Proposal for PyCon India

PyCon is a global community event. We intend to have an Indian edition of the same, in association with BangPypers. The idea is to have all pythonistas from around the country come together and have a good fun pythonic time. The general outline is something as follows:

• Tutorials
• General Talks
• Workshops
• Lightning Talks
• Programming Sprints

TODO List

• Contact David Goodger of PSF to express the idea for an Indian edition of the conference, and for using the PyCon title. (Ramakrishna Reddy)

• Write formal proposal (Noufal Ibrahim) PyConIndiaProposalDraft

• Find venue
• Find Sponsors
• Finalize Date -- 3 days (September)
  • -- I suggest September 4,5,6 (Baiju M)
• Form a planning committee
• Budget ?
• How to do Publicity
  • Blog about it
  • Buttons for websites/blog sidebars
  • Inform in all mailing lists (User Groups) and keep posting reminders
  • Publicize using other conferences/unconferences/events
  • All User Groups -- like django, TG, Pylons, etc. There are a few hundred user groups.. It is viral.
  • Bloggers can start blogging about it.
  • We can have a few magazines as Media sponsors. We can get the ads bartered.
  • Target LUGs. There are lots of Python fans there.
  • Get a few high profile bloggers in India and abroad to write about it. Personal requests will help.
  • Its extremely important to get the big cos which has some interest in Python involved. say Google. They can help evangelizing the conference.
  • If we are officially Pycon India, then don't worry, there will be automatic links out of most Python related sites. You can bet that anyone who's interested in Python will be visiting one such places in the next 5-6 months.
  • Contact the mainstream media which do write about tech-focussed events. [svaksha]

• Create one website with event details and co-ordinating proposals. May be use the same code used by PyCon ?

Community Discussion

Decisions to be made

Please add your name to what you have to say, and try not to edit the opinions of others, you may reorder them though, I guess. -- RoshanMathews

Budgets/Sponsorship/Travel

• Speaker travel sponsorship : International speakers (may) need travel funding. [svaksha]
• Local speakers : Budgets/sponsorship for local (other cities) speakers travel and stay ? [svaksha]
• Conf entry : Is it free or will attendees be charged? This is not mentioned explicitly. [svaksha]

Target audience

• target newbies

  • I've been to lots of talks which focus on "spreading the message" and evangelizing, which are worthy goals in themselves, yes, but I'd like to have atleast something which is targeted at python users, not possible future python users. -- RoshanMathews

• a conference for pythonistas by pythonistas

  • advantage here is that even if beginners don't grok all of the talks, they will be inspired to get their hands dirty and play around with things till they can understand things at the level presented. -- RoshanMathews

• have tracks for both

  • sounds good, but is more work. -- RoshanMathews

To Tee or Not to

• To Tee

  • sure I like the t-shirts as much as anyone else, but then you have to deal with the hordes who are just walking around collecting shirts. -- RoshanMathews

• No freebies
  • I assume this will mean the people who come in would have come in because they are interested in Python and in discussing it.

Opinions

Anand B Pillai (abpillai at gmail dot com)

• PyCon India should be a conference, not an unconference.

• We should strive for international participation in planning and content/presentation right from the start.
• I agree September is a good time.
• We should approach big Python users in Bangalore (HP, Google, Dell etc) as possible sponsors.
• Dates for forming a draft formal proposal ? - This is required for even approaching someone for sponsorship. I suggest creating one in 3 months. I can take the lead in this. Let me know who else will be interested in working on the proposal.

Noufal Ibrahim (noufal at nibrahim dot net dot in)

• I can get probably help to get a draft for the 'formal proposal' ready along with someone else. I think it should be possible to create a first draft in a week or so. If anyone has any pointers, please send them to me.
• Going to companies and advertising (including a website) would probably be predicated on the proposal.

• I'm not so sure about September anymore. ConventionHowto indicates a much longer planning period. We need to discuss this.

Parthan (python dot technofreak at gmail dot com)

• +1 for September, but that means we have to start the publicity measures soon
• We need a dedicated wiki/website up as soon as possible, this will help all information available at one place
• Get international speakers to attract participation, but also give equal opportunity to Indian speakers
• We should also involve all known companies who run as a python shop to increase the awareness within local communities.

• A conference w/o tee is like having a south Indian meal w/o pickle. At least we can have pay for your tees or have delegate fees with and without goodies

• If we consider ConventionHowto , we have 18 months to September 2010

Venkat (venkat83 at gmail dot com)

• +1 for a 'dedicated' event.
• Willing to volunteer for proposal, filtering/scheduling the talks.
• Am not sure about September - as it looks very aggressive.

Roshan Mathews (rmathews gmail com)

• Having the conference be a "PyCon" is serious stuff, which can't be a damp squib like one of the local meets.

• I'd be against pitching this as a evangelical/community-building/newbie-oriented event. I'd like something for Python programmers, not people who have just heard of the language. But this is up to the "community" to agree upon.
• Similarly, I'd rather this was a low budget event sans free T-Shirts and the usual swag.
• So, minus the gimmicks, the only draw should be the quality of the talks/speakers in the conference.
• September sounds okay, but the date should be finalized only after you have some sort of list of speakers, events, tracks et al.

svaksha

• Instead of swag like stickers/T-shirts/mugs, why not give Python books ? Alternatively if that is too expensive, the freely available documentation (with respective author perms) could be printed and bound for those interested at a nominal cost.

  • This is a great idea! I'll second it. We can get publishers to offer deep discounts in return for having stalls at the conference. Assuming an average book will cost around Rs.400, if the publishers offer a discount of 100, and the conference uses it's t-shirt money to knock off another 100 bucks per book, then we've managed a 50% discount which is really cool. -- RoshanMathews

  • And instead of stickers we can have print-outs of those folding reference cards as handouts. -- RoshanMathews

  • If this idea seems cool, I can elide the rant "To Tee or Not To" from above. -- RoshanMathews

Anurag Priyam (anurag08priyam [AT] gmail.com)

• wont the month of July be a better time for college students, considering the fact that we want participation of students from all over India.
• i think we can get some publishing company like TMH to sponsor svaksha's idea of giving Python books.

CategoryPyCon