On Schedule Builders
It's conference time once again. In two weeks, I'll be attending PyCon, a conference that no Pythonistas should miss, then one week later, I will be at ConFoo, a conference that we are organizing at Montréal-Python along with other local user groups.
If you've been to a multi-track conference, you know the drill. As the speaker wraps up for his conclusion, instead of paying attention, you rush to unplug your laptop and to reach for your annotated program. Indeed, you've got only a moment to find out in what room the next talk that you planned to see is.
But this year is different.
One week ago, PyCon unveiled a very nice track selector application. It's very nice because it allows you to select in advance the tracks that you don't want to miss, to add them to you calendar application or to share your schedule with friends. That way, no more last minute rush to find where you go next.
I was really happy to see that so I shared the word with the ConFoo team, mentioning that it's the kind of things that we should develop for ConFoo 2011 next year. Well, it turned out that Anna, the ConFoo webmaster, really liked the idea and she came up with a schedule builder for ConFoo after only 48 hours. Both selectors have their own strengths and weaknesses but at least they get the job done. Hopefully more conferences will follow the trend of implementing track selectors; this is the kind of simple features that really improve the user experience.
Comments
On a side note: I consider ConFoo's website to be a fantastic design. The navigation is simple and direct.
PyCon can learn much from it.
Hey Yannick,
As a side note, I am at the FOSDEM today, and they have this really nice Android application we can use to look at the agenda, select talk, tweet our selection, etc.
This is very useful : http://sourceforge.net/projects/fosdem-android/
Glad you like the app! I wrote it back in 2006 (used for pycon 2007, 2008 and now 2009). It is quite long in the tooth and needs a rewrite.
I have planned to move over to the icon way of selecting talks (just have not had time).
Some other interesting features that are not obvious:
The talk selections are stored in a cookie and are not communicated to the server as AJAX (CONFoo seems to be doing the same thing)
We parse the selected talk information and use it to track talk interest. (This came in handy back in 2007 when we had space restrictions and were able to move popular talks to the one room with more seating).
Volunteer management. The session chairs and runners are managed using the app.
Video and talk materials integration. Speakers can upload talk materials directly to the schedule. (see last years): http://us.pycon.org/2009/conference/schedule/
There is a new json export of the information (will soon be updated) http://us.pycon.org/2010/conference/schedule/events.json
(mashup baby)
A volunteer has set up eitherpad integration which will arrive soon.
The printed out schedule is generated directly from this app and sent to the printer. (check out the print feature in the upper right hand corner).
We can print out room specific schedules to hang out side the conference rooms with the app.
We can print out custom speaker information handouts tailored to individual speakers including which volunteers they will be working with and their contact info.
We can print out custom info sheets for our session staff.
NOTE: WE NEED MORE SESSION STAFF!!! http://us.pycon.org/2010/helping/session_staff/
In the end there are a ton of features built into it (not all of which are obvious). Features 5,6,9,10 are the only ones I did not have implemented for the 2007 conference... 9, 10 are from last year, and 5,6 are new this year.
Still need to find time to do a complete rewrite...
Thanks again, Doug, for these informations on how PyCon works behind the seen. I hope I will get to meet you in Atlanta.