DC-Area Python BarCamp

Goals

• 2-day event, held on a weekend in October or November 2008.
• Held in the DC or Baltimore area.

• Free admission, or admission <$10.

• Do we want to have swag, in the form of a T-shirt or tote bag?
• Will feature 1 track of self-scheduled talks on one day, and at least 3-4 sprints, up to as many as we have room for.
• ~40-50 attendees.
  • Broken down into 15-20 sprinters who mostly code all weekend (about 3 groups), and 20-30 people who come only on the Saturday for talks, and may ease into sprinting later in the day.
  • Sunday will therefore be smaller and quieter.
• If the venue doesn't have restaurants nearby, we'll need to provide food.

Space requirements

• At least two rooms on Saturday (talks in one room, sprints in the other).
• Tables that can seat at least 6 people (so, assuming 50-60 people, that's 8-10 tables)

We'll bring in easels w/ whiteboards or paper pads, or those static-clinging sheets for the wall.

Talk ideas

Talks on the first day should be a mix of offered and invited, going from more introductory talks early on to more advanced and specialized talks later. Possible ideas:

• A general Python intro (depends on the expected audience -- newbie-heavy or not?)
• A Python-dev intro
• An OLPC talk
• Other ideas?

Possible venues

DC:

• Josephine Butler Parks Center, near U Street.

• U. of Maryland College Park
• GWU (CS dept, or Cafritz Center)
• Another DC-area university?
• Look for a hotel (downtown; near Courthouse or Ballston?)
• Strayer University
• Gallaudet

• Clark & Parsia's offices

Arlington:

• Marymount

• VA Tech at West Falls Church

• Arlington schools (but the usual location is probably not good -- too far from Metro)

Baltimore:

• JHU CS dept.

Current tasks

E-mail possible CS department contacts

• JHU: Michael Droettboom

• GWU: Rahul Simha (supervised a project called $ython).

• U. of MD: Bijan Parsia?

• Howard: faculty listing

• U. of DC: faculty listing

Research hotel prices in the fall: Baltimore vs. DC; is one city much cheaper?

What to do about wireless, which is critical? Bring it in? Rely on the venue's wireless? What if it fails, which would cripple us?

Budget notes

Assuming 50 attendees, and assuming we get food (which is looking unlikely):

 1500? Venue
  500? Projector rental
 1500  Food for 50 attendees ($15 x 50 attendees x 2 days)
  250  Contingency 
  250  Equipment (power strips, etc.)
  250  Printing (signage, local map, etc.)
---------------------------
 4250  Total

Charging $10 admission to 50 people only brings in $500; we'd need to charge at least $80 to break even. Maybe we should just forget about charging admission and look for sponsorship instead.

The Chicago BarCamp cut costs by borrowing projectors and other equipment from techies and businesses who wanted a mention; it cut out the food cost by borrowing microwaves and finding a venue near restaurants. Do it on the cheap!