Call For Proposals

PyCon 2014, taking place for the first time in Canada, will be accepting all types of proposals starting **July 2nd, 2013** through **September 15th, 2013**. Due to the competitive nature of the selection process, we encourage prospective speakers to submit their proposals as early as possible. As with years past, we're looking forward to receiving your best proposals for tutorials, talks, and posters, and for the first time, lightning talks. Submit a Proposal! ---------------- Note: **To submit a proposal**, sign up or log in to your account and proceed to your account dashboard! Important Dates ----------------------- - July 1st, 2013: Call for proposals (talks, lightning talks, tutorials, posters). - August 13th, 2013: Financial aid application opens. - September 1st, 2013: Registration opens (early-bird rates are quantity-based). - September 15th, 2013: Talk and tutorial proposals due. - October 15th, 2013: Lightning talk proposals due. - November 1st, 2013: Poster proposals due. - December 15th, 2013: Posters announced. - January 1st, 2014: Financial aid grants awarded (for speakers). - January 1st, 2014: Conference schedule announced. - January 1st, 2014: Financial aid applications close. - January 15th, 2014: Financial aid grants awarded. About PyCon 2014 ---------------- The 2014 conference will run from **April 9, 2014** to **April 17, 2014**, at the Palais des Congrès Montréal Convention Centre, near the beautiful historic old port of **Montréal**. The main conference runs from Friday April 11th through Sunday April 13th, and is preceded by two days of tutorials and followed up by four days of sprints. - April 9 – 10, 2014: Tutorials - April 11 – 13, 2014: Talks - April 13, 2014: Posters - April 14 – 17, 2014: Sprints Attendance records were once again broken last year, and the schedule was the best we've assembled. Can you help us top 2013? Who Should Submit a Proposal? ----------------------------- **You. Your friends. Your friends' friends.** Anyone with any level of Python knowledge is a candidate for a great topic at this conference. As we get attendees of all kinds, we need speakers of all kinds. In all ways and manners, we try to assemble the most diverse conference we can, and we do that with your help. Whether you got started with Python last month or you've been around for 20 years, we think you've got something to share. The Python community is stronger than ever and we're still reaching new areas, new industries, and new users. Be a part of growing Python by helping us change the future. You don't need to be a well traveled professional speaker to get on stage at PyCon. What matters is the topics, the materials, and the drive to present great things to this community. Every year we get first timers and we welcome them and work with them to make everyone feel at home. We also engage our advanced speakers to work with everyone else to share their wisdom and help put together the best show possible. Altogether, we received 458 proposals for talks, 129 for tutorials, and a ton of posters in 2013. Let’s see what you have for us this year! What Kind of Sessions can I Give? --------------------------------- ###Talks: These are the traditional talk sessions given during the main conference days, Friday through Sunday. They're mostly **30 minutes long**, but we offer a limited number of 45 minute slots. We organize the schedule into five "tracks", grouping talks by topic and having them in the same room for consecutive sessions. As for the topic, that's up to you. We want something for everyone. We want the hot topics in the community right now. We also want the hot topics for the future. Where is Python going? You tell us. You're the people who make those decisions and we want to share them. If you think you have a topic but aren't sure how to propose it, contact our program committee and we'll work with you. We'd love to help you come up with a great proposal. Take a look at which talks made it in the last few years. There are a ton of great presentations in there. Hopefully we can include yours in 2014. - PyCon 2013 Talks - PyCon 2012 Talks ###Tutorials: As with the talks, we are looking for tutorials that can grow this community at any level. We aim for tutorials that will advance Python, advance this community, and shape the future. There are **3-hour tutorial sessions** presented on Wednesday and Thursday - the two days preceding the main conference. We schedule two tutorial sessions on each day, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Attention full-time trainers! Please bring your course work to PyCon. Every year we get several educators to bring their show on the road, so show us what you have on the syllabus for 2014! As tutorials are longer than talks and are in an interactive classroom-like setting, they require much more preparation. Due to the amount of work involved, tutorial instructors are compensated, but they are also limited to teaching two tutorials. - PyCon 2013 Tutorials - PyCon 2012 Tutorials - How to submit a tutorial proposal - Suggested tutorial topics - Tutorial information for instructors ### Lightning Talks: Want to give a talk, but do not have enough material for a full talk? Have a shout-out for an open source project or tool? Want to share a community story (everyone loves stories!)? Preach the must-know fundamentals of virtualenv, PyPI, import this, etc? Then lightning talks are for **you**! These talks are, at **max**, 5 minute talks done in quick succession in the main hall. No need to fill the whole slot, though! This year, to help you prepare, we are accepting, reviewing, and selecting proposals for lightning talks in advance. Lightning talks are low stress, tons of fun, and are rumoured to have originated at one of the very first PyCons years ago. - Past Lightning Talks - How to submit a lightning talk proposal ### Posters: Posters are a recent addition to the Python schedule, but they're a definite hit and back for another round in 2014. The poster session provides a more **interactive**, attendee-driven presentation than the speaker-driven conference talks. Poster presentations have fostered extensive discussions on the topics, with many that have gone on much longer than the actual "session" called for. That is *exactly* what we wanted! The idea is to present your topic on a 4' x 4' poster board and as attendees mingle through the rows, they find your topic, read through what you've written, then strike up a discussion on it. It's as simple as that. You could be doing Q&A in the first minute of the session with a group of 10 people. As with the other proposal types, we're really looking to you to talk about what's going on in this community and tell everyone where it's going. If you're doing something awesome, share it. For more information about Posters and the Poster session, see: - Poster Session CFP - Poster FAQ - PyCon 2013 Posters - PyCon 2012 Posters Conference Registration and Travel ---------------------------------- PyCon is entirely volunteer-organized and run, and works hard to keep costs as low as possible. This includes having an everyone pays policy: everyone, from the conference chair on down, pays for their own ticket and travel expenses. That said, we do appreciate those who share their knowledge at the conference: Speakers with accepted proposals will receive early bird pricing and have a guaranteed spot at the conference even if we hit the attendance cap. For registration pricing see: [http://us.pycon.org/2014/registration/](http://us.pycon.org/2014/registration/). If early bird pricing and travel would still be a burden, PyCon also has a large **financial aid program** to help those who can’t afford to attend PyCon. Speakers will be prioritized in the financial aid program. For more details, see [http://us.pycon.org/2014/assistance/](http://us.pycon.org/2014/assistance/). ### Thank you!