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by Jarno Virtanen.
Original Post: Some general thoughts on EuroPython 2003
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Herewith some general unorganized observations of mine about
EuroPython 2003. (I am still writing up things about the content and
such, but I don't promise anything yet.) So, I enjoyed it as whole and
again, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the people who
made it possible. Thanks. (Organizers, attendees, etc.)
The place
We spent few days before the conference in Brussels, and I must say
that I like Charleroi better. Yes, it is smaller, perhaps poorer and
somewhat more industrial, but it doesn't have that "we want more
tourists" written all over the place. I personally am not that much
into shopping, even though I heard that Charleroi is not that bad on
that either, but I like to have a cup of coffee or a glass of beer
while generally enjoying the central european atmosphere, and
Charleroi indeed provided that.
I am not against having the conference at Charleroi next year too,
though I am not still sure whether I will and can attend the
conference next year. (I want.) Both of the proposed, or made-up,
alternatives, England and Sweden, suit me even better. I like to mix
some normal acts of tourism to events like this, and I have seen
Charleroi now. Sweden is, however, a place I have been to many, many
times, and us Finns have a natural love-hate relationship with
them. But still, Gothenburg would sound nice to me, although I think
that Sweden as an alternative was ruled against in the informal
hand-waving vote before Guido's keynote.
The venue
We left at 0800 wednesday from our hotel hoping that we would be at
the venue before 0900. We made it, but with some trouble. See, this
dutch guy with us had a map that had a strinkingly similar logo as of
the CEME, but, as it turned out, the venue was not there. Then we
asked some local guy, who looked like a business-man, for an advice,
but at southern Belgium they really don't speak English (they need to
stop dubbing tv-shows), and Leonard wasn't warmed up yet with
his French. But with some hand-waving and pseudo-English he managed to
direct us to the right way and we made it to the conference at time.
It took about 50 minutes to get to the venue from our hotel with all
the wandering and such, and with a better picture of the route in our
heads, we actually walked the whole way every morning and
evening. This alternative was not mentioned at the EuroPython website
at all, maybe because it would have been too difficult to map the
route (though it wasn't that hard), and I think it should have
been. Maybe not the whole route, but at least a mention that you can
walk, and that it takes a whopping half an hour to walk there from the
center. Walking is nice.
The venue itself was a neat place that had "European Union project"
written all over the place. Let's just say that it wasn't a perfect
match with style of the neighbourhood. Nothing wrong with that, but it
just stood out so clearly. The interior was clean and nice, and had
the necessary facilities in place.
There were three rooms where the presentations were held at, the
Auditorium, and Salle Polyvalente A and B. ("Salle
Polyvalente" sure sounds nice, now doesn't it.) You might guess or
have heard this, but the auditorium was great and the others were
OK. It was relatively hot there, well at least compared to the average
weather here in Finland, and some people used the auditorium as a
place just to chill out. (And I don't mean that "chill out" they do in
tv-shows. Or maybe I do.)
The audio was quite OK too. Again, the auditorium was the best, but
the little rooms had a bit of trouble with echoing. The other trouble
was that since some of the speakers were amateurs or first-timers,
they were not that familiar on how to use microphones and their
voice. (I wouldn't have been familiar either.) But I managed to
understand most of what they said with some concentration, so it was
OK, too. I think the advice is to just speak up, which is to say:
speak louder, but I know that giving a public talk is such an exciting
and frightening event that it's just too difficult to keep
concentrated on such things. But anyway, just speak up and speak
slower, if possible.
Nitpicks
The organizers must have heard like zillion times about this, but let
me state for the record that the name on the name tags was just too
small; you couldn't just look over the badge when someone was passing
by and see who the person was. Actually, me, Leonard, Jurgen Hermann
and Etienne Posthumus did some crafting and wrote our names on the
other side of the badge; don't know how it worked out. So, a big name,
a little logo on the badge next time, please.
Food. I knew this already, but them central europeans have these funny
misconceptions of the concept of vegetarian food. No, chicken is not
vegetarian. (At CEME they didn't try to serve chicken as vegetarian
food, but I've seen that happen.) No, fish is not vegetarian
either. But that's OK, because as a vegetarian you have to be ready
for these anyway and there was some real vegetarian stuff there
too. (Fortunately I am not vegan.)
And, I just can't help myself about this, sorry. It feels a bit cruel
thing to say, but. Um. Those pictures of Guido's kid are cute and
everything, but I do not want to see them in the slides of
some technical talk. There, I said it, now flame me for being a
misanthrope. I know that the family should be the most
important thing, but please spare me from pictures of your family
members in technical talks. (I hope Guido doesn't read this and get
upset.)
General
The variety in
attendees' nationalities was refreshing, and therefore there was a
real variety in accents of English, too. There were even couple of
Finns besides me and Heimo, who was the chairman for the Zope track
and whom I didn't get to talk with, that I exchanged some thoughts
with. (In Finnish, which was a nice relief.) They were for the Zope
track so didn't get to meet with them that much.
Speaking in English is difficult for me, because I desperately try to
pronounce words as best as I can, but I can't, and I can hear it
myself. And not so surprisingly the pronounciation is easier if the
person you're talking with can pronounce well. I know that I should
just concentrate on speaking clearly, not on trying to pronounce as
well as possible, but this again is one of those things that I just
can't help myself. And yes, french and spanish and german and other
european people have funny and recognizable accents too, but that's
just a bonus.
The price of the conference was fine with me, although I did only pay
the student price, and, yes, I am a student, but I could have had paid
the 200 euros also. (Maybe I need to donate.) And for that price you
can't expect anything luxorious, just enthusiastic people sharing
their ideas on the subject, which is, you know, more than enough for
the price.
People. OK, I didn't get to meet with people that much, and those that
I did get to know or speak with I am grateful for, but I am fine just
with all I got from the conference as it is. Francis Glassborow did
emphasize this aspect of communities (such as the Python community),
that they are about people and communicating and all that kind of
stuff, but it's not that easy for me to hook up with people out of
blue. I am not that shy actually, but there's that small barrier of
entry anyway. And I wasn't actually in my best mood for other reasons,
and that might have had contributed to the fact. (I wish I had spoken
more with Michael Hudson, but he was so energized and busy compared to
me that I felt there wasn't a good moment for that. Although he did
show some code that was inspired by seeing the Alex Martelli's talk on
metaclasses, a concept on which he was already familiar with; code
which I would have needed few more hours to tackle with. ;-)
Speaks
Speaks in general were good, although the quality varied quite a
lot. The most important thing for me in an event like this is that the
speaker is enthusiastic about the subject and Python. Sometimes it's
good that the enthusiasm is even in the expense of the quality of the
presentation. I think the most enthusiastic speaker which I saw was
Armin Rigo who gave a talk on PyPy. Well, OK, it
is easy to see why the subject is very exciting, but still. Armin even
had his own presentation software (written in Python, of course, with
the help of PyGame, I think) and there was definitely a great groove
on, although I think I didn't understand everything.
Minor trouble with the talks was the fact that the conference centered
around a vague subject of Python and the presentations were in their
subjects almost too varied. (I don't know if you can complain about
that, but.) Which is to say that they needed to give an introduction,
or at least the speaker felt like it, on a hairy subject on itself,
which took perhaps too much time from the talk. I think it's mostly
best just to go to the point straight without too much introductive
and motivational babbling, but again, it depends and you just need to
follow the conventional wisdom about talks.
There's this one conventional wisdom about talks that you preferably
should speak for too short than too long. Especially with events like
EuroPython where a talk follows another and you might want to go to
another talk and so on. I know that it's not easy to cut flesh out of
your presentation, but that's life and more importantly that's your
job as a speaker. So, again, my advice: take away those unnecessary
slides cruelly and put those extra slides in the back of the
presentation so they don't disrupt you and the audience during the
talk. And I wouldn't put too much blame on the chairmen of the tracks
because they have a really difficult job, and I still think it's the
speaker's job to keep on time. The overruns on time weren't too much
of trouble at EuroPython, but as a listener you almost always notice
it.
Conclusion
Um, hmh.
Nice place, nice people, nice talks, good organization, a great
experience as whole. I will be there next year if possible.
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