Internal cuisine of PyCon Russia and international relations
“I don’t want to arrest me in Russia simply for telling me about my life,” these and other reasons why foreigners refuse to go to our conferences. Under the cut - a few tales of life.
PyCon Russia 2014 is very soon, the program is ready, tickets to speakers are purchased, visas are issued. We again have a strong team of speakers: five of them are python core developers, speakers coming from the USA, Canada, Great Britain, Austria, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Yekaterinburg).
But, frankly, this year the formation of the program was given to us with much more blood than in the past (and we thought it would be easier - you could appeal to the positive experience of PyCon 2013 ). On the way to the "high feelings" suddenly got up - the general political situation in Russia.
')
PyCon 2014 will be June 2-3, respectively, we began to invite speakers in the first quarter of the year, which coincided with the events known to us.
And then it began ... We negotiated with several dozens (!) People who were recommended by members of the program committee and last year’s foreign speakers. There were a lot of failures.
For example, a letter from a famous developer from Ukraine:
We were upset, but continued to work further.
With speakers from far abroad it turned out even more interesting. Here, for example, that a US citizen, python core developer, the famous speaker on us.pycon.org answered us:
Oh. Just write "Gay Friendly" on the site.
By the way, for some reason this very law scares not only gays, but also bloggers. Here is what another famous person in the community writes to us:
This is how it is. We stood up to our ears, even appealed for support to the US Consul in Yekaterinburg - asking him to reassure his compatriot, wrote that, they say, this is all the media are inflating, in fact it is safe here. But on this day, unfortunately, an unfortunate incident occurs: the vice consul of the US Consulate General in Yekaterinburg Kristina Hayden and five American musicians were detained by police in Serov (this is a city in the Sverdlovsk region). As it turned out, they were detained for business and quickly released, but still it became clear that the consul was not our assistant here.
In general, a very active international life is going on here - in the central part of Russia, on the border of Europe and Asia.
But not all the reasons for failure are so dramatic. One European wrote to us that he would not go, because “PyCon Russia does not support the Code of Conduct”. The Code of Conduct is a standard of conduct at a conference, aimed primarily at banning sexual discrimination and harassment.
Fortunately, the rules of conduct at the conference are not the law of the Russian Federation and here we can make decisions ourselves. You know, in order to get a good speaker - we entered them: pycon.ru/2014/conference/coc . So let's try this time to do without harassment and sexual harassment, okay?
By the way, after the last PyCon, at least one married couple was formed: the organizing girl married the speaker. And, although this has never been the goal of the conference, we are still very happy.
Speaking of girls. I will replenish our post with one more funny fact from the internal kitchen: unexpectedly we received a request from - attention! python developers from india! Girl 22 years old, she wanted to come and read the report for 15 minutes for novice developers about one Python library. Doom! Guys are afraid to go, and a young girl from India - she sent a request. (However, we rejected the application, we are doing a conference for experienced developers, and it is expensive to carry a person from India for a 15-minute report.) But we were still flattered.
By the way, next year Alex Martelli and his wife Anna Rovenscroft promised to come to us. So next year, we have every chance to listen to the report of a female pythonist. But, oops, it seems I’m already breaking the code of conduct, so let's stop on this :)
As a result, despite all the vicissitudes - we won! We even managed to bring one American - Brian Curtin. This is the director of the Python Software Foundation and he will tell:
• how things are going with the proliferation of Python 3 (why it didn't go the way it was intended)
• why it has already been officially announced that Python version 2.7 will be supported until the end of 2020
• what lives and where goes the world python-community
In addition - in the conference program reports from the author Flask, Twisted and CPython core developers, from developers from companies Elasticsearch, Rackspace, Yandex, Wargaming, Headhunter, Jetbrains - and many others. Here they are: http://pycon.ru/2014/program/content/
See you at PyCon Russia 2014! Nowhere in Russia, you can no longer meet such speakers!
PyCon Russia 2014 is very soon, the program is ready, tickets to speakers are purchased, visas are issued. We again have a strong team of speakers: five of them are python core developers, speakers coming from the USA, Canada, Great Britain, Austria, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Yekaterinburg).
But, frankly, this year the formation of the program was given to us with much more blood than in the past (and we thought it would be easier - you could appeal to the positive experience of PyCon 2013 ). On the way to the "high feelings" suddenly got up - the general political situation in Russia.
')
PyCon 2014 will be June 2-3, respectively, we began to invite speakers in the first quarter of the year, which coincided with the events known to us.
And then it began ... We negotiated with several dozens (!) People who were recommended by members of the program committee and last year’s foreign speakers. There were a lot of failures.
For example, a letter from a famous developer from Ukraine:
"Good day,
Thanks a lot for the invitation!
And thank you very much for your position - we know that there are reasonable people in Russia and we are glad that python players are among them :)
Unfortunately, due to the current situation, I do not consider for myself the possibility of entering the territory of the Russian Federation in the near future.
Thanks again!"
We were upset, but continued to work further.
With speakers from far abroad it turned out even more interesting. Here, for example, that a US citizen, python core developer, the famous speaker on us.pycon.org answered us:
"I dreamed of visiting Russia for many years, and I would love to come - but, unfortunately, I cannot - because of the current anti-gay law passed in 2013. I know that it is not very strictly observed, and I hardly break , but I can’t risk it, I don’t want to be arrested just for telling me about my life.
I am really very sorry, as soon as this law is repealed - I will be very happy to come to you and speak. I know that this will not happen this year, and that it is not in your power, but, alas, as long as it is - I cannot come. ”
Oh. Just write "Gay Friendly" on the site.
By the way, for some reason this very law scares not only gays, but also bloggers. Here is what another famous person in the community writes to us:
“I am very pleased that you invited me to become a headliner for PyCon Russia. I am also very encouraged that you have a lot of Twisted fans! Several Russian expats are working with me now (all Twisted users!) And I understand that you have a very interesting community that I would like to meet.
However, recent political events in Russia make me think about my personal safety while traveling to your country. I run a blog and some thoughts in it can be interpreted as “propaganda of homosexuality”. I am a popular blogger, and I read recently that a law was passed in Russia according to which blogs visited are equated with media. And of course, objectively now relations between Russia and the United States are tense because of the situation with Ukraine. ”
This is how it is. We stood up to our ears, even appealed for support to the US Consul in Yekaterinburg - asking him to reassure his compatriot, wrote that, they say, this is all the media are inflating, in fact it is safe here. But on this day, unfortunately, an unfortunate incident occurs: the vice consul of the US Consulate General in Yekaterinburg Kristina Hayden and five American musicians were detained by police in Serov (this is a city in the Sverdlovsk region). As it turned out, they were detained for business and quickly released, but still it became clear that the consul was not our assistant here.
In general, a very active international life is going on here - in the central part of Russia, on the border of Europe and Asia.
But not all the reasons for failure are so dramatic. One European wrote to us that he would not go, because “PyCon Russia does not support the Code of Conduct”. The Code of Conduct is a standard of conduct at a conference, aimed primarily at banning sexual discrimination and harassment.
Fortunately, the rules of conduct at the conference are not the law of the Russian Federation and here we can make decisions ourselves. You know, in order to get a good speaker - we entered them: pycon.ru/2014/conference/coc . So let's try this time to do without harassment and sexual harassment, okay?
By the way, after the last PyCon, at least one married couple was formed: the organizing girl married the speaker. And, although this has never been the goal of the conference, we are still very happy.
Speaking of girls. I will replenish our post with one more funny fact from the internal kitchen: unexpectedly we received a request from - attention! python developers from india! Girl 22 years old, she wanted to come and read the report for 15 minutes for novice developers about one Python library. Doom! Guys are afraid to go, and a young girl from India - she sent a request. (However, we rejected the application, we are doing a conference for experienced developers, and it is expensive to carry a person from India for a 15-minute report.) But we were still flattered.
By the way, next year Alex Martelli and his wife Anna Rovenscroft promised to come to us. So next year, we have every chance to listen to the report of a female pythonist. But, oops, it seems I’m already breaking the code of conduct, so let's stop on this :)
As a result, despite all the vicissitudes - we won! We even managed to bring one American - Brian Curtin. This is the director of the Python Software Foundation and he will tell:
• how things are going with the proliferation of Python 3 (why it didn't go the way it was intended)
• why it has already been officially announced that Python version 2.7 will be supported until the end of 2020
• what lives and where goes the world python-community
In addition - in the conference program reports from the author Flask, Twisted and CPython core developers, from developers from companies Elasticsearch, Rackspace, Yandex, Wargaming, Headhunter, Jetbrains - and many others. Here they are: http://pycon.ru/2014/program/content/
See you at PyCon Russia 2014! Nowhere in Russia, you can no longer meet such speakers!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/222543/
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