euruko2013 / committee

EuRuKo 2013 organising committee repo
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Speakers #29

Closed vvatikiotis closed 11 years ago

vvatikiotis commented 12 years ago

Thread for speaker proposals. Hashing out the invited/crowdsourced session ratio and the program outline should be done in #34

The idea is we decide here how many and which invited speakers we would like to have and then we spawn further issues for contacting them and arranging invitations.

damphyr commented 12 years ago

First up, Matz has been invited and we now have his dates, see #32

damphyr commented 12 years ago

My proposals (and obviously personal preferences)

Avdi Grimm Steve Klabnik Katrina Owen

and I will add Aaron Patterson because I know at least half of the committee wants him here :wink:

In my shortlist there's also

Matt Wynne Pat Shaughnessy

I will leave to you to exercise your google fu and find out about the names you don't know :smile:

pagojo commented 12 years ago

I had contacted Jim Gay ("Clean Ruby") who said was interested, so was Pat Shaughnessy when I asked him. So did the Ramaze folk when I asked in the group (one of them Yorick Peterse is based in Holland btw).

btw any chance of asking YARV and AtomicRuby creator Koichi Sasada?

I kinda think that since this is the Ruby 2.0 EuRuKo effectively we may wanna focus a bit more on the language and its internals (VMs etc) if that works.

nikosd commented 12 years ago

Totally like the idea of Koichi Sasada.

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 12:24 PM, pagojo notifications@github.com wrote:

I had contacted Jim Gay ("Clean Ruby") who said was interested, so was Pat Shaughnessy when I asked him. So did the Ramaze folk when I asked in the group (one of them Yorick Peterse is based in Holland btw).

btw any chance of asking YARV and AtomicRuby creator Koichi Sasada?

I kinda think that since this is the Ruby 2.0 EuRuKo effectively we may wanna focus a bit more on the language and its internals (VMs etc) if that works.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/euruko2013/committee/issues/29#issuecomment-10403853.

Nikos Dimitrakopoulos | Software Developer I love deadlines. Especially the whooshing sound they make as they pass by. m: +30 6972 440 920 w: blog.nikosd.com t: @nikosd http://twitter.com/nikosd

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nolamesa commented 12 years ago

+1 for Koichi Sasada

2012/11/15 Nikos Dimitrakopoulos notifications@github.com

Totally like the idea of Koichi Sasada.

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 12:24 PM, pagojo notifications@github.com wrote:

I had contacted Jim Gay ("Clean Ruby") who said was interested, so was Pat Shaughnessy when I asked him. So did the Ramaze folk when I asked in the group (one of them Yorick Peterse is based in Holland btw).

btw any chance of asking YARV and AtomicRuby creator Koichi Sasada?

I kinda think that since this is the Ruby 2.0 EuRuKo effectively we may wanna focus a bit more on the language and its internals (VMs etc) if that works.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub< https://github.com/euruko2013/committee/issues/29#issuecomment-10403853>.

Nikos Dimitrakopoulos | Software Developer I love deadlines. Especially the whooshing sound they make as they pass by. m: +30 6972 440 920 w: blog.nikosd.com t: @nikosd http://twitter.com/nikosd

fraudpointer.com http://www.fraudpointer.com | pamediakopes.grhttp://www.pamediakopes.gr/ | fantasticgreece.com http://www.fantasticgreece.com/ | airtickets24.comhttp://www.airtickets24.com/ | moneyexpert.gr http://www.moneyexpert.gr/ Fraudpointer LTD | E-Travel SA - Evelpidon 61-63, 11362 Athens, Greece

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/euruko2013/committee/issues/29#issuecomment-10403917.

pagojo commented 12 years ago

ok I used to contact him when we were porting the Ruby 1.9p0 VM to Symbian OS. @damphyr we may wanna sync up on Ko1, Pat and Jim

nikosd commented 11 years ago

Some more ideas (classics) after discussing it with a few more rubyists :

will come up with some more...

vvatikiotis commented 11 years ago

Jim Weirich (RSpec) Reg Raganwald Braithwaite

petros commented 11 years ago

https://github.com/keavy

damphyr commented 11 years ago

Oh yeah, keavy is cool!

damphyr commented 11 years ago

Also guys, I know most of you earn your bread and butter with Rails, but keep in mind this is a Ruby conference, not a Rails conference. There's so many subject apart from Rails to cover that we can leave Rails to it's own conferences.

pagojo commented 11 years ago

Absolutely! This is a Ruby conf not a Rails conf :-)

petros commented 11 years ago

@damphyr yeap definitely, we need to keep this in mind.

vvatikiotis commented 11 years ago

A few priority 1 items are nearing completion or are progressing well so we need to gear up for the speaker selection. @damphyr can you put down a summary/bullets of your thoughts regarding the selection process and their criteria? Up till now there is a general consensus that 4-6 speakers will be selected by the committee and the rest will submit a proposal to be voted by the community. We need to think and decide about a few things such as the 4-6 person list, establish a way of anonymous voting, address the diversity issue and more I suspect.

damphyr commented 11 years ago

OK, I'm for 4 preallocated slots (of which 1 goes to Matz, which leaves us with 3 slots to fill with invited speakers) and 8 slots to be filled by CFPs. Now the selection process for the CFPs is the tough part. We have a few options:

I'm actually for the third option: allow the participants to decide what they want to watch and not the community in general.

We could go about it in the following way: Open a CFP where we collect title and abstracts. Publicise them on the website (omitting presenter names etc.). Have a token delivered with every ticket that allows the ticket holder to place up to 8 votes on the list of proposals. Shortlist the most voted for proposals and announce. This needs to be refined of course, I can think of a zillion things that can go wrong, but the crucial part is the timing. It would mean we have to put out the CFP as soon as possible.

Now, doing it this way also allows us to collect proposals by one channel and publicise by another and establish a "blind" selection process. Naturally word of mouth and personal advertisement by the speakers part can very easily defeat any measures we take for a proper blind selection process but I think we can let the community decide how to behave on this.

pagojo commented 11 years ago

I think that since we (as the committee) are responsible for the event that we must have the final say on the speakers and presentations. I do agree we should ask attendees for their opinion but this must not be binding.

btw here is an example of a speaker and subject I'd like to see A Simple Tour of the Ruby MRI Source Code with Pat Shaughnessy

pagojo commented 11 years ago

Another idea is to ask speakers (in the CFP process) to present only original material, so that delegates experience new presentations.

nolamesa commented 11 years ago

Γιαννη θα προτεινα να μην αρχισουμε να κανουμε contact speakers χωρις να υπαρχει συννενοηση. Αυτο το θεμα δεν το εχουμε συζητησει και δε μου αρεσει να προσκαλεις στο Euruko καποιον speaker επειδη σου αρεσει. Αν αρχισουμε ολοι να στελνουμε θα γινει πανικος...

Please πρεπει να εχουμε κοινη πλευση σε τετοια λεπτα θέματα. Με τα tweets που στελνεις δείχνεις ήδη οτι μπορει το committee να ειναι biased για την επιλογη speakers. Οποτε αν παμε σε CFP θα φανει ασχημο....

2012/12/6 pagojo notifications@github.com

Another idea is to ask speakers (in the RFP process) to present only original\ material, so that delegates experience new presentations.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/euruko2013/committee/issues/29#issuecomment-11081106.

chief commented 11 years ago

Α) @pagojo Σε παρακαλώ πάρε πίσω αυτό που έγραψες στον άνθρωπο με δική σου ευθύνη χωρίς να εμπλέξεις ούτε το euruko ούτε κανένα. Άμεσα όμως γιατί είναι πολύ μεγάλο λάθος αυτό και ακόμα μεγαλύτερο που ένας άνθρωπος νομίζει ότι τον καλέσαμε.

Β) Οποιος δεν μπορεί να ακολουθήσει διαδικασίες ας προτείνει κάποιες και να μην ενεργεί αυτόβουλα. Αν δεν μπορεί κάποιος να ακολουθήσει μια διαδικασία τότε δεν μπορεί να είναι μέρος της ομάδας.

Γ) Κανένας δεν είναι μόνος του.

Σε παρακαλώ διόρθωσε το λάθος σου και ας προσπαθήσουμε να συννενοούμαστε.

pagojo commented 11 years ago

The fact that enough of the speakers which we had in mind for EuRuKo will appear at BaRuCo is a) a good thing, b) a bad thing or c) irrelevant?

pagojo commented 11 years ago

I think it is a) so I'll repeat my suggestion (modulo whatever Matz wants to do:-):

"Another idea is to ask speakers (in the CFP process) to present only original material, so that delegates experience new presentations"

pagojo commented 11 years ago

it may sound pushy, but if we open the CFP during the xmas holidays people may actually find the time to think about and write up a presentation proposal :-). this should give us some traction over the holidays which is always good because people make plans for the new year:-p

What does everyone think?

apantsiop commented 11 years ago

We could do that. Just don't refer to a specific final number of the proposals that we will accept. Also, this should be communicated extensively (IMHO) so the only blocking issue is that we haven't done anything on the social networks/communication thing yet.

-- Apostolos Pantsiopoulos Software Engineer

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 12:25 PM, pagojo notifications@github.com wrote:

it may sound pushy, but if we open the CFP during the xmas holidays people may actually find the time to think about and write up a presentation proposal :-). this should give us some traction over the holidays which is always good because people make plans for the new year:-p

What does everyone think?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/euruko2013/committee/issues/29#issuecomment-11568142.

pagojo commented 11 years ago

Good point @apantsiop we shouldn't promise numbers related to acceptance because we have not decided yet anyway.

pagojo commented 11 years ago

May I edit the CFP with something like:

a) "EuRuKo 2013 welcomes all kinds of engaging Ruby related presentations, however we will be even happier if you propose an original presentation which will not appear in any other conference prior to EuRuKo 2013."

or giving it a "Language theme" in order to differentiate us from other Ruby confs in 2013

b) "EuRuKo 2013 welcomes all kinds of engaging Ruby related presentations, however we will be even happier if you propose an original presentation which will not appear in any other conference prior to EuRuKo 2013.

Ruby was first coded in 1993 and so this summer we'd like to celebrate its 20th birthday by having the plethora of presentations focused mostly on the language, its evolution, its future and its internals wherever possible."

pagojo commented 11 years ago

Any more opinions on this one? :-)

pagojo commented 11 years ago

btw a very neat but esoteric (preso)[http://www.atdot.net/~ko1/activities/rubyconf.tw2012_ko1.pdf] by Ko1. I handn't noticed that Matz is his boss now at Heroku.

damphyr commented 11 years ago

I made a few notes about the CfP here https://github.com/euruko2013/committee/wiki/CfP-draft

damphyr commented 11 years ago

I made the notes, went away, thought about it a bit more and went and changed the notes. Two things: For the sake of speed and simplicity I abandoned all schemes for a blind selection process and also all infrastructural additions to the site required for submission. It boils down to using GitHub for talk submissions (the CfP repository only needs some minor documentation love and it is ready to go) and pull requests to judge community interest in specific talk subjects.

Second: After tweaking several program outlines I ended up with one that offers us a couple more talks without being too tight and allows for a full hour for our "keynotes". This is debatable and also not a prio 1 since the final program is a couple of months off (meaning if we get too many good talks then we can see how to tweak them).

Which leaves the subject of the "keynote" speakers. 1 is Matz

My other three would be Avdi Grimm Katrina Owen Koichi Sassada

Avdi and Katrina are both booked for Baruco which might present a problem, so we will need alternatives as well.

nolamesa commented 11 years ago

I agree with your proposal. It seems more aligned with the general CFP approach. I added a couple of comments too.

Other than that, I added a page to get the list of all the speakers we want to see at Euruko so that we can vote for the rest 3 speakers: https://github.com/euruko2013/committee/wiki/Invited-Speakers

damphyr commented 11 years ago

@nolamesa did you add the page? Because I land on the "create new page" form when I click on the link.

vvatikiotis commented 11 years ago

As per what we've decided, new working docs should be opened in our euruko2013.org google drive so everyone from the team can view, edit and most important comment. If there are any other thoughts please share but unless we decide something else, stick with google drive.

pagojo commented 11 years ago

@vvatikiotis this seems to be adding too much process for something which is simple. Wiki pages serve its purpose and must NOT be deleted irrespective of using gdocs or not.

I use wiki for taking notes for example. So lets not put roadblocks to each other's way especially based on a decision taken without prior discussion at thw 12th hour. Please

I am happy with following some process some majority feels is right, but let me use mine as well please :-)

pagojo commented 11 years ago

Here you go it was a renaming issue which was my fault: the list

vvatikiotis commented 11 years ago

I just saw this I disagree on so many things.

-12th hour? We were 5 on the meeting and we were there.

John, we cannot comment on the wiki pages, you do realise that, don't you? Unless you want to work without input from others (fine by me). And don't start about github threads. They were meant for code, not commenting...

Feel free to do whatever you want

vvatikiotis commented 11 years ago

Where is the discussion concerning the CFP?

pagojo commented 11 years ago

I'd love to see something like this Ruby Supercomputing as well :-)

vvatikiotis commented 11 years ago

θα ηταν και γαμω τα hype!

Vassilis Vatikiotis Sent with Sparrow (http://www.sparrowmailapp.com/?sig)

On Friday, 18 January, 2013 at 4:50 PM, pagojo wrote:

I'd love to see something like this Ruby Supercomputing (http://www.slideshare.net/preston.lee/ruby-supercomputing-using-the-gpu-for-massive-performance-speedup-v11) as well :-)

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub (https://github.com/euruko2013/committee/issues/29#issuecomment-12424821).

pagojo commented 11 years ago

So here I go about the CFP process:

Following our 16/01/13 meeting I gave it a lot of thought and had various discussions that made me swing from position to position. As we have agreed all, the programme and speakers of the event is the most important thing to gauge the success of EuRuKo 2013 so it is our obligation to make it the best we can.

I hear @nikosd and @fotos concern about anonymity in the submission process and how this may help diversity and more importantly, in my view, how such anonymity can bring-in new blood. At the same time I also back @nolamesa's idea to keep the tried and tested way used last year through github pull requests that so many people endorsed. However what has made the most impact in forming my opinion is what @dark5un suggested during the meeting and also in private discussions we had about this matter.

@darksun made two excellent points:

a) If we use a process where proposals are submitted and discussed in public right from the beginning then we effectively filter candidates based on their confidence (and arrogance) to present in front of a large crowd. This is a desired side-effect because the last thing we need is to have presenters with stage fright. Coming from @darksun this point has special weight and should be considered carefully.

b) We should allow the delegates to decide and none other (apart from the committee of course). Hence we should allow only those who purchase tickets to vote for how their event should look like! We can achieve this because Eventora can give us (in CSV format) the details and ticket reference codes of those who purchase tickets. This will also hype-up the ticket sales in my view and engage everyone right away.

So here is my proposal:

If @nikosd or someone else can do the coding then we can have the best from both worlds, such that:

  1. We make the proposal submission anonymous.
  2. We only allow delegates who have purchased tickets to vote on presos they want.
  3. On the submission pages we state clearly past presentations and past presenters. This should "scare-off" people with potential stage-fright. We have to do this! Candidate presenters may be nice people and top programmers, however they must be able to stand in front of a huge unforgiving crowd if they want to speak at such a gig. If they can't, then we must not make it easy for them to enter such hell and jeopardise the event.
  4. We should ask for the proposals to be original and not to be a boring repetition of the 'same olde' presenations! The list of past presos will feature on the submission pages for everyone to have a look. Then we must state clearly that the committee which has the last word will have a strong preference towards original presos.
  5. We somehow post/link the submissions to github and encourage everyone to comment on any given (anonymous) submission, but do so eponymously :-). This way the committee will a) engage the community b) get a feel about the preso topics. This should also act as a filter for presenters that can't deal with criticism.
  6. We must ask all candidates that make it through the final stages of the process (whatever that means) to also submit the full presentations for review.
    1. We describe our process to the public (TBD).

Now, there is another benefit from the above. If we build such a 'CfP app' then we can re-use most of it for the last day of the programme in order to have a way to perform the EuRuKo 2014 voting --since the authentication and voting mechanism will be almost identical.

How does this sound?

nolamesa commented 11 years ago

As I stated in the last meeting I am in favor of eponymous submission and voting. It would be nice to follow the way Euruko 2012 did the whole process, but I am open to add a few tweaks. I don't want to focus so much on the way the whole CFP will work but more on the reason why I believe the process should not be anonymous:

Some ideas on the side:

vvatikiotis commented 11 years ago

My comments on both proposals:

@pagojo

  1. Yes. This is actually recommended for diversity issues (http://2012.jsconf.eu/2012/09/17/beating-the-odds-how-we-got-25-percent-women-speakers.html)
  2. I wouldn't go so far. We have to keep in mind that some ppl will be dead on coming but won't find a ticket. I'd go for, say, 2 votes for ppl who have purchased tickets and 1 vote for the rest. The 2/1 vote is just an example.
  3. I'm fine with mentioning past speakers and the whole idea that if someone cannot overcome stage-fright then he shouldn't be presenting (although you overstate your case "huge unforgiving crowd", "enter such hell, jeopardise the event").
  4. Agree on the rest.

@nolamesa

The link above states: "This is crucial. Even if you don’t think you are biasing against anything or anyone, unless you anonymise CFP submissions, you will apply your personal bias." Now, this is just the OT opinion. I agree with his opinion.

  1. The github process is not gospel. If we can improve it we should.
  2. Delegates don't care about the process unless the outcome is not what they expect i.e. top presenters/presos/other issues. The "other issues" includes diversity and is or is becoming a major one. Also, I wouldn't agree on the "delegates don't care about the process" in the first place. Community means involvement.
  3. Agree
  4. I don't think this is an argument in favor or against eponymous submission (or I don't understand the argument).
  5. I don't necessarily agree on "let's market/advertise my proposal".
  6. I agree on the committee having the final word. In most cases, I assume that in most cases the community vote will stand, but there may be a/few fringe cases where we should have a saying in the outcome.
  7. "deceived" is the wrong word since it implies intent. We would deal with this issue on a case by case basis.

About @nolamesa ideas

  1. I don't agree with this, in fact I'd take the opposite direction. In most voting processes there are no spammers, since physical authentication is in place. We have no way to ensure this.
  2. Agree. Maybe give an incentive for ppl to vote, or give more votes to ppl who bought tickets. In any case we shouldn't restrict voting to a group of ppl, be them delegates or not.
vvatikiotis commented 11 years ago

On Wed we'll decide on the 4 speakers. So put your proposal in the Speakers wiki page.

@damphyr can you check with Matz if his employer is going to cover traveling and accommodation expenses?

damphyr commented 11 years ago

This one on the assumption that we have the resources to create a custom submission/voting app:

Open up the CfP with a custom form that allows us to collect all pertinent information about the talk and the speaker:

Title, Abstract. Attachments can include the slides, a video link, a website etc. Speaker enters email, twitter, blog link, short bio.

The proposal info is published immediately on the site, the speaker info is stored. While the CfP is open the proposals are listed anonymously. Once the CfP closes speaker information can be added to the proposal information. Alternatively we keep everything anonymous until the ticket sales (more on that later)

Voting opens with the CfP. People can register with their emails and use 3 votes. After the first batch of tickets is sold, people with tickets get another 4 votes for a 7 in total using a code from their ticket. At this point it might be OK to turn off anonymity and let the attendees decide.

The vote numbers can(read should) be tweaked. 1 is not enough, 10 would be too much given that we need to fill 10 slots.

Now this way there might be some speakers that buy themselves a ticket. Do we offer to reimburse the ticket or leave it at that?

Also we state that the committee reserves the right to adjust the conference program only if the amount of votes cast is not representative of the number of attendees (which to me it means >2.5k votes) and/or if the vote distribution is heavily slanted (e.g. 3 talks with most of the votes and all other talks with really low numbers). We could add here a clause about curating along the lines of "Ruby 2.0, 20 years, original talks" but I don't feel it's right to have an open voting process and then curate on basis of content. I would only feel OK stepping in when we don't have enough/proper participation. Choosing the 4 keynotes is intervention enough on our parts.

If we remove ourselves from curation I see nothing against posting speaker info from the beginning. Our responsibility is to advertise and encourage through the appropriate channels so that we get the diversity we're looking for. For the same reason I don't think we should filter the proposals in the beginning. Euruko is a community effort. Heavy curation is to my mind not appropriate for an open community event.

nikosd commented 11 years ago

I like the proposal as a whole, I may have one or two adjustments/objections. I also like a lot what these guys have done: http://vestibule.rubymanor.org/proposals. Additionally to being anonymous and open, they also encourage feedback and discussion which I like a lot. As I said on a previous email, I would like to get in touch with them and see whether we can get their code and improve it.

On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 8:11 PM, Vassilis Rizopoulos < notifications@github.com> wrote:

This one on the assumption that we have the resources to create a custom submission/voting app:

Open up the CfP with a custom form that allows us to collect all pertinent information about the talk and the speaker:

Title, Abstract. Attachments can include the slides, a video link, a website etc. Speaker enters email, twitter, blog link, short bio.

The proposal info is published immediately on the site, the speaker info is stored. While the CfP is open the proposals are listed anonymously. Once the CfP closes speaker information can be added to the proposal information. Alternatively we keep everything anonymous until the ticket sales (more on that later)

Voting opens with the CfP. People can register with their emails and use 3 votes. After the first batch of tickets is sold, people with tickets get another 4 votes for a 7 in total using a code from their ticket. At this point it might be OK to turn off anonymity and let the attendees decide.

The vote numbers can(read should) be tweaked. 1 is not enough, 10 would be too much given that we need to fill 10 slots.

Now this way there might be some speakers that buy themselves a ticket. Do we offer to reimburse the ticket or leave it at that?

Also we state that the committee reserves the right to adjust the conference program only if the amount of votes cast is not representative of the number of attendees (which to me it means >2.5k votes) and/or if the vote distribution is heavily slanted (e.g. 3 talks with most of the votes and all other talks with really low numbers). We could add here a clause about curating along the lines of "Ruby 2.0, 20 years, original talks" but I don't feel it's right to have an open voting process and then curate on basis of content. I would only feel OK stepping in when we don't have enough/proper participation. Choosing the 4 keynotes is intervention enough on our parts.

If we remove ourselves from curation I see nothing against posting speaker info from the beginning. Our responsibility is to advertise and encourage through the appropriate channels so that we get the diversity we're looking for. For the same reason I don't think we should filter the proposals in the beginning. Euruko is a community effort. Heavy curation is to my mind not appropriate for an open community event.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/euruko2013/committee/issues/29#issuecomment-12848775.

nikosd commented 11 years ago

Shall I close this and open a new clean one when we'll have to select our final one from the cfp.euruko2013.org?

fotos commented 11 years ago

Closing this.

If you want to know what actually happened have a look at http://cfp.euruko2013.org/about.