PyCon 2015, taking place in Canada, will be accepting talks and tutorial proposals from August 1st, 2014 through September 15th, 2014. Poster proposals can be submitted until November 1st, 2014. 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 talks, tutorials, and posters.
Submit a Proposal
Note To submit a proposal, sign up or log in to your account and proceed to your account dashboard!
Guidelines for Proposal Submission
Everyone is encouraged to submit a proposal, regardless of experience level. PyCon thrives on having talks ranging from introductory to advanced. If you are reading this, and you are interested in speaking at PyCon, we want you to submit a proposal.
Important Make sure you read our proposal advice page. This page is prepared by the review committee and is a partial enumeration of what we expect to see in good proposals.
Figure out what kind of session is appropriate for your material. PyCon has three primary types of presentations: talks (30 or 45 minute lecture-style presentations), tutorials (3 hour interactive, classroom presentations to a small body of students), and posters (a presentation of research on posterboard). More detail on this below.
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.
There is no restriction on the topic that you choose for talk sessions, although the review committee usually expects that the topic and proposal will be able to gather an audience (more on that in advice). We do observe a limit of at most two talks that we will allow to be given by one presenter. You may submit more, but if the committee should accept more than two, then we will ask you to choose two to give.
If you're interested in sample proposals, here is an enumeration of what was accepted over the last few years:
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 2015!
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. There is a limit of at most two tutorials given by one presenter.
- How to submit a tutorial proposal
- Suggested tutorial topics
- Tutorial information for instructors
- PyCon 2014 Tutorials
- PyCon 2013 Tutorials
- PyCon 2012 Tutorials
Posters
A poster is a presentation of a topic on a 4'⨉4' poster board. As attendees mingle through the rows, they find interesting topics, read through them, then strike up a discussion.
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:
About PyCon 2015
The 2015 conference will run from April 8, 2015 to April 16, 2015, at the Palais des Congrès Montréal Convention Centre, near the beautiful historic old port of Montréal. The main conference runs from Friday, April 10 through Sunday, April 12, and is preceded by two days of tutorials and followed up by four days of sprints.
- April 8–9, 2015: Tutorials
- April 10–12, 2015: Talks
- April 12, 2015: Posters
- April 13–16, 2015: Sprints
Important Dates
- August 1st, 2014: Call for proposals (talks, tutorials, posters).
- September 1st, 2014: Financial aid application opens.
- September 1st, 2014: Registration opens (early-bird rates are quantity-based).
- September 15th, 2014: Talk and tutorial proposals due.
- November 1st, 2014: Poster proposals due.
- December 20th, 2014: Selected talks and tutorials announced.
- December 20th, 2014: Financial aid grants awarded (for speakers).
- December 20th, 2014: Selected posters announced.
- January 1st, 2015: Conference schedule announced.
- January 1st, 2015: Financial aid applications close.
- January 15th, 2015: Financial aid grants awarded.
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.
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. Accepted talk speakers will be prioritized in the financial aid program.
