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Showing posts from November, 2011

PyCon US: Information for International Attendees

Just a quick message today for all attendees - but especially for international attendees. It has been brought to my attention as conference chair that there are time issues when dealing with the acquisition of visas for attendees outside of the US - as has been previously noted , the Program Committee is running behind schedule due to the sheer volume of talks submitted. We plan on announcing accepted talks as soon as possible. Registration, and therefore Financial Aide applications will be opening soon, tutorial selection is rapidly coming to a close. While I can not disclose details on talks or tutorial selection or rejection, I can go out of my way to assist international attendees. Given the timelines involved, I am offering to immediately start assisting international attendees with the required visa recommendation letters as chair. I will draft and sign letters certifying your attendance and value to the conference regardless of speaker status - the assumption being that even...

What's up with the program committee?

"What's up with my PyCon proposal ?" That's the question I've gotten pretty much since the day the call for proposals closed for PyCon 2012. Since the program committee does most of its work in private, it can try anyone's patience waiting to find out how their proposal fared. Well, starting with this post I'll do my best to keep you informed of where we are. As Jesse announced last month , we had record-breaking levels of talk submissions this year -- about 380 talk proposals. And it's not just quantity: the quality has been breathtaking. Sadly, we have just over 100 spots on the schedule. Selecting the best proposals is quite a challenge. Let me tell you a bit about how our review process works: First, the committee reads through proposals and scores them (using a system based on the Identify the Champion system). The goal here is to identify "champions" -- a committee member who feels strongly that the proposals should be placed on the sc...