EuroPython/SoftwareRequirements

Legacy Wiki Page

This page was migrated from the old MoinMoin-based wiki. Information may be outdated or no longer applicable. For current documentation, see python.org.

EuroPython Conference Software Requirements

This page is derived from PyConPlanning/SoftwareRequirements but focuses on things that have proven more relevant to EuroPython. The requirements here do not directly address general conference Web site issues, such as http://www.europython.org/ which focuses on the publishing of general information about the conference.

Existing Software

There are a few solutions people are using for conference management, including the following:

Essentials

These are things which have been central to the organisation of EuroPython and which have already been managed using conference software:

  • Account management

  • Registration

  • Paper/talk submissions

  • Scheduling

Extras

These are things which could have been managed using conference software or which could have been made easier using such software:

  • Feedback

  • Sponsor management

Luxuries

These are things which people seem to find interesting but which haven’t been the focus of the EuroPython organisers:

  • Mapping of attendee locations

Account Management

It is not generally a good idea to allow unauthenticated users to register for a conference - this tends to attract speculative registrations from people who seem not to be serious about attending. However, a few use-cases need to be supported for people logging in to…

  • Register themselves

  • Register other people

  • Submit/edit/withdraw materials created by themselves or collaborators

  • Review paper/talk submissions

  • Manage aspects of the conference

One limitation of the Indico instance hosted at CERN was the insistence that registrants must have their own account. Creative workarounds include using distinct e-mail aliases belonging to one person.

Registration

This combines some of the PyCon requirements for “users” with more general requirements:

  • Support the following information:

    • Name

    • E-mail address

    • Registrant status: participant, speaker, volunteer, session chair

    • Registrant class: student, normal

    • Payment class: paid, unpaid

    • Geographic information (this is more relevant for EuroPython given the number of countries involved)

    • Organisation

    • Other contact details

    • Privacy preferences (would (not) like name published in delegate listing, would (not) like e-mail notifications)

    • T-shirt size (if appropriate)

    • Food preferences (if any)

  • Export/reports of registrant information

  • Badges must be able to show name, class/status, organisation, origin and must obviously be exportable (as PDF, for example)

  • Payment:

    • Support e-payment and later payment (bank transfer being the norm in Europe)

    • Support non-paying registrants (guests, invitees)

    • Must support different prices for students, non-students (and other classes of registrant)

  • Keeps or can generate the total revenue for the conference

  • Support tutorial registration and extra events

  • Support capacity limits for tutorials and extra events

  • Optional donations and/or extra items

  • Support editing and cancellation of registrations by both users (for their own registrations) and by administrators

Paper/Talk Submissions

See “Account Management” for some relevant criteria.

  • Reviewers can look at other people’s proposals

  • Organisers can mark proposals as ‘accepted’ or ‘declined’, and can set a scheduled time/location

  • Proposals have: title, summary/abstract, description, category, length (30/45 min), difficulty level (beginner/intermediate/advanced), a list of 3 assigned reviewers, an accepted boolean, a list of reviewer comments, and a list of uploaded documents

  • A mechanism must exist for reviewers to choose or be assigned submissions; PyCon requirements involve assigning 3 reviewers at random (excluding the author)

  • Reviewer voting or the mechanisms to form a consensus

  • Exports/reports showing the status of submissions and their scores

  • Reviewers and users can comment, but some reviewer comments can be withheld from the user until a decision is made

  • Notifications via e-mail about comments and decisions

  • Export conference materials for proceedings

Scheduling

  • Produce online schedules with talk information, track/theme membership for each room

  • Produce printable schedules for the entire conference, and for individual rooms for a given day

  • Track session chairs for each session

  • It can be nice to be able to edit the schedule interactively

  • Room management: desirable to be able to switch or rename rooms globally

Sponsors

  • Sponsors can fill in a form with contact information that gets stored in a list and also e-mailed to the sponsorship coordinator

  • Support the following information:

    • Contact information

    • Sponsorship level (platinum/gold/silver)

    • Invoice number

    • Paid (Y/N)

    • Web graphic, banner provided (Y/N)

    • Banner received (Y/N)

    • Comments on where the banner should be displayed

Feedback

  • Forms for the entire conference, and for specific talks and tutorials (but not sprints since they’re separate things)

  • Report: feedback summary for the conference, summaries for individual talks

  • E-mail authors with the results from their talk’s feedback

Experiences with Indico

Indico has been used to manage EuroPython 2007. Here’s how it fares in the above criteria:

  1. An “invitation code” feature would let people register without manual validation of non-paying registrants afterwards. Generally, some kind of validation mechanism would be required, anyway.

  2. Add chargeable items to the form for extra events and items.