jessenoller.com

Edit to Add: This was a stream of con­scious­ness for me, and I will be using the proper chan­nels to pro­vide feed­back to the orga­niz­ers. I am in no way dis­parag­ing the work that they per­formed. Not in the slight­est. I briefly spoke to AMK about my thoughts, and as noted, I will be pro­vid­ing feed­back via the proper chan­nels. I would like to add I will also not be pas­sive about this, I will attempt to be an active par­tic­i­pant in the plan­ning of the 2007 pycon.

Ok, so in another post I men­tioned that I had some issues with PyCon this year. Now, let’s put this into context:

• This is my first Pycon
• This is my first “lan­guage” conference

That being said, here are some raw thoughts about what I think it needs/what didn’t jive too well.

• There was a dis­tinct lack of presentations/tutorials ori­ented around:
  • Advanced lan­guage fea­tures and usage (e.g. gen­er­a­tors, iter­a­tions, etc)
  • Imple­men­ta­tion of “real world” non UI/Webapp appli­ca­tions and sys­tems (prac­ti­cal systems)
  • Build­ing scal­able Appli­ca­tions (back end sys­tems, etc)
  • Stan­dard library modules/usage/special usages (new features)
• I think we need a page, or cen­tral­ized place for actual pre­sen­ters, and recruiters. I know there were a lot of com­pa­nies hir­ing, and some com­pa­nies want­ing to shill their wares, but there was no clear place to sit and meet and greet with these peo­ple. While I am not look­ing for a job, I would have liked to have had some time to meet the peo­ple and at least talk to them.
• Lack of social time. Maybe it’s just me, but there didn’t seem to be enough time to sim­ply sit down and talk to “like minded” peo­ple. I mean, if you know each other from the com­mu­nity (or you’re a lumi­nary) it seemed easy. I don’t know, maybe some more BoF ses­sions on more gen­eral topics.
• White board space for peo­ple to discuss/map out ideas (ties to open social space/time)
• Extend the 30 minute time slot slightly, or offer clear “break out areas/times” for followup
• Com­pelling keynotes. Day 1’s wasn’t inter­est­ing (light on tech), Guido’s was awe­some, but the inter­view style with Bram didn’t work at all.

More thoughts as they come. I largely enjoyed it, but like all things, I think there is room for improve­ments across the board. I can’t com­plain about the hotel (except that the laun­dry ser­vice can bite me).

Edit to Add: This was a stream of consciousness for me, and I will be using the proper channels to provide feedback to the organizers. I am in no way disparaging the work that they performed. Not in the slightest. I briefly spoke to AMK about my thoughts, and as noted, I will be ...