. Our thought was that the sponsor lightning talks
from last year were well received, so they probably would be this year
as well. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case - at least
having *that many* was not well received.

3 - We had a very limited time when some of the sponsors would still be
here - basically Friday and Saturday. The major problem on Saturday is
that we *had* to stack the sponsor talks that way or else we would not
fulfill our obligations to our sponsors.

We offered lightning talks this year because a) we didn't know how well
the expo hall would go, and b) that was the only way for the sponsors to
connect with the audience last year - so we assumed that it might be the
same way this year. This was discussed and generally agreed-to in
September.  IIRC, the sponsor lightnings were not an issue that was
subject to much debate back then, most people were accustomed to the
generally positive 2007 experience.*

I think that with the success of the expo hall, we can remove the
lightning talks from the sponsor benefits for next year, and at this
point I am in favor of doing so.

Personally, I was *very* disappointed that some of our sponsors didn't
prepare or even show up for their assigned slots. I think that the
sponsors are members of our community, and I expect them to act as such.
Taking slots and not showing up - or not showing up prepared - isn't how
I would hope a community member would act.

Thanks,

Van

1) To learn more Plone / Zope
2) To hang out with Python geeks

The first one I didn't really get anywhere with, but I got lots of
time with PyCon attendees, which was cool. I hope I can go next year,
make new friends and maybe present some of my own stuff.

* There's a reason why I labelled it a "rant" ;-)

* You may be misunderstanding the distinction between "fault" and
"blame".

When there is fault, it is a person's responsibility to correct it.
Blame, OTOH, is about responsibility that *should* have been taken.
We're not telling people that they should volunteer to run PyCon
(although the vast majority of people who help run events like this end
up enjoying them more than people who just show up).  But anyone who
complains and doesn't volunteer is at fault -- the only recourse likely
to produce results is to change their volunteer status.

As I said, feedback is welcome.  Those of us who volunteer do so because
we care about the Python community and want to put on a successful event
for everyone.  But we can rarely make commitments to change anything
unless people step up to fix them.

It's really no different from the people who show up here on c.l.py to
complain about Python: the answer inevitably boils down to "write a
patch!"
--
Aahz (a...@pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

I attended all the keynotes, 15 sessions and two days of the lightning
talks. I was disappointed with about one-third of the keynotes and
sessions. I found only a handful of the lightning talks interesting.
My biggest complaint was the lack of preparation of the speaker:

* in three cases the presenter had a recent problem with their laptop
  but had no back-up plan (dead drive, dead power supply, unable to
get
  video out to projector). The presenters didn't have a copy of their
  presentation elsewhere (thumb drive, or even a printout) so they
just
  winged it and the presentation was difficult to follow and
ineffective.
  When I have presented at conferences in the past, we were required
to
  submit our presentations and materials to the conference at least a
  week before so they could make them available on a web site and also
  on backup laptops at the conference.

* the PyCon feedback survey doesn't allow for any useful feedback
about
  the presentations. You only get to pick your five favorites. There
  should be forms available (hardcopy or online) where we can give
feedback
  to the presenters themselves. My impression is that many of the
speakers
  have presented at PyCon before and may do so in the future so this
feedback
  can help them be more effective. I found it a bit ironic that I
attended
  at least three sessions with a strong testing theme that talked
about
  the importance of feedback in the development process and how it
helped
  improve the quality of the final product, yet there was no channel
to
  provide feedback to the presenters themselves. It seemed a glaring
  omission to me that the PyCon survey had questions about whether I
shared
  a room (who cares?) but not about the quality of the presenters and
  presentations.

* As a PyCon first-timer, I was not aware of the open meetings and
BoF
  discussions while I was there. I feel like I might have missed one
of the
  more valuable parts of the conference simply because I was ignorant.
It
  would have been nice to get the word out a bit more - maybe an
announcement
  each morning at the beginning of the keynotes.

* There has been a lot of discussion about the reservation of
lightning talk
  slots to sponsors. What I don't understand is why this wasn't
disclosed at
  the conference. I've seen some of the organizers defend the
"experiment"
  but no one explain why it wasn't mentioned beforehand. I'm left with
the
  impression that the organizers knew this would be unpopular and
didn't want
  to draw attention to it. I think a lot of this could have been
averted by
  disclosing this change before the conference took place (in which
case the
  community may have pushed back and convinced the organizers to
reconsider
  the decision). Or at least it could have been disclosed at the
conference
  so people could have decided to skip the lightning talks and
organize their
  own ad-hoc meetings or talks. Experimenting isn't bad. But failing
to
  disclose this information was a poor decision - especially at a
conference
  that prides itself in openness and community involvement.

* Lastly, I found the technical depth at most talks to be too shallow.
I was
  especially surprised at this because I've only been using Python for
two
  years, so I still think I'm a bit of a noob. But if you looked
around at
  the conference, you saw a bunch of people who are really into
programming
  (so much that many of them were doing it _during_ the talks) so to
think that
  the audience isn't capable of following deep technical discussions
is a bit
  off the mark. At other conferences I've attended and/or presented
at, they
  would typically rate presentations as a level 1, 2 or 3. I think
this would
  help set people's expectations. That coupled with session-level
feedback, would
  help the organizers plan future PyCon sessions that better match the
attendees'
  interests.

That said, I did learn a few things at PyCon and found the overall
experience
pretty good. I simply had been hoping for a little more...

Django code lab was fantastic.  

Teach me Twisted was a fantastic, innovative, and effective way to teach
a new technology.  There was a little bit of difficulty hearing over the
cross-talk, but I just moved up front and had no further troubles (and
better access to the Balvenie single-malt!

Most of the sessions I attended were moderately to highly useful.  FWIW,
none of my presenters had laptop troubles, except at teach me twisted,
but we weren't on as much of a time crunch, and we took care of that one
pretty easily and kept going.  

The only useless one I attended was actually the most highly technical,
not because it didn't have good information, but because functions were
used without reference to what module they had been imported from and
slides containing 15-20 line functions were left up for about thirty
seconds, and then were gone.  I couldn't even finish reading them.  

Note to speakers:  do not say

   x, y = tee(foo)

say

   from itertools import tee
   x, y = tee(foo)

or better (for pedagogical purposes)

   import itertools
   x, y = itertools.tee(foo)

I don't disagree with the criticisms leveled throughout this thread, but
I do want to say that I think it has been a great conference, and for
me, the problems did not ruin the experience.  Heed these criticisms and
it will be even better next year.  Ignore them, and it will probably
degrade over time.

I help to organize a community based conference, and we have struggled
with providing value for sponsors as well. I have some suggestions,
which I will offer here and to PyCon organizers. This sounds similar
to what one person described above, regarding how lightning talks were
managed in '07.

At CodeMash, we scheduled a daily slot for vendor sessions and clearly
marked them as such.  We were concerned that attendees would simply
avoid the vendor sessions, which would backfire.  To mitigate this
risk, we strongly encouraged our vendors to do something "different"
than a sales pitch for vendor sessions, asking them to consider
providing something meaningful for the audience.  Talks weren't
reviewed; we just gave them a nudge when we discussed the vendor
sessions with them.  They were entitled to choose a pure sales pitch
if they wanted to do so, but we definitely discouraged this activity.
And the sponsors responded with some great talks, and expressed
satisfaction in the entire process! The vendor sessions were well
attended, and it was completely transparent that they WERE vendor
sessions.  I had been totally skeptical about providing vendor
sessions ahead of time, yet even *I* was won over.  Vendors WANT
people to come to their sessions.  Sometimes they, just like speakers,
simply need a little nudge in recognizing what makes a compelling
talk.

In my opinion, other speakers suffered from not knowing what makes a
compelling talk as well.  I don't know what other talks were proposed,
but those that were on the schedule were often disappointing because
the speaker provided too much "background" and not enough "here's
what's cool" for me.  Those were the talks that I walked out of.  I
suffer from this same problem as a speaker and I'm trying to fix that
myself.  I hope that other speakers are interested in doing the same.

As for the attitude that if you weren't involved with organizing
Pycon, you can't complain about it, that's a bit unfair.  Several
people DID engage in the conference onsite, organizing Open Spaces
discussions (Bruce included).  I saw Bruce both suggesting Open Spaces
talks and being recruited to convene them (and, in one case, even
reconvene one that had taken place earlier).  That's being involved in
the process, and should not be discounted.

Furthermore, in my experience, people don't usually complain about
things that don't matter to them.  It's important, IMO, to recognize
that the complaints you see on this group seem to come from the heart,
from a desire to see PyCon flourish and be a conference worth
attending.  I certainly feel that way, and I suspect that the vast
majority of people who have offered constructive criticism here do as
well.

I'm bummed about the lightning talks at PyCon from 2008, but I have a
lot of confidence based on what I have read here from Jacob and
others, that things will be different in 2009.  Thank you for
listening to the community feedback.

Jacob

* Saturday and Sunday were much better than Friday.

* Open-source != Anti-vendor.  The vendors are a vital part of the
open-source community.

* Lightning talks should be proportionate to their information
content.  The most common vendor message can be done in 45 seconds
while the next speaker is setting-up:  "Hi, I'm Raymond from Raymond
Enterprises.  We sell Raymond's signature to Raymond's fans.  We use
Python to crawl the web for clients wanting his signature.  We're
hiring Python programmers with experience in web-crawling.  We're
proud to sponsor for PyCon 2009. Good night and good luck.".

* The sole guiding principle for the conference should be whatever
best serves the attendees.

* As the conference gets bigger, lots of previously minor annoyances
will become more irritating.  The conference organizers will adapt as
needed.

* Vendor/sponsor presentations should not have priority over
informational talks.

Also, lots of things went well:

* Sean stepped-in and fixed-up the wireless for Saturday and Sunday
(but on Friday the third-party wireless setup sucked mightily).

* The conference admin (checkin, schedule posting, etc) was excellent.

* The AV work was great (you'll soon be able to see HD recordings for
most talks).

* Steve Holden successfully created a new type of talk, "Teach me
Twisted".

* The feedback on the tutorials was excellent, the BoFs seemed to go
well, and the sprints are off to a nice start.

* The conference was close to the airport.

One last thought:

* Most of the conference work is done by volunteers.  As the community
grows, more volunteers will be needed (for next year, I plan to help
by reviewing talk proposals).

If there must diamond 'keynotes' put them at the end of a session or
in a separate track so we can easily avoid them if we wish. But
personally, I don't think keynotes should be for sale at all in any
form.

One problem I faced was that there were sessions that had few talks I
was interested in and other that had several at the same time where I
couldn't attend all that I was interested. It's likely that there is
no good solution to this, but perhaps one could try a new scheme for
scheduling talks by posting the talk list early and letting
registrants select the top n talks they want to see and running some
sort of scheduling optimizer that tries to satisfy most of these
desires (I have no idea if anything like this exists anywhere).