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.
- 50-60 attendees maximum.
- Broken down into 20-30 sprinters who mostly code all weekend, 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.
Possible venues
DC:
[http://www.washingtonparks.net/parkscenter.html 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:
[http://www.marymount.edu/academic/business/it/ Marymount]
[http://www.ncr.vt.edu/programs/CS.html 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: [http://seas.gwu.edu/~simha/ Rahul Simha] (supervised a project called $ython).
- U. of MD: Bijan Parsia?
Howard: [http://www.scs.howard.edu/faculty_staff.aspx faculty listing]
U. of DC: [http://www.udc.edu/academics/soe/faculty.htm 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!