How to submit a proposal

1. Create a PyConZA 2024 account (or login if you already have one) by clicking on the Create Account/login button on the top right.
2. On your profile page, click Edit User and fill in your name if you didn't do so during account creation.
3. On your profile page, click Edit Profile and fill in a contact number. Contact numbers are never displayed on the site but organizers need them in case they need to contact speakers urgently (e.g. shortly before or during the conference).
4. On your profile page, click Submit talk proposal on the right.
5. Fill in the title and abstract for your talk and select the appropriate speaker (or speakers).
6. Select the appropriate talk type for your proposal.
7. Select the appropriate talk track for the proposal. If you're unsure, just use Other.
8. Done!

What happens next?

After you've submitted a talk, we'll email you to let you know that we've received your talk proposal. We'll ask questions if we're unsure of anything and help you make your abstract as shiny as possible.

Then there'll be a long wait while other proposals come in.

We'll start accepting talks at the end of August. If it's important for you to know before then, let us know and we'll work something out.

When do talks need to be submitted by?

We'd love to have talk submissions in by 18th August 2024, but submissions after this deadline are also welcome.

FAQ

If I'm a speaker, do I need to purchase a ticket?

Yes. Python conferences have long had a policy of everyone pays. Even the organizers have to purchase tickets.

How do I edit my talk submission? Your talk submissions will be listed on your profile page. If you go to the individual proposal page by clicking on the talk title, you should see an "Edit" button to the right of the title. Note that you can only edit the proposal while it's under consideration. Once a final decision has been made, it can no longer be edited. If you need to add or edit something after a proposal has been accepted, please contact the talk committee with the details.

Can I submit multiple talks / tutorials / other? Talks and Tutorials are treated independently, so it's fine to submit both a talk and a tutorial.

You can also submit multiple Talk and Keynote proposals, but, to encourage speaker diversity, we will generally only accept one of your proposals. If you do submit multiple proposals, please let us know which proposal you would most like to present, so we can use that as a potential tie-breaker.

Multiple proposals for the other options are fine, but we do expect you to be realistic when submitting multiple proposals.

What if I'm new to speaking?

If you're new to speaking and would like assistance preparing your talk, email team@za.pycon.org with a rough draft of your talk proposal and we'll find a suitably experienced speaker to act as a mentor.

What kinds of proposals are we accepting?

• Keynote: A 30-45 minute talk on a broad topic that should be of interest to almost all of the attendees.
• Talk: A conference talk given in person at the venue. Talk slots are 30 minutes long, with an additional 10 minutes for discussion at the end.
• Remote Talk: A conference talk that will be presented remotely. Talk slots are 30 minutes long, with an additional 10 minutes for discussion at the end. Note that, because of technical considerations, we will only be accepting a limited number of remote talks.
• Tutorial: A long presentation (either 4 or 8 hours) covering a topic in detail. We are still working out details of when tutorials will be run with the venue - watch this space for more details.

Shared sessions are also possible. Presentations must be in English.

What topics are we accepting?

We are interested in a wide variety of talk topics. The only hard requirement is that your talk must be related to Python.

If you are keen to talk but you are struggling to come up with a topic, here is some food for thought:

• is there a tool that you want to geek out about?
• are you building something interesting for work or fun?
• maybe you have some strong and/or novel opinions about some part of the Python ecosystem or community that you would like to share
• maybe you think you can put together a panel discussion or some other thing that isn't exactly a presentation
• maybe ... something else entirely. We are very keen to allow speakers to test out new ways of presenting their ideas

If you would like to see what kinds of talks have been presented before, you can browse videos from past PyConZAs. You are also welcome to revisit topics from past PyConZAs so long as there is something new to say.

Talk tracks

To simplify scheduling, and help reviewers, this year we are dividing the submissions into a number of tracks.

See the tracks details page for more information.