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?¶

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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