As usual, we have two https://www.conferencechats.org video calls coming up next month (one nine days away and one fourteen days away). We've had an influx of new group members from a bunch of different communities recently, and I am very much looking forward to getting to know everyone.
@ThePSF Is there a reason that the "Voting Member" option in the Managing / Contributing membership self-certification form (https://psfmember.org/civicrm/contribute/transact/?reset=1&id=32) defaults to "No"? If this option needs a default, I would hazard a guess that the average new member signup intends to vote, and it would be a shame to see someone put in the work, enroll as a member, and then accidentally default opt-out of voting privileges.
@hugovk@indepndnt@ThePSF Thanks for filling in some detail here. Even still, those are pretty small numbers.
Do you happen to know if the missing OpaVote results page is intentional or a mistake? I wasn't expecting to be unable to access that page, especially given that the Helios results pages are still accessible (at least back to 2018, the earliest I checked).
@jonafato@indepndnt@ThePSF
re: 9 votes - I was only interested that the gaps were at least 9 because there had been 9 empty votes due to a bug. I don't remember how much more than 9 the gaps really were.
I don't know if the missing page is intentional or a mistake.
I have a longer rant about this that I will write up at some point, but here's the TL;DR: yes, you should attend conference talks, and please stop telling other attendees (especially those new to the community) to categorically skip them. Supporting conference speakers and the staff and volunteers that work to make the talks possible is a very cool decision.
@jonafato I'll write my own "how to conference" post after reflecting on the most recent PyCon. I'm going to suggest finding some talks to go to, because while you can watch them later it's an entirely different experience to see a talk in person.
One thing I don't see discussed much is the more focused hallway track that happens right outside an interesting talk once it lets out. Those are particularly interesting discussions based on the shared experience of just having seen the talk live.
@ehmatthes I look forward to reading it! I see all of these "why would you go to the talk if it's recorded?" comments, and I can't help but view that through the lens of live theater and music still existing in a post- radio and television world. Not to mention the fact that recording errors do occur.
Is there a name for the law of oversimplified "justs"? That whole thing where someone says "why don't you just..." to a problem they assume is simple despite others with deep experience in the subject matter telling them that it is, in fact, complex?
You know what happens when you publicly shame someone for sharing covid test results? People stop sharing them. The test results don't change, just the ability of other people to learn that they may have been exposed and to test and take precautions themselves. Public shaming may make you feel superior, but it does nothing for harm reduction at best.
Hey, so I pretty rarely blog, but this post that I shared here a couple days ago (https://www.jonafato.com/2024/05/20/conference-organizing-isnt-a-trap) was one of those things I couldn't get out of my head otherwise. It would mean a lot to me if you kept the sentiment in mind for future occasions when you see people getting pushed away from organizing communities of any sort. And if you legitimately feel trapped in your role, please reach out so we can help find the right people to help lighten that burden.
I met some new folks at PyCon US this year, but with so many attendees, there was not nearly enough time, and I surely missed a bunch of people. Who's doing cool stuff in the Python community that I should be following? Who's doing cool and important behind-the-scenes work that doesn't get talked about much?
If you're writing docs or example code, remember to use placeholder values that are specifically designated as such, or to use resources like domain names that you control if you absolutely must. Linking to example.com is a safer choice than a domain that someone else may own today or in the future.
QR codes are nice as an addition to URLs on conference presentation slides, but they're not great as a replacement. If you're using a QR code to link to a website, please share human-readable URLs on your slides as well.
@jonafato We're going all digital on our handouts this year and hadn't fully considered this. At the moment the QR Code takes them directly to the handout for that session, the displayed URL takes them to the general handout site and then they have to navigate to the appropriate session (there are 500+ sessions over 7 days). Might reconsider and come up with a short domain/session pattern for the URLs.
@box464 Update-able short urls are nice for this. I know a bunch of people that use linktree and similar tools for this sort of info, too. My main issue here was QR codes displayed without any sort of URL, so I have no way of seeing the content at all without holding up my phone in the middle of a conference presentation.