There is a PyCon UK. There is a PyCon Italy. Just now I saw the announcement of a PyCon France. I understand why these conferences happen - local user communities will want to see conferences where most talks are in their own language and have a bigger selection of talks relevant to the local community. But, being Dutch, these country-specific conferences are typically not things I'd go to, as I'm not based in these countries. I don't speak French or Italian. The Netherlands being a smaller European country, with a proportionally smaller group of Python users, I don't think I'll see a "PyCon the Netherlands" anytime soon either. The same likely holds true for many of the smaller European countries. While I'm happy to see so much activity in the European Python community, it does worry me a little too - because it's not exactly the European Python community. There is already a conference for that community: EuroPython. EuroPython is more than for just the European Python community, in fact - it has traditionally been the most international Python conference there is. I enjoy meeting people from the larger international community. Open source is international. The appearance of country-specific conferences is in itself a good sign: the Python community in Europe, and these countries in particular, has grown large enough to support them. It can be argued that these attract different attendees than EuroPython, people who would not have visited EuroPython anyway. These conferences, in itself, are of course a good thing. One can even argue that perhaps they will energize their local communities so much that more people will end up going to EuroPython. But there is bound to be some overlap between the potential attendees of a country-specific conference and the potential attendees of EuroPython. Moreover, there will be an increased competition to attract international speakers for these local conferences as well, as it's unlikely these will want to go speak at four European Python-related conferences a year. So, local conferences in the UK, Italy and France may draw away visitors and good speakers from EuroPython. That would be a shame. Analyzing the statistics of where EuroPython visitors come from doesn't tell us very much. While attendance from the Italy and UK, which had PyCons last year, was indeed down, attendance from many other European conferences was down as well, including France, where they didn't have a PyCon yet last year (though certainly they had user group meetings). The statistics don't support the increased attendance theory either, though: EuroPython last year wasn't one of the largest ones I've seen in terms of participants - against the trend of growing usage of Python overall. One can attribute EuroPython's relatively small size to other causes. Perhaps the lower attendance is due to the somewhat haphazard organization in the run-up to the conference last year (it's not a complaint as I didn't help, and this year already looks to be better). Perhaps it was due to the location in Lithuania, which may appear to be out of the way to some people. I think if the location is the cause, people have entirely the wrong impression. I don't think Vilnius, Lithuania is harder to reach than, say, Gothenburg Sweden, where we've had the conference before. Vilnius is certainly not expensive compared to some of the previous locations EuroPython has been in. I certainly don't want to begrudge anyone a conference in Python with their own community and own language. It would be a shame however to see EuroPython shrink further in the face of local conferences. An international conference can attract a really interesting set of attendees and speakers. We should also celebrate the international nature of our open-source community. So, I hope my worries are unjustified and more people will visit EuroPython 2008 in bigger numbers. Speakers: prove my worries wrong and submit a talk: the call for participation is open! Local conference organizers: prove my worries wrong and visit EuroPython 2008 with a delegation. Promote EuroPython at your local conferences! Incentive: you might see speakers you will want to invite for your own local PyCon there. :)
![[Comments]](/blog-content//themes/Default/comments.png "15 comments")
(15) Sat Apr 12 2008 11:57 Local European PyCons and EuroPython:
- Comments:
Posted by Graham Higgins at Sat Apr 12 2008 13:40
++ An international conference can attract a really interesting set of attendees and speakers.And it has a correspondingly larger collective carbon footprint. Numbers are likely to continue to decline, I suspect.
Posted by Lennart Regebro at Sat Apr 12 2008 13:45
The French PyCon is just a renaming of what last year was called "Journees Python", so there was one in France last year as well. I don't see it competing with EuroPython, though.
Posted by Fabio Pliger at Sat Apr 12 2008 14:19
Hi, i'm one of the Pycon Italy organizers and last year i've been to EP, PyConUK and ( of course ) PyCon Italy. Even if i see the point ( and mostly agree ) i have (also) to partly disagree with you.
First I think that last year low attendance at EP has nothing to do with the presence of national Conferences( or at least it's minimal ). Since i've attended to all 3 conference i really see the difference between PyUK and PyItaly with EP. ORGANIZATION and PARTECIPATION!! When i went to Birmingham i really saw the same motivation and organization as we had here in Italy. Sadly, EP had some organization problems that leaded to some "troubles". Laura herself highlighted the problem... most of organizers were missing in action. ( Please, if i'm saying somtehing wrong or that not corresponds to the truth i ask to correct me.. ) . The result is what you already said: The 3 conferences had the same ( more or less ) the same attendes number!
It's important to have a group of people where everyone has it's own task. Just as an example: for the italian conference of this year we delayed the release of the schedule for a few days. This delay also delayed people registration! We had lots of people asking for the scedule as they needed time to organizing their trip and so on... If i remember well EPs last year schedule was released really late.Again, i thinks that the country-specific organizations/conferences, must be considered as an OPORTUNITY and not as a threat.I think it's time for the EP core team and all the countries organizations to sit down a work toghether to help each other. I really do agree that Europython is and must be the main european python conference ( organization ) but i really think it's time for all the local team to help. We should meet and think about how to help people from our country to go to Europython. At Pycon Italy, this year, we will talk about EP and why it's important and try to say to people: "Hey folks! If you want to go to EP2008 and need help talk to us! Maybe we can help!". What about creating EP local teams at the country that have local conferences? The power of python is comunity... About the "international" speakers problems.. I don't see it as problem... Europe ( and the world ) is full of the great people working on great projects! ;)I would be really glad to discuss about this problem with a cup of tea at EP2008! ;)Posted by Tom Hoffman at Sat Apr 12 2008 15:35
OTOH, PyCon in the US has grown to the point where it seems like it will be difficult to maintain as a community-run event. It has definitely hit a less personal scale. Whether or not the same kind of growth is coming or desirable for EuroPython is an open question.
Posted by EuGeNe at Sat Apr 12 2008 15:48
I raised a similar issue last year roughly at the same time but on comp.lang.python : http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/e12536c746c593a8/4abf782de169db18 The feedback was interesting.It is exciting to see all the vibrant Python communities in Europe. I would say that they are competing for resources sponsors / speakers / attendees at a global level even if not entirely at the national level.I am hoping the outcome of this competition will not be the disappearance of a transnational European Python event.Planning on being in Vilnius this year (didn't make it last year) and should attend Pycon.FR too :P
Posted by Martijn Faassen at Sat Apr 12 2008 16:48
Graham, I consider carbon footprint concerns to be an unlikely casue of the decline of EuroPyton. If PyCon in the US can attract 1000 attendees this year, it doesn't seem to be the cause.Fabio, thanks for your input. You don't say much I disagree with. I agree that the organization of EuroPython has been too haphazard at times. I've certainly been guilty of that in the early years when I helped out. (I've only been a speaker at the most recent events, but that's been the limit of my participation) I think the lack of organization and participation is not only due to lack of volunteering, but also on how the volunteers are organized. The traditional EuroPython complaint session ("nobody was participating, we had to do all the work ourselves") doesn't appear to work very well.
I am not sure what will. Giving a fresh set of people real responsibility might do the trick. Perhaps this year is an opportunity to put together a fresh team.Tom, I agree that 1000 people sounds a bit big. But a declining attendance figure at EuroPython is not what we want either. I think we use some more people than we had in 2007.Posted by Henning at Sat Apr 12 2008 23:21
I just looked into the delegates list of PyCon UK 2007. There were people from many European countries (two from the Netherlands btw) but the majority was from the UK. The conference was great and I really hope this team will eventually host EuroPython.
Posted by reine at Mon Apr 14 2008 21:43
but french people are really poor with their english, they prefer listen to the talks in french!. be charitable!. Reine.
Posted by Christopher Arndt at Mon Apr 14 2008 21:57
You forgot to mention the RuPy conference in Poznan, Poland. Though it's not a pure Python conference, there were a large number of Python programmers and many international speakers from the Python community. One nice thing about this conference (apart from that it was very well organized) is that is completely in English language, even though most of the attendants were Polish. And of course that you get a lot of inspiration from looking beyond one's nose through the Ruby talks.PyCon UK is a bit different from the other, national pure-Python conferences in that is able to attract many people from other countries, since every Programmer should at least be able to understand English. But still many people prefer to discuss with other programmers in their own language. I think PyCon Italia is going in the right direction to offer the best of both worlds.
Posted by Martijn Faassen at Mon Apr 14 2008 23:31
[whoops, earlier one of my own comments got listed as one by Fabio, I since correct it. my apologies Fabio]Henning: yeah, I think I know the Dutch participants. :) It's a good point about having local teams host EuroPython. That'd be a plus for EuroPython.reine: I understand that these conferences are attractive to many people. I don't want them to go away. I just want to make sure they don't hurt EuroPython either.
Posted by John Pinner at Tue Apr 15 2008 12:24
I think that we should rejoice that the Python community is growing to the extent that more national events can be supported: then we can reach an even wider audience. As someone involved with both EuroPython and PyCon UK, I would not like to think that we are in competition. (BTW, the first UK Python conference (not called PyCon UK) pre-dated EP, so this is not a new phenomenon.)I think that there will always be a need for national events, for two reasons: firstly the geography - as soon as air travel is involved it's just that much more expensive and time-consuming (especially for community events where people are on a very limited budget); secondly the language problems, many of us don't have the linguistic skills of the Dutch, so it's a healthy sign that we have native language PyCon IT and PyCon FR.I think that getting a multi-country organisation going for EP has been the greatest problem: IRC meetings across timezones are no substitute for face-to-face meetings. Hopefully Laura's action last year in making future hosting of EP conditional upon taking part in the organisation of previous EuroPythons will help.Oh, there will not be a PyCon UK in 2009/2010, as the UK will be hosting EP, maybe Italy or France after that? We could do with somehere with sun ;)It will be interesting to see what that does to the attendance: PyCon UK is over a weekend to encourage community attendance, whereas EuroPython is during the week, which maybe is one of the problems.
Posted by Martijn Faassen at Tue Apr 15 2008 15:41
It's not just language skills (and the Dutch being good at English isn't really due to any language skill; the languages are closely related): a country like the Netherlands has a smaller population base to organize a conference from. I think many European countries are in the same boat, so it's natural to look to EuroPython.I hadn't heard that the UK is organizing EuroPython in 2009 and 2010. That's excellent news! I think having the local country organizations help organize the conference is a great way to compensate for any possible competition. A win-win situation.Laura's condition last year isn't new, by the way - I think that condition has been set in the past.
Posted by Paul Boddie at Wed Apr 16 2008 22:13
Fabio and John make an excellent point if you look at what they both write and put it together: a focused, motivated, localised team will typically arrange a conference which will attract lots of attendees and create a lot of enthusiasm. This enthusiasm will help get stuff done, and people will take pride in showing off the capabilities of their local community. Meanwhile, a distributed team can have difficulties in sharing out the work, and it's hard for such a team to pull together and work through any organisational inefficiencies by sheer application of effort.Currently, EuroPython's core organising team is more or less a hybrid of some of the local organisers from 2004/5, the local organisers from Vilnius, together with those of us who promised to help out at some time or have always had some kind of role. For example, I only got involved in 2006 because there was some concern about the preparedness of the organisers (which proved to be unjustified) and I saw a role I could play in helping out, since I had some familiarity with the venue.Although there are some new, motivated volunteers who also have no real connection to the current venue, I'm inclined to believe that for many attendees EuroPython is perceived as some kind of local show: something that gets put on as a sign of the vitality of the local community. This means, unfortunately, that many of the aspects of the conference which have nothing to do with the locality fail to attract volunteers, perhaps because people don't believe they have a role to play.I'd like to see more cooperation between conferences with more sharing of infrastructure and expertise. I'm highly unlikely to go to PyCon (US), although quite a few Europeans do appear to go over there to attend (with interesting carbon footprint implications), but there shouldn't be anything preventing me from making a meaningful contribution to its organisation - indeed, the organisers have been very encouraging of participation in the behind-the-scenes workings of PyCon - and there shouldn't be anything preventing PyCon organisers from helping EuroPython get up and running.Certainly, unless the style of a particular conference is totally different to the others, there's a huge benefit in taking advantage of permanent infrastructure for managing the "invariant" parts of a conference. Sadly, the limit of volunteer participation for some people is found in the usual "bikeshed" discussions about what kinds of systems they might like to design to handle some hypothetical situation in conference or content management, rather than actually committing to doing any actual work. If we can disregard such distractions, I think that EuroPython and other conferences will be easier to put together in future.Anyway, it's back to pushing out EuroPython announcements for me, because someone has to do it.
Posted by Martijn Faassen at Wed Apr 16 2008 22:46
Paul, your efforts are much appreciated. I agree that enthusiasm and focus is important. I apologize I've not committed to doing any work myself and go into a theoretical discussion - I'm overcommitted as it is, and I feel at least somewhat secure I don't suck too much: I helped in putting together earlier versions (in my own haphazard way). I will submit a talk again, however.
Posted by Paul Boddie at Wed Apr 16 2008 23:11
Martijn, as a prominent EuroPython supporter yourself, my comments obviously weren't directed at you. ;-) However, I think it's a common problem to all conferences that people overthink the problems and prefer to talk about how they might solve them rather than rolling up their sleeves and actually doing the work necessary to solve them, probably in a simple, unglamourous way.Meanwhile, on the subject of participating in a more general sense, one of the best ways to participate at a conference (and to promote it, too) is to present something. It would be a sufficient reward for many of the organisers - certainly, at least it would be for me - to see more proposals and ideas from would-be presenters than we had last year. And it would get more people interested in going, too.
