It was a really good decision! The "hallway track" is one of the most interesting parts of any conference, of course, but when you have a table of interesting stuff to draw people in and start conversations about, it goes to the next level. I barely made it into any formally scheduled events at all, and had lots of fun meeting people from the big and growing open-source community. I tried to preserve my voice, but I was half-hoarse by the time my 4:00 talk started.
- Ponyshow was a big hit - it caught peoples' eye and drew them over to the table. I'd still like to add more flashy graphics to it for next year, though - I ran short on time, and had trouble installing pyglet. Tables in the nonprofit zone lacked electricity, but I used two laptops to get around that - one on display at the table and one recharging at an outlet elsewhere.
- Python stickers donated by PyCon were an even bigger hit. If 1/2 the people who took a sticker are using or will use Python, we've got a very healthy community here!
- I whipped up a homemade PyOhio banner that went pretty well. I projected our logo onto a wall, traced the outline, used an Exacto knife to make a stencil from the pattern, then used some fabric spray paint.
- For next year: bring candy. We may see if we can do a swag raffle of our own, too.
- A rerun of last year's Python introduction went well. The Python Beginners' Hackathon was good, but small. We'll have to think about what might need changes there.
- I really like the idea of PyOhio running something on the Friday of next year's LinuxFest. Join the pyohio-organizers mailing list to help kick around ideas for that.
There was a lot of interest among the attendees. There were more people already actively using Python than I expected, and virtually everyone else knew Python as something they wanted to learn more about. I think we'll see that reflected in an even bigger and more intense PyOhio next year.
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