PyCon rant
I was seriously considering going to PyCon this year — i’ve got a buddy in Chicago that I’ve been meaning to catch up with — I’m really glad I decided to pass this year.
This post from Bruce Eckle is floating around: PyCon disappointment
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 myfavorite conference had been sold to vendors, presenting me as acaptive 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.
Filed under: Programming