Open Space

NOTE: The conference is now Over.

Please see the on-site Open Space Board for room assignments and times. They WILL change often. The website will not be updated to keep track. The board location is outside the Open Space Rooms. See the provided handouts for the location. If you read the rest of this page and watch the video you will understand how Open Space works and the reasoning behind not using a website for times and locations.

PyCon features extra rooms for attendees to schedule informal presentations or discussions. These "Open Space" rooms let you customize your experience at PyCon to match your specific interests.

Several rooms will be available during the conference days. There will be plenty of room, so make PyCon yours by using Open Space to create an event on whatever topic you wish.

See the list of Announced Open Space Events.

Screencast (by Bruce Eckel)

Bruce Eckel has created a screen cast explaining OpenSpaces, what they are, how they work, and how to make the most of your time. It is a must see.

You can download the original (23MB).

Here is the URL mentioned in the video: http://www.mindviewinc.com/Conferences/OpenSpaces.html

Ideas for Open Space Sessions

Have a "Birds-of-a-Feather" (BoF) session
Get deeper into the details of a scheduled talk
Give a presentation or tutorial
Hold a panel discussion
Run a mini-sprint
Brainstorm about a new project

To Set Up An Open Space Event

At the conference post the event on the Open Space Board. Thats it.

/common/2009/public/openspaceboard08.png

So what is this part of the site for?

Glad you asked. This wiki is for the promotion and coordination of potential open space events before the conference starts.

Maybe a group of people want to have a BoF session and you want to get the word out to others in the community and keep track of the interest. This could include sharing e-mails, getting information out about twitter feeds, or querying for questions to discuss on a topic. In short this space is for you, the PyCon attendees, to communicate the intent to hold Open Space events before the conference starts.

Any time before PyCon starts:

Decide on the title and content of the event
Create a site Login (if you do not already have one)
Create a wiki page for it.

To create a page, just type a non-existing URL into your browser location (i.e. /2009/openspace/MyNewFancyOpenSpace ), and click 'Create Page'. The Wiki uses ReStructuredText for the markup, and a ' Title ' is required. Please note that you must be logged in to create a new page.

If you like, there is the option of adding Google Moderator to your Open Space wiki page. To add this feature you need to send a request e-mail to doug dot napoleone at gmail dot com with the url of your wiki page and the e-mail addresses of the people you wish to have admin access to Moderator.