Make plans for Django Girls

[inglesp]

Tasks for PyCon UK committee:

• Earmark room(s) for workshop
• Ensure room is adequately equipped with tables of four, power sockets, and a projector
• Link to application form from website
• Provide booth space for Django Girls
• Publicise workshop in Cardiff area
• Help find coaches

[helenst]

Super excited that Django Girls is going to be happening at PyCon UK again this year - we really appreciate the efforts that are being made to improve diversity and make it a friendly and accessible conference for everybody! ✨ Here are a few initial thoughts and questions, I'm sure there will be more later on but hopefully this can get things going:

Date / Time

Can we confirm this will be all day on Thursday 15th?

Tickets

Would it be possible for PyCon UK to sponsor some tickets again this year? We had 30 last year and I think this worked very well - we had some great feedback from attendees who enjoyed the whole weekend and really appreciated feeling like part of the community - and I think this played a big part in the overall diversity of the conference.

Room

We will need a suitable room. In terms of numbers, we will have one coach per three attendees, plus a few extras (organisers, metacoaches). So for example if we've got 30 attendees, we'll need space for about 45 people.

It's best if people can be seated in groups of 4 around tables, but we can work with what's available. We'll need wifi, lots of power sockets (at least 4 per group) and a projector if possible.

Number of attendees

We had 30 last year, it's a good number and was manageable for us as organisers... although we had 80 applications so it might be nice to accommodate more if we can (obviously depending on space)

This could include people who have bought their own ticket, or are just at the workshop for the day, so this doesn't have to be related to level of ticket sponsorship.

Booth

Would it be possible to find a space for a Django Girls booth? It would be fantastic to give us more of a presence throughout the conference and raise awareness of the organisation :)

Coaches

We struggled a bit last year with finding enough coaches! This might have been due to us not being very good at raising awareness of the event, or people being reluctant to miss talks - I am not sure.

We'd really appreciate any way PyCon UK can help us to encourage people to coach, or any ideas you might have.

Promotion

We need to look beyond the Python community to find Django Girls attendees - and we’d like to be able to promote the event locally (e.g. at the university) Perhaps that’s something the PyCon UK team (especially those based in Cardiff) could advise on?

Talks

It would be good this year if information about experience level of talks could be made known so we can help attendees to navigate the rest of the conference!

Attendee information

For the purposes of putting our application form together, what information will you need to know about attendees?

What is the latest date by which you will need that information? This will help us when planning our own schedule for accepting and scoring applications.

[inglesp]

Hi @helenst, thanks for all of this! I've answered your questions below.

Date / Time

The workshop will be all day on Thursday 15th.

Tickets

Given the problems we had finding coaches last year, I'd like to limit attendance to 30 again this year, and make sure we get this right.

We haven't budgeted for giving a conference ticket to every attendee. Do you know how many attendees took up free tickets last year? We do though have a financial aid budget, and we should encourage attendees to apply for this if they need to.

An alternative would be to look for particular sponsorship to cover tickets for all attendees. I know that @lifeisstillgood has been talking to one sponsor about sponsoring Django Girls. If you're aware of anybody we could approach, please let him know.

If we do go down the financial aid route, either you'll need to decide who's on the workshop by June 28th (which is when financial aid applications close) or we'll need to keep some financial aid back. (/cc @Lukasa.)

Room

We'll make sure you've got a suitable room!

Booth

We'll give you a booth in the Marble Hall with the sponsors.

Coaches

I hope that finding coaches will be easier this year, since the workshop runs before the main conference starts. We'll certainly publicise that you need coaches.

Promotion

We have links at the university and with local software user groups, and will make sure that the workshop is well-promoted locally.

Talks

To help first-time conference attendees make the most of their conference, we're planning to run a session early on (probably Friday morning) for first-timers.

Attendee information

We'll just need a name and an email address for attendees. To be on the safe side for things like making badges, we'll want this at least two weeks before the conference starts. Can we say 1st September? I expect you'll want to have chosen the delegates before then.

[inglesp]

Some questions for you...

Timetable

When would you like to close applications? When would you like to inform applicants whether they've been successful? Would you be able to work with the financial aid deadline (June 28th, see above) or would you like to work separately to that?

Other costs

Are there other costs, apart from food and room hire, that we need to be aware of?

Anything else

Will you want help from the conference committee with anything else?

[inglesp]

I've created some tasks for the conference committee in the description for this issue. Let me know if there's anything you think I've missed off.

[helenst]

@inglesp Thank you for your responses!

Tickets / financial aid

30 is a good number and we are happy to go with that.

Last year we had 30 tickets for Django Girls, and they were all used. If things are different this year, that's fine. I do think getting some good sponsorship behind this will be important as we're mostly dealing with people who are taking their first steps towards something new - finding the time and resources to come to a conference can be a huge barrier. It's great we are having this conversation well ahead of the financial aid deadline.

I also just noticed that http://2016.pyconuk.org/diversity-accessibility-inclusion/ talks about free tickets for Django Girls - I don't know if this is pasted from something for last year, it makes it sounds like that's something outside of regular financial aid so perhaps worth clarifying there!

Dates

After closing applications, we will need a couple of days to score and make decisions. So we could go with say June 24th as a submission deadline, score over the weekend and then get a list of names over to you for the 28th. We can ask applicants whether they have a ticket already or are they dependent on financial aid. We can also encourage them to mention they are a Django Girls applicant when they fill in the FA form.

When do you expect to tell people about the success of their financial aid applications? Perhaps we can coordinate on that to send out acceptances at the same time?

All that considered, we should be ready well before 1st September - we want to give people as much time as possible to plan their travel. There will inevitably be last minute changes and dropouts but I think we will have to deal with that as best we can.

Room, booth etc

Thank you for offering help with room, booth and promotion of the event. We can provide copy, posters etc. to help promote. It's fantastic that there will be a beginner's session on Friday and I am sure the attendees will appreciate the extra guidance!

Sponsorship

We're happy to work with you to find extra sponsorship for this and could give @lifeisstillgood a few suggestions.

In terms of other costs - there are a few things like decorations, swag, stickers, thank you dinner for coaches which will depend on a little bit of extra sponsorship, but we're happy to take care of that separately.

Anything else

A few thoughts:

• Will it possible to get packages sent to the venue before the conference (e.g. t-shirts, posters)? We can probably cope if not but it'll make life easier!
• Re. the third task you've put in for creating a page... we'll have an application form up on the Django Girls site, which links into the scoring systems. So you'll just need to make a page that links to that. (We can help with that if you want)
• Would somebody (yourself or anybody else on the committee) be interested in helping score applications? This takes a couple of hours (depending on number of applications) in the days following the closing date and involves reading and assessing applications and then blind scoring them from 0-5 based on these criteria . It's always good to have an extra opinion in the mix, and nice to have input from conference organisers who are helping us to be there in the first place :)

I think that's it for now. Our next step is to get the event website ready - I'll post it here when it's up!

[inglesp]

• I've removed the mention of free tickets from the website (welp, well spotted!) for now, but I'll start an email conversation with @helenst and @lifeisstillgood about finding a sponsor for Django Girls.
• I've created Make arrangements for sponsors etc to get stuff delivered to venue #89 to track making arrangements for delivering packages to the venue.
• I've updated the task list at the top of this page to just link to the Django Girls website.
• If you'd like help scoring applications, send an email to the admin mailing list asking for help -- I'm sure you'll get plenty of takers.

[helenst]

Django Girls PyCon UK 2016 site: https://djangogirls.org/pyconuk2016/
Application form: https://djangogirls.org/pyconuk2016/apply/

The applications are open... we haven't publicised anything yet but I'll be getting on that today :)

[inglesp]

Hi @helenst, that all looks super.

Can I request one small change? You describe PyCon UK as a "big IT conference". Could you change that to a "big conference for programmers"? I'd like to think that we're about more than IT.

[helenst]

Thanks Peter! I've made that change, thanks for pointing it out :)

[helenst]

@inglesp Aside from sponsorship, our big priority is to get people applying as soon as possible! What's the best way to get the ball rolling for promoting this locally? We can provide promotional copy, poster designs etc.

[helenst]

I can't tick it myself, but "linking to application form from website" is done (PyconUK/2016.pyconuk.org#85)

[inglesp]

@drvinceknight and @evildmp are the best people to talk to about promoting in the Cardiff area. Can you discuss this between you?

[helenst]

Hi @drvinceknight and @evildmp - I hope you are both well :) We're very keen to start promoting this to potential participants as soon as possible as we'd like to get all our applications in by June 24th.

We're especially looking to promote to:

• students at Cardiff and Cardiff Metropolitan Universities, and any tech colleges.
• Womens' groups - either tech focused or targeted at entrepreneurs, designers etc. who might be a little bit programming-curious. We're already starting on this by contacting groups found on Meetup etc. but welcome all suggestions.
• Any tech / co-working hubs in the city where we could put up posters

... and are open to any other ideas.

Although Cardiff is our priority, we'd like to try and look further afield to nearby cities, e.g. Bristol, Bath and Swansea so anything related to any of those places would also be very much welcome - we're already finding Bristol has quite a strong tech scene.

[drvinceknight]

Hi @helenst , apologies for the late reply. I'll pass this around the Cardiff University mailing lists. I know someone at Cardiff Met who would be able to do the same and also University of South Wales.

[helenst]

Thanks @drvinceknight! 😎