 Thank you very much for coming. This talk is about organizing the next year's EuroPython conference. And so I wanted to give you a short overview of how we do these things, how it works, and then basically we can, you know, do questions and answers, discuss a few things. So what is the EPS? The EPS is the organization behind EuroPython. It was founded in 2004 in Göteborg. It's supposed to provide the legal framework for running these conferences. It managed initially just the EuroPython location selection process for many, many years. So basically the EuroPython society did not really organize the conference itself, but it had local organizers basically do all the organization, run the conference, and so on. And just, you know, selected which local team could actually run the conference for a number of years or for just a single year. Then starting in 2014, we tried to change that model to basically move more of the organization to the EPS because we found that the size of the conference was becoming essentially unmanageable for local teams. So there was too much money involved, there was too much risk involved for people, so the local organizers didn't want to have the responsibility anymore for running the conference of this size. Because the budget that we have is around 600,000, 650,000 euros a year right now, and of course that's quite a sizable number, and it's not easy to handle for a smaller, let's say, a regional, national non-profit organization. So in 2015, we then came up with the idea to reorganize everything to not only do the selection process, but to actually then run the conference ourselves. What else does the EPS do? It provides support for the Python community that we have in Europe. So we try to do something very similar to what the PSF does internationally, but on a European scale. So we try to help other conferences in Europe with, for example, grants. We also try to help them with experience that we have. We can help a bit with the organization or with communication. For example, pushing out messages about things that other organizers do in Europe and then helping them gain more traction. We also protect the IP behind EuroPython, so we've registered the trademark in Europe, and we're currently in process of registering it in the US as well. We have the logo, which is not officially trademarked, but it is our trademark. And of course we have a number of social accounts that we use to send out messages, and those social accounts are being used a lot, followed a lot, so we have good channels. So how did we envision to make this work? We wanted to have a way to build smaller groups that can then manage a separate task that we have to do. So we have a longer number of groups that do certain things. To give you an example, we have a program work group that deals with the program selection, the talk selection process. We have a marketing and design work group that deals with most of the design things that we have to do. We have a finance work group that deals with the finances and so on. The EPS always takes the complete financial risk now, so we have to make sure that we have enough money in the bank, and on the other hand we can also then, because we are an organization that has been around for quite a while, we can enter contracts and people actually trust us to be able to take that risk. So for us it's not that hard to enter contracts with venues for example. And then of course we have professional accounting for everything so that we make sure that all the bookkeeping is done right, the auditing is done right, that we pay our taxes correctly in Sweden and so on. For the conferences in the various countries what we do is we usually get a local accountant to help us with this, so we had one in the UK for example last year, we have one right now in Switzerland to help us with the VAT and all the accounting that needs to be done and also the registration processes, and this we're going to continue to do going forward. Normally what happens is that we have to register in the country where we do the conference for VAT, even if it's in the EU, at least in some places we have to do that, because the regulation says that if you sell tickets to conferences, those tickets have to be VAT taxed at the location where you do the conference, not at the location where the organization is registered. So how does the EPS work? We have a board, we have these work groups and then we have the members. And of course we actually consider the Euro-Python attendees to be part of the EPS as well, because we like to get feedback from everyone for all the attendees that come to Euro-Python and then want to use that feedback to make it a better conference, because essentially the Euro-Python is not a conference that the EPS let's say owns, in the sense that the EPS makes it happen, but it's something that we do for everyone. So everyone, all the attendees are actually part of the effort that we do here. Let's have a look at the conference development. The whole thing started in 2002 in Charleroi in Belgium, where we started with 240 attendees. That was the very first event. The organization was a bit hectic. It was the first time, so lots of opinions, lots of discussions and so on. It took a while, almost did not happen, but then in the end three people then basically built an executive committee and then they made it happen eventually to basically work around all these discussions that we always had. And then later on you see it's been growing a lot. In Berlin we had I think 1200, it's not on this slide. Then the numbers went down a bit because of course Berlin is very central in Europe so it's easy to get there for everyone. The numbers went down a bit when we went to other places that were a bit harder to reach, but now in Basel you see we're back to the 1200 again. So let's have a look at how EuroPython ideally should be organized. I'm saying this deliberately because we've never managed to make this happen like this. But this is how it should be, how it would work really well. So we start off the RFP process. Do you know what an RFP process is? Request for proposals, a commercial process of how you do, let's say you want to search for vendors, you create a document that basically has all the things that you want from a vendor and then you send that document around to different vendors and they can enter bids into the process. And it's a whole process that has multiple steps. The nice thing about it is that the vendors compete against each other. So you get better prices. And this is one nice effect. Another nice effect is that we have to ask fewer questions because we can put into that document lots of questions that we have get information from the vendors that we would, vendors in this case being the conference venues, that we would like to get upfront in order to make the decision. Before we always had to ask the questions then directly to the conference venues and that was always very time consuming. Now it's more like a pull. It's not so much a push operation that we have to do. And we've done that for Edinburgh. The first time we've again done this for Basel. It worked really well. We have to improve it a bit because it's still too much work. But once we have this more polished and I think this is an excellent process to do the selection. Once you have the selection done, ideally in October, then you work on all the other bits that you need, like designing a logo, for example, that you want to have for the conference, preparing the website, maybe adding some information to it. And then you start with the pre-launch website. Once you've selected everything, the pre-launch website is more intended to do marketing for you. So get the word out about the fact that your business is happening again, where it's going to happen. And then January would be a good month to start, to actually start the main website, to get everything going. And then in February you can then start CFP and the ticket sales. Maybe then by March you know how the schedule looks like and then you have a bit of time until June to order all the material that you need to buy. This is done in June and not earlier because you always have to make it so that the material that your order gets delivered in a certain time frame before the conference. Usually you get one week or maybe two weeks before the conference from the venue to be able to send material there. And so all the shipments that you do need to be timed into that window. And then July would then be the conference. So that's the ideal time frame. How does the workgroup structure work? This is a bit theoretical at the moment because actually we do have these chairs in the workgroups. So the normal structure would be that you have one or two chairs. Then you have workgroup members, you do voting, then you have voting members, non-voting members. In reality the voting actually doesn't really happen a lot. We had that in the early days, but then we kind of basically decided the various things that we had to decide on more or less in a way that everyone agreed on it. Another problem that we faced was many inactive members. So we had lots of sign-ups for workgroups and then it turned out that only very few of those workgroup members actually did something. This is something that it affects us. So this is not good. Let me just remove this. Let me just switch off telegram for this session. I had that in the previous talk as well. Okay, sorry. So, like I said, this is a bit like static. What actually happens is that you usually have a few people who do a lot, then you have some people who do a bit and then you have a number of people who don't do anything much. And the problem there is that if you publish the list of members of these workgroups, it looks to others as if there were lots and lots of people in that workgroup, so no need to apply for that workgroup, which is of course not really helpful if you actually do need more help. So this needs to be managed in a bit more effective way. So this is the list of workgroups that we currently have. We have an admin workgroup, a finance workgroup, sponsors workgroup, the communications workgroup that deals with all the communications, the workgroup that does the help desk and all the on-site support that we have. Financial Aid is responsible for running the whole financial aid program that we have. Marketing Design does all the logos and designs and backgrounds, deals with designers and so on. Program Workgroup does the selection, Web Workgroup deals with the website. Then we used to have an on-site team, we found that we can actually do without an on-site team, we just need a few people on-site who can maybe go to the venue and do some venue visits, ask some questions, maybe shoot some photos and then send them to other people. We have a media team, which is currently just Anderson and myself, and then we have a Code of Connect workgroup, which is a bit special because you cannot apply for that workgroup you actually have to be assigned to that workgroup. And then how do we work together? We have mailing lists, but more recently we added telegram groups to this and now most of the communication happens over telegram, which is actually, it's a nice thing because it's more direct, it feels more interactive, you feel more in touch with the workgroup. The downside is that some messages get lost in telegram, so you don't necessarily, if you haven't read the telegram messages for a longer while then you sometimes miss things. We have Google Docs for most of the information that we need to share with people. We used to have a wiki, the wiki basically crashed, I think a year and a half years ago, and I'm currently in the process of copying the information that we have in that wiki over to Google Docs to make it more accessible again and to edit for everyone. And essentially the way that the chairing works of these workgroups is that the chair should be responsible for whatever the workgroup has to do, ultimately. So essentially, let's say the media workgroup is then responsible to get the video recording working and if that doesn't work then, you know, the chair has to be, is accountable for this. They need to feel that they're responsible for something. They cannot just walk away and not tell anyone, so this is important. Right, any questions? Yes? They are related in the sense that both have similar, let's say similar missions. They both want to help the Python community. The PSF does this on a global scale. The PSF also holds the IP rights to Python, the programming language itself and also to a couple of trademarks. The Europe-Python Society, and the PSF also runs a conference, Python Yes is the conference that they run. We run Europe-Python. We don't own the IP rights to anything that has to do with Python, the programming language, but we do own the IP rights for Europe-Python. So no other conference can call itself Europe-Python. And so we are similar. The PSF is a lot bigger in terms of number of members, in terms of the volumes that they, the volumes in terms of money that they push around. Their budget is a lot larger, a lot larger. The conference at Python Yes generates millions each year. And it's a really big operation. So both organizations have the same mission, but there's no relation between... There is a friendly relationship between the two organizations. So the PSF used to give out grants to Europe-Python for the conference for many, many years. We've come to a size now that we think that this is not really something that we should do anymore. We don't ask for grants anymore because we generate our own revenue. And so what we're currently doing is we're taking that revenue that we generate and also the profit that we make in these conferences and then give that profit out as a form of grants to other conferences. If we were to take grant money from the PSF, we would essentially be just redistributing the PSF money to other local organizations, which is not really the point. I mean, I can just then go directly to the PSF. Thank you. Any other questions? Yeah. How do the work groups work in a way that... How autonomous are they relative to, I don't know, board, chairman? Can you repeat? How autonomous are the work groups in the way of decision-making? Like, can they make decisions that are best... Like, sooner or later they have to go through the board or board or something or chair... Well, the chairs in the work groups, can they take decisions and make decisions for the work group for the conference or they need to have an approval vote or something like that, go through a board or something like that. Like I said, we don't do much voting. What we do try to do though is that we try to... We want to make the communication work between the work groups and the board because essentially the board is on top of all these work groups and has to coordinate everything. Ideally, we would also like to have the chairs of the work groups be board members simply because that simplifies the whole communication setup. This year we had the case where Alexander, who is the chair of the program work group, was not a member of the board and that created some issues and he didn't know about some things that we had discussed at the board level and that he wasn't aware of, so we, for going forward, would have to fix that and have to find some way to make the chairs, all of the chairs aware of what the board discusses. So right now you cannot become a board member if, like, during the organization of Europe, I think? No. The board members have to be voted in by the General Assembly, which is the... The next talk. The General Assembly in the EPS is the main kind of... I don't know how you call it... It's the main body of the organization, so they have the complete power to decide anything and they need to also vote in the board, several other positions, like checkers, auditors and so on and ultimately the General Assembly can change anything they like. The General Assembly can also change the bylaws, which is something the board cannot do directly. So that's the separation between the board. The board is responsible for the day-to-day operations. The General Assembly is responsible for the directions of the EPS where it moves, which direction it wants to take. Of course, the way it works is that most of the time the board does the propositions to the General Assembly and then the General Assembly discusses those and then votes on them. And who can be part of the General Assembly? Anyone? Anyone in the EPS. Any EPS member has voting rights in the General Assembly. The General Assembly is where you get together, so the next talk essentially, where you get together and then you vote on these things. Cool. How can one help, actually? How do I know if I can help in a work group or not? If you have a specific area where you'd like to help, then you need to let us know. We have a sign-up form for this, but I must admit the sign-up process currently doesn't really work that well. Not so much because we don't want to have anyone onboarded to the work groups, but more because the whole sign-up process is a bit onerous. And this is something that we need to improve going forward. We do have some work groups which are very popular, like the Program Work Group, for example, but the Program Work Group actually doesn't always want more people because they have a decent size already. So it's not necessarily a work group that needs more volunteers, but we have other work groups which are desperate in need for more volunteers, like people, for example, the Media Work Group, dealing with selecting video, recording, arranging all that, or another work group that needs more help is Support Work Group. The Support Work Group usually has a lot to do in the few months before the conference and then, of course, at the conference because that's what they mostly do. So they have to actually help Desk. So that group needs more help. We have a couple of others, like we have an Administration Work Group which we have to basically consolidate these things a bit. The original design of these work groups was basically taking all the different tasks that we have in the EPS, taking them a bit apart and separating them out into these work groups. I think we overdid it a bit and maybe we should just fold multiple work groups into just one work group. Because at the end of the day, what happens is that the Admin Work Group and the Finance Work Group and at this point also the Media Work Group is mostly just Anders and myself. And that's not really the point, right? So we want to spread that load a bit more. Also, another comment on the... Actually, I don't know if I have enough time yet. Five minutes, yeah. Another comment, the board is very active. So the board members are actually the most active people in the whole organization. Except maybe for Alexander who's not on the board. He also did a lot. But these are the people who do most of the work. So in terms of signing up for a work group, I think, well, we have to discuss, we have to see how we can make the process better to get people into the work groups. At this point, it's probably better to not use the sign-up form but instead just either talk to the work group chairs that you know of those work groups or just write to the board. And then we can just say, okay, we need more help in this area and maybe you can help there. Okay, thanks. More questions? No? So right after this talk, we're going to have the General Assembly of the EPS. This is not a secret kind of operation anyone can basically attend. I'd just like to ask to simplify the voting for everyone who is an EPS member to sit in the front rows and then everyone else to sit further back. We have to create a list of all the people from the EPS who are present. And then we can go to the next talk. The General Assembly is generally a very boring operation. Thank you.