Jacob may be paying us a visit next year

[Udi h Bauman]

Hi all,

My company, Tikal Knowledge, has invited Django's co-BDFL Jacob Kaplan-Moss to lecture/teach in Israel next year, & he kindly agreed to arrive around April/May. I think this can be a great opportunity for all of us, & have 2 questions/challenges for you:

1. Will you be interested in attending a 1-day workshop/master-class given by Jacob? It'll have a fee, which we'll need to figure out.
2. EuroDjangoCon will be held in May in Berlin. This conference is helping push Django to the European market & introduce it to many potential developers & businesses. I was thinking of leveraging Jacob's arrival to organize a DjangoCon-IL conference, to do the same thing in the local market. It sounds very pretentious, but basically we only need to organize a 1-day conference, with regular PyWeb-IL talks + Jacob's talks, intended for as wide developers audience as possible, e.g.: Web developers (PHP/Rails/Drupal &c), Entrepreneurs, IT developers/sys-admins & more. We can do also some nice gimmick stuff (live frameworks benchmark, web app contest &c). What do you think? Are you in for this challenge?

Udi

[Ahik Man]

Udi,
This is grate news.
Count me in for both parts.
The DjangoCon-IL sounds very promising. If you want, we can dedicate
time in the coming PyWeb meeting to give it some boost.

Ahik

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[Sivan Green]

Sounds cool, how about me adding the show case of latest Plone
package? I'd like to try to introduce this wonderful technology to the
local market as well, as an in-place SharePoint replacement.

http://sivang.blogspot.com/2009/10/plone-as-sharepoint-replacement.html

Sivan

--
Best Regards,
Sivan Green

[Idan Gazit]

No offense to plone, but presenting plone at a Django conference with
one of Django's creators might be a little offensive. :)

-I

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> Best Regards,
> Sivan Green
>

[benny daon]

1. Will you be interested in attending a 1-day workshop/master-class given by Jacob? It'll have a fee, which we'll need to figure out.

great. count me in.

1. EuroDjangoCon will be held in May in Berlin. This conference is helping push Django to the European market & introduce it to many potential developers & businesses. I was thinking of leveraging Jacob's arrival to organize a DjangoCon-IL conference, to do the same thing in the local market. It sounds very pretentious, but basically we only need to organize a 1-day conference, with regular PyWeb-IL talks + Jacob's talks, intended for as wide developers audience as possible, e.g.: Web developers (PHP/Rails/Drupal &c), Entrepreneurs, IT developers/sys-admins & more. We can do also some nice gimmick stuff (live frameworks benchmark, web app contest &c). What do you think? Are you in for this challenge?

I like the idea but I think we have to be careful with the way we brand it. It can't be "DjangoCon-IL" as it will drive all non-django developers away. I would call it "The Open Way" and get as many frameworks on board as possible. We can cover issues like development process, community, licensing and documentation. The key issue is to make it appealing for .net developers as well...

[Refael Ackermann]

I just have to ask, this Jacob:
http://oneyearbibleimages.com/jacob_angel.jpg
or this Jacob:
http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/lostpedia/images/7/79/5x16_Jacob_and_nemesis.png

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[Idan Gazit]

On Dec 13, 2009, at 10:35 AM, benny daon wrote:

> I like the idea but I think we have to be careful with the way we
> brand it. It can't be "DjangoCon-IL" as it will drive all non-django
> developers away. I would call it "The Open Way" and get as many
> frameworks on board as possible. We can cover issues like
> development process, community, licensing and documentation. The key
> issue is to make it appealing for .net developers as well...

-1.

It's too early to waste effort in trying to get people from the .NET
ecosystem into Django. Also, it is almost impossible to give a talk
that is both interesting for an experienced python dev and followable
for somebody who has never seen a .py file in his life.

Trying to be all things to all people means that you suck at
everything. We can put on a great conference about Django or a "blah"
conference about everything.

Or in hebrew, pick a wedding to "dance on". :)

-I

[Udi h Bauman]

I think it should be about Django, but relevant also to people who want to see what's Django all about. The talks should be explaining how to do stuff in Django & how Django solves problems, which is useful for both educating current Django developers & marketing to potential converts. Idan, does it make sense to you?

Udi

[benny daon]

It's too early to waste effort in trying to get people from the .NET
ecosystem into Django.

Says who? Open Source Web Frameworks are all the rage and many startups in Israel are still using .Net. I'm sure you've seen the YC poll - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=750142 - where open source frameworks take the lead.
 

Also, it is almost impossible to give a talk
that is both interesting for an experienced python dev and followable
for somebody who has never seen a .py file in his life.

The idea is not to talk about python files about about Open Source as a way of development. We're used to being in 3 IRC rooms, reading django.reddit.com and tracking the Django groups, following the core developers on twitter and more. Jacob can tell a very interesting story abouthow the Django community evolved and how it's been maintained by just 15 core developers working part time.

Trying to be all things to all people means that you suck at
everything. We can put on a great conference about Django or a "blah"
conference about everything. 

I'm not sure who much experience you have working with closed-source too in a closed enviornment, but the process is completly diffrent. Many closed source developers I talk to don't understand there's much more to Open Source than just the code. It took me quite a while and a few embarrasing posts on the Django groups to get my bearings right - the whole way of communications is different.
You think it's "blah" becuase you're already doing it for a long while, but for those close source developers out there, the whole open way is uncharted territory. I admit it's a not going to be very interesting for us who've been using Django for a while (maybe except for a licensing panel), but I do think it's time for Israeli's software R&D to move behind "things we did in the army" and join the open source communities.

[Idan Gazit]

You're mixing up a few different things.

My point isn't that django is unpopular or that .net developers aren't
interested.

My point is that you cannot give detailed talks about developing with
django and expect a .NET developer to stay awake.

I understand that there's a goal to "introduce" django to the Israeli
web-dev community, including the people who wear suits. That's great!
There are several talks that can be given on the subject which will be
*interesting* for them. None of those talks will be interesting to
somebody who is already using Django.

If there's another goal of putting together a djangocon with a focus
on more advanced technical talks, maybe a workshop with jacob --
great! None of those talks will be interesting to somebody who has
heard about django and is curious to learn what it is about. Both
suits & .NET developers will fall asleep during such talks.

My suggestion:

1. Have a half-day/day of talks for people new to django. Can give a
talk or two about the business case for django, success stories, etc.
If you want to draw technical people who are not new to django, offer
a workshop where we do an accelerated tutorial on-screen -- tell
people to bring their laptops, and walk them through a shortened
django tutorial. Key goal is showing them results in the space of an
hour -- they should have a blog or a twitter clone or whatever at the
end of it, and see how easy it is to Get Things Done.

2. Have a separate day of technical talks about Django. Can roll
Jacob's workshop into this. Make it about Django and expect a basic
level of knowledge from the crowd.

-I

[Sivan Green]

Huh? In Budapest, we even had a special track of how to integrate
plone and django using Deliverance, exploiting each technology's best
strengths.

Are you sure he'll get offended ? That's not typical to confident
technology leaders...

Sivan

Best Regards,
Sivan Green

[Idan Gazit]

No I don't really think he'll be offended. Just poor manners to invite
him all the way out to here and give talks about other platforms.

Giving a talk about integrating plone/django could be interesting
(personally I'm -1) but that's not the same as a talk about using
Plone to replace M$. In other words -- "where's the django?"

-I

[Sivan Green]

Noted, we should then try to opt for such a talk on one of the upcoming PyWebs.

Best Regards,
Sivan Green