Notes from the SciPy 2020 BoF
=============================

Notes from the Birds of a Feather session on Friday, July 12, 2019, to gather
ideas for SciPy 2020.

Grow or not?
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- We love this space. It's a great venue.
- It's easier to see people over and over again throughout the week because the
  conference is not too big.
- Maybe have multiple ticket types? For example academics, students, single
  tickets, corporate, etc., with different constraints or numbers. Grace Hopper
  conference does this.
- Have more tracks?
- Try to guess which talks will be large so they're in a larger room.
- Try streaming popular talks into overflow rooms.
- There's no desire to cap the size of the conference.
- The hotel was sold out for many nights
- If the conference grows, we will need an other way to move posters, and
  increase engagement with them.

Grab Bag
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- Give a different name to volunteers? Fellows? "Would you serve as a committee
  member"? "Would you lead..."? To increase the number of people who join the
  committees.
- The five minutes time between talk work for some people but didn't for
  others.
- Ask people if they want to submit their contact information to a registry to
  facilitate contacting people who had you have interactions with (this is
  actually provided by Slack)
- People loved the program and the paper schedule. Could we add a one line
  description to the schedule, in addition to titles? Would it fit?
- Could we make the schedule horizontally as a single thing, instead of over
  two pages?
- Assert that the WiFi will work for attendees with their particular technical
  requirements
- Could talks be shorter? 15 to 20 minutes? Maybe not, that would require
  cutting a lot of "how the sausage is made." If we do, how would we use the
  extra time? More talks, or do something else?
- Slight larger restrooms


Diversity
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- Increase the size of the Diversity luncheon.
- The impromptu second diverse city luncheon was great.

Poster Sessions
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- Many people would like posters to have a more important presence.
- Maybe do odd/even, or split them up. We need something to make posters
  a first class citizen.
- Could we do the poster session during catered lunch? We should be careful
  that it doesn't overlap with the diversity luncheon.

Sponsors
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- Sponsored tables are not in a great location to have impromptu interactions.
  Maybe move them downstairs along the flow of people between the ballroom and
  the smaller rooms?

Birds of a feather (BoF)
------------------------

- We might have lost something by pre-organizing all the birds of feather
  sessions. Maybe bring back Impromptu boss and advertise that rooms are
  available for them.


Submission process
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- Maybe make more obviously the people have submitted a talk for a poster in
  the confirmation email. A presenter taught their proposal was accepted as
  a talk but only realized a few weeks before the conference that it was
  actually a poster.

Tutorials
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- There are concerns about some fundamental tutorials not having been excepted
  given that some more pointed tutorials were.
- Some people suggest giving more power to the tutorials committee to select
  tutorials. Some other people worry that it would give the tutorial committee
  too much power.
- maybe creative intermediate track?
- increase outreach for underrepresented communities to teach tutorials. Review
  who has talked at PyLadies, PyCon, PyData, and ask them to submit tutorials.
- could we increase the number of tutorials even more?
- Be more explicit about the possibility of full-day tutorials.
- Backspace encourage trial applicants period

Lightning talks
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- Space get an HDMI switcher or two podiums so one presenter can get ready
  while the other one is presenting.