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.
