Kiwi PyCon 2009 - Call for Talks, Papers and Tutorials

Kiwi PyCon 2009 is an independent, community-run, community-controlled and not-for-profit conference dedicated to the Python programming language, Python applications, toolkits and frameworks. It also features social events and a chance to meet fellow Python users. It is organised by the New Zealand Python User Group.

Kiwi PyCon 2009 will be taking place at the Canterbury Innovation Incubator in Christchurch on the week end from the 7th through 8th November 2009. We are looking for Talks, Tutorials, Lightning Talks, Demos, Open Spaces and lots of hall way interaction. To submit a talk, please visit our submissions page.

We're looking for proposals on all aspects of Python - programming from novice to advanced levels; applications and frameworks, or how you have been involved in introducing Python into your organisation.

We especially welcome first-time speakers; we are a community conference and we are eager to hear about your experience. If you have friends or colleagues who have something valuable to contribute, twist their arms to tell us about it! Please also forward this Call for Papers to anyone that you feel may be interested.

Instructions for Presenters

We will accept a broad range of presentations, from reports on academic and commercial projects to tutorials and case studies. As long as the presentation is interesting and potentially useful to the Python community, it will be considered for inclusion in the programme. It's easy ... Can you show the conference-goers something new and useful? Can you show attendees how to: Use a module? Explore a Python language feature? Package an application?

All presentations (except Lightning Talks) must be accompanied by presentation materials. A detailed paper complementing your talk matter would be preferred - your slides merely illustrate your verbal presentation.

We will accept the following types of presentation:

• Lightning Talks/Quick Fire Demo (5 minutes) - You don't need to submit a proposal for a Lightning Talk. These will be organised from sign-up sheets at the conference. Instructions will be given on the first day.BR (Lightning Talks are brief talks that focus on a single example, idea, project or technique. Lightning Talks are not expected to cover all aspects of the subject. They're an excellent forum for first-time speakers.)

• Standard (30 minutes) - This is the preferred format. 20 minutes for talking and 5 minutes for questions (with 5 minutes spare for set-up and take-down). This is enough time to cover a few issues well and allows us to provide a good selection of talks throughout the day.

• Extended (45 or 60 minutes) - Extended talks are ideal for experienced speakers who want to cover a large topic. 45 minutes for talking and 10 minutes for questions (with 5 minutes spare for set-up and take-down).

If you choose the longer time slot please include a request in your proposal.

Submission

Proposals should be succinct summaries containing the following information:

• Author name(s), and a bit of bio info (include a bit about your qualifications regarding your presentation topic)
• Contact Information
• Preferred timeslot (standard or extended)
• Title of proposed presentation
• Summary of proposed presentation (around 30 words)
• Presentation outline (around 200 words)
• Intended audience (some keywords and non-programmers, beginning programmers, advanced users, CPython developers, etc.)

Don't panic. We don't require you to have written the technology that you want to talk about. If you use something in your day to day working life and you think that other people might benefit from using it, then feel free to propose a talk on it.

Please submit your proposal(s) here

If your proposal is accepted, you have the option of including a companion paper along with your presentation. The paper will get published in The Python Paper Monograph series. We suggest, but do not require, that authors place their papers under the Creative Commons license. See this page for preferred formats of submissions.

Proposals Acceptance

All proposals will be reviewed. Authors will be notified of the acceptance of their proposal by the proposal acceptance date. Obviously we'd love to accept as many proposals as we can, but we only have a certain number of sessions to fill. If you require faster confirmation of acceptance (for example, because you are travelling from overseas and require extra time to make arrangements) please communicate this to the committee when submitting your proposal.

(Final) Paper/Handout Submission

All presenters are required to submit presentation materials by the specified date. This submission is to be your full paper, not a draft. It should contain all of the usual aspects of a paper such as an abstract, introduction, body and conclusion. Please ensure that this submission has had its grammar and spelling corrected and that code snippets work. Your paper allows attendees who attended your talk a chance to refresh their memories about your presentation, and gives attendees who missed your talk a chance to learn from you anyway. Make sure your paper includes - at the very least - a brief introduction to your subject material and a list of further resources.

We would prefer that papers for standard length talks (30 minutes) be no more than 5 A4 pages of 11-point type with reasonable margins and papers for long talks (45 or 60 minutes) be no more than 10 pages. Appropriate file formats include any file that can be read with Open Office (which includes plain text and HTML with minimal mark-up) or a PDF viewer. Slides (even those accompanied by speaker notes) will not be printed in the proceedings.

Papers from other PyCons provide a good range of sample paper layouts.

Paper Review

All papers for the proceedings will be reviewed. The purpose of review is to ensure that papers are of a high quality and to aid our talk scheduling. The purpose is not to identify spelling or grammatical errors or to test code snippets, although errors may be corrected during the review if found. Obviously, we'd strongly recommend you ask a friend or colleague to give your paper a read through before you submit it.

Once your paper has been reviewed, the review results will be provided to you so that you can make the requested improvements for the published version. In case of acceptance the version to submit then is the final copy of your paper as it will appear in the conference proceedings (in The Python Papers Monograph Series). This is a separate process, and you will receive further information upon submitting your paper.

Speaker Benefits

Of course the fame that comes with it! Beyond that, all speakers (except for Lightning Talks) will have a reduced conference registration fee of $10.

Note that it's important that you get your papers in by the due dates - we reserve the right to withdraw the reduced registration if you don't get it in on time. If you're having problems meeting the deadlines, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can work with you to figure it out.

Contact details

Meanwhile, if you have questions or want to suggest another conference event, please contact the organisers: kiwipycon@nzpug.org

Call for Proposals (Printable Version)

KiwiPyConCfP.pdf

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CategoryKiwiPyCon