Look for conference organization tools

[dbrgn]

There are some tools available to help organizing conferences. They aid in publishing a CFP, publishing the schedule, and other things.

I have no prior experience with any of these tools, but it might be worthwhile to take a look at what's available.

This is a low-priority task, since we can stick to the tools we have so far for the next edition.

I'll assign this task to myself for now, but would be happy to pass it to anyone else that is interested. General feedback is also welcome as Github issue comments.

[loleg]

While not a conference-organizing tool per se, I'd like to offer my experience developing a homebrew Python project to support hackathon events (Dribdat) to this task. Also, I am involved with organizing the Opendata.ch annual conference and know of some of the logistics and communication tasks involved.

[dbrgn]

@loleg your help is very welcome :)

I'd start by collecting different tools that exist as well as possible features they can cover. We don't necessarily need all of them, we could probably cover a lot of them with our static website. I'll start with a few:

Features

• CfP management
• Ticket sale
• Schedule management
• Speaker management (like a CRM)

Tools

Self hosted:

• https://frab.github.io/frab/ (used by CCC)
• https://github.com/osbridge/openconferenceware (seems to require a lot of customization)
• https://github.com/rubycentral/cfp-app (only for CFP, but also includes voting systems etc, used by Rustfest)

Cloud based:

• ...

Other resources

• Conference organization 101 video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSnWhJvLtDY

[The-Compiler]

@raoulb can maybe say a bit more about frab, FWIW

[loleg]

@dbrgn @The-Compiler I've checked out the ones proposed, and also looked into some Python-based conference apps. pythonindia/junction and pretix both look interesting, for different reasons.

What stood out for me is the good work that's already gone into SwissPy.github.io. Lots can be done with a little static site magic. I like PyDelhis JSON API. There are many cool Pelican plugins to explore. And just tying in the decision flows and other processes here on GitHub to the site using GitHub's API could be fun and rewarding.

I don't know about ticket sales (though surely someone has ideas involving a blockchain or two), probably better to do it through a dedicated provider who has a decent API anyway. The other points could definitely be managed with some well placed CSV's, JSON's or YAML's. All I want to say is: every conference is unique, and a lot of brainpower underlies SwissPy. Let's use it ;-)

[davidhalter]

Just throwing this one in: https://www.papercall.io/

No idea how good it is, but pycon.de just used it for this years CfP.

[dbrgn]

We're doing tickets with https://ti.to/ for now. Seems pretty nice so far.

We should probably look for a good CfP tool for next time though.

[0xjac]

Just looking at the summit, the repo and this issue caught my eye. May I suggest Indico, an open-source python event management tool developed at CERN: https://getindico.io/ @pferreir could you help some swiss pythonistas?

[pferreir]

I'd be glad to assist with Indico. It does epayment, ticketing and CfP. It's Open Source, and easy to install, no strings attached. There's a sandbox here.

[chiesax]

Thanks for your help, but we are using ti.to for payments and ticketing. We may evaluate Indico for the next edition though.

[dbrgn]

Looks interesting though, thanks for the link :)