PyCon 2007 Call for Proposals

• Submit a proposal
• Suggest or Find an Idea for a Talk.

Want to share your expertise? PyCon 2007 is looking for proposals to fill the formal presentation tracks. PyCon 2007 will take place February 23-25 2007 in Addison, Texas.

Previous PyCon conferences have had a broad range of presentations, ranging from reports on academic and commercial projects to tutorials and case studies. We hope to continue that tradition this year. As long as the presentation is interesting and potentially useful to the Python community, it will be considered for inclusion in the program.

For 2007, we're especially interested in presentations that will teach conference-goers something new and useful. Can you show attendees how to: use a module? explore a Python language feature? package an application?

Important Dates

• Submission deadline: October 31, 2006
• Acceptance deadline: November 15, 2006
• Electronic copy deadline: February 15, 2007

Talk Format

The preferred length for talks is 30 minutes. You can request a 45-minute slot, but proposals requiring 45 minutes will be reviewed more stringently and tutorial talks will be preferred for these longer slots.

Session lengths include time for audience questions. You should budget at least five minutes for questions; for example, a 30-minute talk will be 25 minutes of presentation and 5 minutes of questions.

Panel Discussions

A panel discussion is one in which a group of people discuss a list of pre-determined topics or bullet points. Due to the interaction, panel discussions should be 45min long with the last 10-15min for questions and audience interaction. A panel is usually made up of 4-6 people with one person being the panel moderator.

The moderator is responsible for keeping the discussion on track and making sure panelists have roughly equal time. The moderator is responsible for coordinating the panelists, both before making the proposal and at the conference. This includes getting commitments from panelists before submitting the panel talk proposal, getting agreement on the discussion topics, and making sure the panelists make it to the talk.

The moderator should be the person who submits the talk proposal; the title of which should be prefixed with 'Panel: '. After the initial proposal is submitted the panelists will need to be added to the proposal. Each panelist will need to create an account before they can be assigned in the system.

Informal panel discussions created at the convention are also encouraged, and should use the OpenSpace format (below).

Submission Mechanics

Use the PyCon Online Proposal Submission (http://us.pycon.org/apps07/proposals) to send us your proposals and ideas. Proposal submission will begin on September 15th.

If your proposal is accepted, you have the option of including a companion paper along with your presentation. The paper will be published on the PyCon web site.

Presentations and papers may be in text (plain or reST), HTML, or PDF; HTML or text are preferred.

We suggest, but do not require, that authors place their papers under a Creative Commons license. Please visit the CC 'Choose a License' page (http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses) to select a license that meets your requirements.

The HelpForSpeakers wiki page has suggestions and advice for speakers.

Other Presentations

If you don't want to make a formal presentation, you can still bring your new project or idea to PyCon.

• There will be several Lightning Talk sessions for talks no longer than five minutes.
• There will also be OpenSpace, thirty-minute blocks that are allocated during PyCon on a first-come first-served basis. These blocks can be used for presentations, round table discussions, hands-on tutorials, or anything else you wish to present.