The Event
I finally got to processing video shoot at DneprPy #1 - The Great Python Web Frameworks Showdown. We tried to build a simple "wall blog" to compare Django, Pyramid and Flask and it was interesting and fun:
Here are the links to projects created for this showdown:
- Django - https://github.com/e0ne/showdown_wblog
- Pyramid - https://github.com/nskrypnik/dneprpy
- Flask - https://github.com/nimnull/flask-blog-sample
The Aftermath
This was the first event to be run in the way I envisioned for the showdowns and it was a perfect opportunity to validate some ideas and assumptions.
Format
This time we've split all the talks into shorter segments to make sure things we are comparing are close to one another in time. Consider following. Overall each presentation was around hour and 20 minutes. Given that presentations follow the same structure talks about database access in different frameworks would be separated by 2 hours and 40 minutes - way to much for the audience to be able to meaningfully grasp differences and come to any conclusions. Segmented approach lets keep all the related points together making it easy to understand and evaluate them.
As we saw in the discussions after the event, segmented approach also calls for more orchestration with more or less detailed description of the overall format and the content of the segments upfront and short introductions before each segment.
Panel discussion with all the speakers after the main agenda also proven to be a valuable addition to the presentations.
Technical Setup
For quick switching between the presenters we used TeamViewer in the following setup:
- One laptop (the "director's laptop") was connected to the projector
- From "director's laptop" a TeamViewer session was open to each of presenters' laptops
- Resolution on all laptops should be set to projector's resolution. For most modern projectors 1024x768 should work fine
This setup allows for quick and seamless switching between the presenters from director's seat and it is exactly what's needed to run segmented presentations.
Another benefit of a setup like this may be in allowing people in the audience to connect to director's laptop via TeamViewer. Unfortunately, live coding and, for that matter, working with the code in an IDE or text editor does not look good on a project, so connecting via TeamViewer to director's lapton can be an option for those in the audience, who have seat further away from the stage.
Next Event
Next event - Java IDEs Showdown on Dnipropetrovsk JUG meetup on March 21, 2013 - will also be run in segmented format with TeamViewer. Stay tuned for the announcement with details!