In short, I was convinced, quite strongly, that because of PyCon's strong community orientation that we shouldn't just offer as a de jure perk to speakers.
What I love most about PyCon has been the genuine community feeling that I've gotten and that means not only welcoming, but also empowering and helping. There has been a genuine commitment to make a great conference for the community and to keep it accessible to as many as we can, both by intentionally rotating locations and by focusing on keeping costs down.
Most importantly, there was a genuine commitment to financial aid. The explicit goal of it all was getting as many people there as we could. An emphasis was placed on students, speakers and sprinters as well as anyone who would clearly provide something to the community. Going hand in hand with that, I saw a genuine intentionality amongst the other organizers; very few asked for financial aid and those that did had clear need. The rest of us paid, because we could and so that we'd have more money to help those who needed it. Further still, we asked aid applicants for their desired amount and their minimum-"can't make it without it"- amount. We trusted people to be honest and the community of applicants responded impressively -- many did all that they could to skimp and claim as small of a minimum as they could. And, because of all parties genuinely working for the greater good, we were able to offer aid to a record number of applicants. Furthermore, all speakers who requested aid were given aid. I want to make it clear that we saw their contribution as extremely valuable and weighed it strongly in our aid matrix and the calculated aid amounts.
My point is that by requiring speakers to pay for registration or ask for aid, we're holding them to the same standard that we hold everyone else. Yet, at the same time, we take their valuable contributions seriously and they're strongly weighted in our decision process. I would hate to think that speakers felt they were somehow undervalued -- nothing could be further from the truth. Nevertheless, I'd hate to see PyCon become anything other than a group of people who are all, in some way, on the same footing, all excited about Python and what we can, have, will and could do with it, as a language and an attitude. Rewarding speakers with free registration somehow taints that -- especially when there were so many good talk proposals that were turned down... why should we make the sting of a talk decline also be an automatic hit to the pocketbook? Doing so would seem to doubly discourage the almost-made-the-cut speakers from coming and that would disadvantage the open-space and lightning talks, not to mention the community at large (aka the hallway track)
Most importantly, there was a genuine commitment to financial aid. The explicit goal of it all was getting as many people there as we could. An emphasis was placed on students, speakers and sprinters as well as anyone who would clearly provide something to the community. Going hand in hand with that, I saw a genuine intentionality amongst the other organizers; very few asked for financial aid and those that did had clear need. The rest of us paid, because we could and so that we'd have more money to help those who needed it. Further still, we asked aid applicants for their desired amount and their minimum-"can't make it without it"- amount. We trusted people to be honest and the community of applicants responded impressively -- many did all that they could to skimp and claim as small of a minimum as they could. And, because of all parties genuinely working for the greater good, we were able to offer aid to a record number of applicants. Furthermore, all speakers who requested aid were given aid. I want to make it clear that we saw their contribution as extremely valuable and weighed it strongly in our aid matrix and the calculated aid amounts.
My point is that by requiring speakers to pay for registration or ask for aid, we're holding them to the same standard that we hold everyone else. Yet, at the same time, we take their valuable contributions seriously and they're strongly weighted in our decision process. I would hate to think that speakers felt they were somehow undervalued -- nothing could be further from the truth. Nevertheless, I'd hate to see PyCon become anything other than a group of people who are all, in some way, on the same footing, all excited about Python and what we can, have, will and could do with it, as a language and an attitude. Rewarding speakers with free registration somehow taints that -- especially when there were so many good talk proposals that were turned down... why should we make the sting of a talk decline also be an automatic hit to the pocketbook? Doing so would seem to doubly discourage the almost-made-the-cut speakers from coming and that would disadvantage the open-space and lightning talks, not to mention the community at large (aka the hallway track)
As such, my personal feelings are that maybe what we didn't do well enough was to encourage the speakers to apply for aid if they needed it... but giving them free registration isn't in keeping what I've come to know and love of the PyCon spirit.
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