Pycon disappointment

[Bruce Eckel]

If the following seems unnecessarily harsh, it was even more harsh for
me to discover that the time and money I had spent to get to my
favorite conference had been sold to vendors, presenting me as a
captive audience they could pitch to.

I believe that this year's Pycon organizers suffered from inexperience
and naivete, because they didn't know that some vendors will ask for
anything just to see how far they can push it. And that it's a
negotiation, that you must push back rather than give in just because
the conference might get some money for it. More importantly, that the
imperative to grow Pycon does not mean "at all costs." I've already
spoken to more than one vendor who was dismayed by the state of
things, so we are not talking about all vendors here by any means.

At first the morning plenary sessions -- where the entire conference
audience was in a single room -- just seemed a bit commercial. But
then I slowly figured out that the so-called "diamond keynotes" were
actually sold to vendors. It must have sounded great to some vendors:
you get to pitch to everyone and nothing else is going on so the
audience is trapped.

But it gets worse. The lightning talks, traditionally the best, newest
and edgiest part of the conference, were also sold like commercial air
time. Vendors were guaranteed first pick on lightning talk slots, and
we in the audience, expectantly looking forward to interesting and
entertaining content, again started to feel like things were awfully
commercial. And what seemed like a good idea, moving lightning talks
into plenary sessions with no competition, began to look like another
way to deliver a captive audience to vendors.

What was supremely frustrating was discovering that the people wanting
to give REAL lightning talks had been pushed off the end of the list
by this guarantee to vendors. We didn't get to see the good stuff, the
real stuff, because that time had been sold.

On top of that, the quality of the presentations was unusually low.
I'd say that 80% were not worth going to -- there were definitely some
good ones, but it was a lot of pain to discover them.

In my opinion, open spaces should have had greater status and billing,
with eyes-forward talks and vendor sessions offered only as possible
alternatives. Especially, vendor sessions should not be presented as
"keynotes" during plenary sessions. I think it took a little while
for people to catch on to the idea that they could have control of
their own experience through the open spaces and that the main
offerings were not the only option.

The worst thing about the whole experience was the feeling that
someone was trying to trick me and control me into watching these
things, presenting them under the guise of real keynotes and real
lightning talks. My trust has been violated. I paid a lot, in both
money and time, to be at this conference just to be herded into a room
and have my eyeballs sold to the highest bidder. And it's going to bug
me, especially when I think about coming back next year. I'm going to
need a lot of reassurance that this isn't going to happen again.

I think a lot of people have been caught up in the idea that we need
to commercialize Python, and ride some kind of wave of publicity the
way that Java and C# and Rails seem to have done. This kind of
thinking leads to bad, impulsive decisions that can have long-lasting
or even permanent negative impacts on the community. Maybe things
don't seem to be happening fast enough in comparison with those
commercial endeavors, but this is a grass-roots movement. It's never
been about moving as fast as you can. It's always been about vision,
not tactics. For many, it's fun and exciting and really important to
"catch the wave," but the wave passes and then you've just exhausted
yourself chasing a brief bump in the water. Python may not have caught
any particular wave, but it's always grown, steadily.

I know what the argument for the results of Pycon 2008 will be: we
needed the money. My answer: it's not worth it. If this is what you
have to do to grow the conference, then don't. If the choice is
between selling my experience to vendors and reducing the size of the
conference, then cut the size of the conference. Keep the quality of
my experience as the primary decision criteria, or I'll stop coming.

 

[Ben Finney]

My trust has been violated. I paid a lot, in both money and time, to
be at this conference just to be herded into a room and have my
eyeballs sold to the highest bidder.

Hear hear.

Conference organisers, past and future, take note: Attention of
attendees is *not* a commodity to be traded. Just because some parties
will pay significant sums for that, it is *not* your place to sell it
to them.

Your place as conference organisers, rather, is to provide value to
paying attendees. Their trust is hard earned, and easily lost.

 

[Mike Driscoll]

But it gets worse. The lightning talks, traditionally the best, newest
and edgiest part of the conference, were also sold like commercial air
time. Vendors were guaranteed first pick on lightning talk slots, and
we in the audience, expectantly looking forward to interesting and
entertaining content, again started to feel like things were awfully
commercial. And what seemed like a good idea, moving lightning talks
into plenary sessions with no competition, began to look like another
way to deliver a captive audience to vendors.

This was my first time at PyCon and when I went to the Lightning Talks
yesterday, I was also under the impression that they were for
attendees. About half of the ones I saw were commercials. It was weird
and made me wonder if they were always like that.

On top of that, the quality of the presentations was unusually low.
I'd say that 80% were not worth going to -- there were definitely some
good ones, but it was a lot of pain to discover them.

Do you mean the "official" presentations or the lightning talks? I
thought both were kind of bad. Jeff Rush was great in both of the
sessions I saw and the gaming presenters were also good. But I saw a
lot of people who had never presented and were unprepared. In fact,
one didn't have any code whatsoever to share and the other one only
started showing some code during the last 10 minutes of his time.

The sponsor keynotes weren't all bad. I thought the White Oaks guy was
quite sincere and it was cool to hear about Python from the business
side. And the Google rep probably had the slickest presentation I've
ever seen. In retrospect, I'm not sure what it had to do with Python
though.

Mike

 

[Aahz]

If the following seems unnecessarily harsh, it was even more harsh for
me to discover that the time and money I had spent to get to my
favorite conference had been sold to vendors, presenting me as a
captive audience they could pitch to.

Ouch. I'm probably one of the few organizers currently paying much
attention to c.l.py -- because I'm also one of the few who's not at
PyCon. We debated this extensively before going ahead, and we decided
it was worth an experiment. If your feedback is at all representative,
this won't happen again, I assure you.

I'm forwarding your post to the semi-private pycon-organizers list
(pretty much anyone can join -- more volunteers are always welcome -- but
you have to join to see the archives) to make sure everyone sees it.

I believe that this year's Pycon organizers suffered from inexperience
and naivete, because they didn't know that some vendors will ask for
anything just to see how far they can push it.

Actually, it was our idea to offer something in return for the
sponsorship.

On top of that, the quality of the presentations was unusually low.
I'd say that 80% were not worth going to -- there were definitely some
good ones, but it was a lot of pain to discover them.

Just to make sure, you're talking about the vendor presentations, right?

I think a lot of people have been caught up in the idea that we need
to commercialize Python, and ride some kind of wave of publicity the
way that Java and C# and Rails seem to have done.

Not in my observation. What we were trying to do was to increase
sponsorship to decrease the cost to attendees -- we have NO interest in
pushing the commercialization of Python.

I know what the argument for the results of Pycon 2008 will be: we
needed the money. My answer: it's not worth it. If this is what you
have to do to grow the conference, then don't. If the choice is
between selling my experience to vendors and reducing the size of the
conference, then cut the size of the conference. Keep the quality of
my experience as the primary decision criteria, or I'll stop coming.

That was our intention. Apparently it didn't work for you. I'll wait
for more feedback before I make up my mind about whether your experience
was common.

And no, we don't need the money so badly that we can't afford to turn
away sponsors who demand this particular benefit.

 

[Aaron]

In my opinion, open spaces should have had greater status and billing,
with eyes-forward talks and vendor sessions offered only as possible
alternatives. Especially, vendor sessions should not be presented as
"keynotes" during plenary sessions. I think it took a little while
for people to catch on to the idea that they could have control of
their own experience through the open spaces and that the main
offerings were not the only option.

This is an excellent suggestion and observation. Sold sponsorships
are fine as long as they are billed as such. Labels on the vendor
speeches indicated they were sold as ad space would be great, as well
as more strongly emphasizing the ad hoc discussion spaces.

 

[Fuzzyman]

But it gets worse. The lightning talks, traditionally the best, newest
and edgiest part of the conference, were also sold like commercial air
time. Vendors were guaranteed first pick on lightning talk slots, and
we in the audience, expectantly looking forward to interesting and
entertaining content, again started to feel like things were awfully
commercial. And what seemed like a good idea, moving lightning talks
into plenary sessions with no competition, began to look like another
way to deliver a captive audience to vendors.
coming.

I have a conflict of interests - coming to PyCon from a sponsor
company and having given a lightning talk. But I *kind* of agree with
you. Most of the sponsor lightning talks were pretty dull. I *hope*
mine was one of the exceptions. (Resolver One demo.) ;-)

This isn't new though. Last year (my only other PyCon) all the
sponsors gave lightning talks. The difference is that there were more
sponsors this year I guess...

Personally I think 'sponsor keynotes' was a mistake. Not a huge
mistake, but nonetheless...

Michael Foord
Resolver Systems

 

[Fuzzyman]

"It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code."
--Bill Harlan

That's a great quote that I had not heard before.

Michael Foord
http://www.manning.com/foord

 

[Tom Stambaugh]

But vendors often don't label themselves as vendors. And often, the

researcher or individual in question, who has something worth saying, does
have a professional job of sorts, which might be related to his or her
work
or speech. I've heard people give very long, detailed talks about
interesting topics, that did have a spin on them, but contained worthwhile
information also. Now, is that to be billed as a "vendor" (and ignored)
or
not?
Further, no vendor who is trying to sell a product will allow themselves
to
be marked in an obvious way as advertising, knowing that they'll be
ignored. At least, they certainly won't pay for the time/space to any
real
degree, knowing they'll be walking in under a cloud like that.

No vendor with integrity will want their advertising to be presented to
attendees as anything but advertising. If vendors won't buy advertising,
then find different ways to fund the conferences.

This sounds like an example of the editorial-content/advertising dilemma
that publishers have wrestled with for a long time. It's basically
impossible for anybody, even for seasoned professionals, to both sell
advertising and set editorial content without bias. In the publishing
business, it is a very big no-no for the same people to both sell
advertising and also set editorial content. When you go high enough in an
organization, it's harder to do, but still a goal.

Perhaps the organizers can therefore learn from the experience of
publishers:

1) Keep the folks who sell things in an "advertising department". They need
to be different people from the folks who book keynotes and such.

2) Keep the folks who book keynotes and such in a "content department". They
need to be different people from the folks who sell things.

3) Do everything possible to keep the "advertising" and "content"
departments firewalled. This is cultural as much as anything else. Like any
other potential conflict of interest situation, make it honorable for folks
to recuse themselves when they sense a bias in themselves.

 

[Barry Hawkins]

If the following seems unnecessarily harsh, it was even more harsh for
me to discover that the time and money I had spent to get to my
favorite conference had been sold to vendors, presenting me as a
captive audience they could pitch to.

Ouch.  I'm probably one of the few organizers currently paying much
attention to c.l.py -- because I'm also one of the few who's not at
PyCon.  We debated this extensively before going ahead, and we decided
it was worth an experiment.  If your feedback is at all representative,
this won't happen again, I assure you. [...]

I believe that this year's Pycon organizers suffered from inexperience
and naivete, because they didn't know that some vendors will ask for
anything just to see how far they can push it.

Actually, it was our idea to offer something in return for the
sponsorship.

[...]
Ashz, thanks for offering some explanation. It is my sincere hope
that the organizers will look upon the aforementioned experiment as a
failed one. I shared the same perception as Bruce; most "keynotes"
and lightning talks were anemic vendor pitches that really gutted the
spirit of what I experienced last year. In meeting new people this
year, I have had more than one first-time attendee ask me if PyCon
lightning talks "are always like that." I have also heard from a
couple of folks I would consider PyCon elders who were not happy with
what lightning talks became this year.

I was one of the 15 or so persons who had a lightning talk that ended
up in overflow for the Saturday talks. At the end of the regular
time, we were all brought forward to be told that we would not do
overflow talks. Standing there in the huddle, I looked around, and
it appeared that we were mostly non-vendors. It was pretty crummy to
see that real PyCon lightning talks had been sacrificed in favor of
subjecting Pythonistas to rather dry vendor presentations. Some of
the vendor presenters even had a tone that sounded like "my boss is
making me do this." PyCon lightning talks are the stuff of legend; I
implore the organizers to learn well from this costly experiment, and
let's not go there again. Ever.

Just to make sure, you're talking about the vendor presentations, right?

[...]
I'll step out and say that some of the non-vendor talks were quite
weak. The most severe was a talk on Stackless where the original
speaker was unable to be here and someone got up and clicked through
the slide deck at a very fast pace. I thought the person had stepped
in at the last minute, but later learned that he had volunteered with
a couple of weeks' notice. Additionally, the original speaker had
Andrew Dalke's *exact* slide deck from his Stackless talk last year.
One first-time attendee told me over lunch that he was going to
recommend to his employer that they not pay to send their programmers
to PyCon next year based on what he had seen in this year's talks. I
know that's an unpleasant message, but in the interest of preserving
PyCon's quality, I'm willing to be the jerk of a messenger.

That was our intention.  Apparently it didn't work for you.  I'll wait
for more feedback before I make up my mind about whether your experience
was common.

[...]
Hopefully the surveys and this thread will be filled with feedback
from the participants. Also, check http://twitter.com/pycon for some
further anecdotal evidence.

 

[Jacob Kaplan-Moss]

This isn't new though. Last year (my only other PyCon) all the
sponsors gave lightning talks. The difference is that there were more
sponsors this year I guess...

The difference (from my POV as the guy who helped plan and run the
lightning talks this year and last) was that last year the sponsor
talks were at a separate time, and clearly labeled as "Sponsor
Lightning Talks". A *lot* of folks still showed up, and they didn't
feel lied-to when they got product or company pitches.

Jacob

 

[Jacob Kaplan-Moss]

But it gets worse. The lightning talks, traditionally the best, newest
and edgiest part of the conference, were also sold like commercial air
time.

Thanks for being harsh here, Bruce. I've been responsible for
organizing the lightning talks at PyCon over the past few years and
Saturday's talks -- where a grand total of four community talks were
given between twelve sponsor talks -- was the low point. I volunteer
to run the lightning talks because they're usually by *far* my
favorite time of the conference. Yesterday wasn't.

What was supremely frustrating was discovering that the people wanting
to give REAL lightning talks had been pushed off the end of the list
by this guarantee to vendors. We didn't get to see the good stuff, the
real stuff, because that time had been sold.

Tell me about it. I felt like crap putting up a sign-up sheet with
four names on it.

Again, thanks for your harsh words, Bruce. Needed to be said.

Jacob

 

[fumanchu]

Ouch. I'm probably one of the few organizers currently paying much
attention to c.l.py -- because I'm also one of the few who's not at
PyCon. We debated this extensively before going ahead, and we decided
it was worth an experiment. If your feedback is at all representative,
this won't happen again, I assure you.

Add me to the list, then, please. I heard from several people that the
entire first day was a bit wasted, that even the non-vendor talks on
Friday were rather dull and simple.

This is my third PyCon, and I've found a reasonably-sized cadre of
people who come for the hallway conversations plus a Bof or two,
having given up on hearing anything new, useful, or inspiring in the
talks. There are several people I know who would like to see a more
advanced academic track.

What we were trying to do was to increase sponsorship to decrease
the cost to attendees -- we have NO interest in pushing the
commercialization of Python.

Can't fault you for that. But perhaps we're seeing the limit of what
that approach can provide.


Robert Brewer
(e-mail address removed)

 

[lbonafide]

I think a lot of people have been caught up in the idea that we need
to commercialize Python, and ride some kind of wave of publicity the
way that Java and C# and Rails seem to have done.

This coming from someone who caught the Java wave and rode it for a
decade.

 

[Robert Hicks]

This coming from someone who caught the Java wave and rode it for a
decade.

Doesn't that make him better to see the problems with it?

Robert

 

[Pete Forde]

I know what the argument for the results of Pycon 2008 will be: we

needed the money. My answer: it's not worth it. If this is what you
have to do to grow the conference, then don't. If the choice is
between selling my experience to vendors and reducing the size of the
conference, then cut the size of the conference. Keep the quality of
my experience as the primary decision criteria, or I'll stop coming.

This commodification of "eyeballs" is happening in the Ruby community,
as well. 2008 seems to be the year of Ruby conferences, and both
organizers and attendees have been entirely complicit in the gradual
dilution of interesting, un-biased presentations.

As a result, many of the most innovative members in our community no
longer show up. This is a real shame.

My friends and I decided to stage a grassroots Ruby conference this
summer; it will have no paid sponsors for exactly this reason. We're
trying to change up the typical format as well: it's a single-track
event, no "keynotes", no schills for well-heeled interests. We're even
organizing activities for significant others traveling with conference
attendees so that everyone has a good time.

The response we've gotten to this approach has been curious; many
people totally get why these things are important, and the speaker
list reflects this. However, we've also had a lot of complaints that
our event is too expensive. In fact, they say that it should be free,
like a BarCamp. Just get a bunch of sponsors, and that will be the
ticket. We say bollocks to that.

http://rubyfringe.com/

I'm posting here because even though the Python and Ruby communities
are seen as being in some sort of competition, I personally believe
that we have more in common (and lots to learn from each other) than
we are credited for. For example, the popular Haml template engine is
white-space sensitive, and that's a direct nod towards Python syntax.

Thanks for your post, Bruce. You've given us a huge boost that we're
doing something right, here.

 

[Bill Mill]

Tom Moertel organized a Perl conference with an interesting
sponsorship policy, that may be worth considering. He posted about it
on the reddit thread about this clp thread: http://reddit.com/info/6c9l6/comments/c03gli2
..

(Disclaimer: I have no idea if that would work for pycon at all or in
part, I'm just posting it because I found it thought-provoking.)

-Bill Mill
http://billmill.org

 

[Bruce Eckel]

My friends and I decided to stage a grassroots Ruby conference this
summer; it will have no paid sponsors for exactly this reason. We're
trying to change up the typical format as well: it's a single-track
event, no "keynotes", no schills for well-heeled interests. We're even
organizing activities for significant others traveling with conference
attendees so that everyone has a good time.

The response we've gotten to this approach has been curious; many
people totally get why these things are important, and the speaker
list reflects this. However, we've also had a lot of complaints that
our event is too expensive. In fact, they say that it should be free,
like a BarCamp. Just get a bunch of sponsors, and that will be the
ticket. We say bollocks to that.

http://rubyfringe.com/

I've been running open spaces conferences for the past few years and I
would suggest you do that instead of an "eyes-forward" conference.
It's not only a lot easier, but it's also a lot more fun. For example,
last week we did the Java Posse Roundup, which is all open-spaces.

The way we've handled "sponsorship" for the Roundup is "swag only." If
sponsors want to send gifts, then we'll give them out, but we don't
take money. Everybody seems pretty happy with that arrangement and it
doesn't feel intrusive in the least. So you might consider that.

Because of requests I've had (before Pycon started) we are planning a
small open-spaces conference on Python, this summer in Crested Butte.
The dates haven't been set yet but I'll announce them on my weblog and
elsewhere. It will follow the format of lightning talks to kick off,
then all open spaces (plus the usual hikes and barbeques). And swag-
only contributions from vendors, although that usually just happens
via people who happen to work for vendors, who are coming as
participants and find out they can contribute something else.

I'm posting here because even though the Python and Ruby communities
are seen as being in some sort of competition, I personally believe
that we have more in common (and lots to learn from each other) than
we are credited for. For example, the popular Haml template engine is
white-space sensitive, and that's a direct nod towards Python syntax.

I think Ruby has done a lot to push the idea of dynamic languages for
medium and large scale projects and to help recover from the bad
experience many had when they tried to push Perl too far.

Thanks for your post, Bruce. You've given us a huge boost that we're
doing something right, here.

I'm sure your conference will be great because you're making it
totally attendee-focused.

 

[Alaric Haag]

If the following seems unnecessarily harsh, it was even more harsh for

......

As a relative noob to the Python world, (and lurker to the list ) I
can't speak to differences from previous years. However, my impressions
as a first-timer are much in alignment with you Bruce. Many lightening
talk seemed to me to be more about recruiting than selling though.

Whereas I might have been discovering a vendor for the first time in a
lightening talk, it wasn't a particularly good use of my time here. I'll
FIND the commercial vendor, because, if they have a good product, word
will get around, aided by their web presence, and formidable advertising
budget.

On the other hand, bleeding edge use of Python in a lab on a distant
continent (just for example) is going to be much harder to both
discover, much less get the added bonus of face-to-face time with the
developer!

That said, I thank the organizers, and welcome the new friendships made
at this event, and hope like hell I can come next year!!

Alaric

 

[lbonafide]

Doesn't that make him better to see the problems with it?

Sure, but he dumped C++ (a truly non-commercial language) like a bad
habit for the latest silver bullet ten years ago. Complaints against
Java's commercial nature now ring a bit hollow.

 

[Aahz]

[warning: rant ahead]

[[
Before starting my rant, I would like to encourage anyone who was at
PyCon but has not provided formal feedback to use the following URLs:

For the conference:
http://tinyurl.com/2ara8u

For the tutorials:
http://tinyurl.com/2ew2pc
]]

This is my third PyCon, and I've found a reasonably-sized cadre of
people who come for the hallway conversations plus a Bof or two,
having given up on hearing anything new, useful, or inspiring in the
talks. There are several people I know who would like to see a more
advanced academic track.

Let's leave aside the issue of how sponsor talks were handled: assuming
that there's general agreement that this year was a failed experiment,
fixing it is easy.

What you're bringing up here is a much more difficult issue, and it is,
in the end, not a solvable issue in the general case. For starters,
speaking as someone who has been going to science fiction conventions
for more than twenty years, there will inevitably be plenty of people
like your cadre. I rarely go to organized programming anymore, but I
still have a great time because I'm seeing all my friends. PyCon is a
similar community-oriented event.

Moreover, PyCon's success rests on many legs: tutorials, Open Space,
Lightning Talks, formal presentations, keynotes, and sprinting. That's
aside from the myriad opportunities to network with people.

Finally, trying to satisfy a thousand people is impossible. People who
want to emphasize specific topics (e.g. an academic track) will need to
start organizing other kinds of Python conferences.


Now the rant:

If you did not like the programming this year (aside from the sponsor
talks) and you did not participate in organizing PyCon or in delivering
presentations, it is YOUR FAULT. PERIOD. EXCLAMATION POINT!

PyCon is built on the backs of its volunteers. I personally spent more
than twenty hours just doing Program Committee work. We rejected half
the proposals that we received, simply due to lack of space. We had
difficulty evaluating some proposals because nobody on the PC had subject
matter expertise.

None of the speakers received any kind of honorarium. Except for keynote
speakers (e.g. Ivan Krstic), no speakers received free registration
unless they requested financial aid.

There are no requirements for volunteering other than a willingness to
volunteer and a modicum of courtesy in working with people.

PyCon is what YOU make of it. If you want to change PyCon, propose a
presentation or join the conference committee (concom) -- the latter only
requires signing up for the pycon-organizers mailing list.

This doesn't mean that we are uninterested in feedback. We love
feedback. But there are stark limits to what we can do unless people get
involved and push their pet projects.