This year we got one workshop on SciPy-Image processing selected for Gnunify. We were waiting for schedule eagerly and when it came out we were totally confused. There were almost 6 parallel tracks. So we reached to Pune at night and after dropping the luggage headed straight to event place to make sure we can get Lab setup properly. There were lots of volunteers running around fixing up things, making sure that "all izz well" for next day.
We had talk scheduled on first day itself that too at 10 AM. All the rest of talks and workshops were staring at 10:30, we were the odd one out, and even that didn't help. It was Friday, a working day so I think many students and professionals might have skipped first day. By 9:50 everything was very relaxed, no hurry no rush, people were turning in slowly and figuring out what sessions they would be attending. But for us it was going to be tough to lure attendees. By 10:10 we had two participants turned up and to make things worse, we had Kushal Das covering basic Python right next door. That talk was to start at 10:30 and students were lined up from half hour before itself. We were thinking of going around advertising the workshop to get more people, or changing workshop to a informal session of hands on, but then suddenly out of no where we got precious interested attendees, decent 20 odd turn up. But still we made the anchor(they introduces speakers to audience) also to participate.
Now the workshop requirement was that participants should have basics understanding of Python, but we got students still griped in evil clutches of TurboC++(Bhagwaan sab ko sadbuddhi de). So we changed the pace and plan of workshop, we covered basics image reading, displaying, numpy arrays, slicing and striding concepts, and then processing image by using filters, dropping information and other fundas. Thankfully we did not notice any one dozing off, they were responding to small exercises, and doing hands on. All in all it went well.
But I think, Gnunify management could have scheduled talks considering kind of audience registrations they had. I think, if this workshop would had been scheduled after introductory workshops and talks we could have got more and better literate participants, hence we could had covered more. Okay would have, could had are always there, lets hope we next time it is better.