PyConZA Role Descriptions¶
Contents:
Chair¶
Secretary¶
Event Coordinator¶
Sponsors¶
Venue¶
Talks¶
Talks Coordinator¶
Description¶
The first point of contact for speakers submitting talks to the conference.
Responsiblities¶
- Send out the call for submissions to the various places
- python-conferences and the local python mailing lists
- Whichever local meetup groups seem relevant
- Send out “deadline extended” notifications if required.
- Reply to each talk submission in good time
- 24 hour turn-around is a good target to aim for
- Mark talks as “Under Consideration” once they’ve been responded to on the site.
- Manage the talk submission process
- Ask for clarifications / improvements of the initial submission
- Ask for information not included in the submission if it seems appropriate (early decisions, travel funding, visa requirements, etc).
- Review and re-ask as needed
- Followup with speakers for questions that haven’t been answered
- Pass talks on the review stage when they’re ready
- Create a slack thread for each talk
- Title, authors & url need to be specified
- Post initial comments and opinions
- Follow and engage in any discussion with reviewers as appropriate
- Note decision on the slack thread once it’s made.
- Create a slack thread for each talk
- Inform submitter of the decision (Accepted, Declined)
- Explain the “Provisionally Accepted status”
- Inform Accepted submitters of relevant extra functions (speakers dinner, photograph, etc).
- Ask about scheduling constraints.
- Inform speakers once their talks have been scheduled
Talk Reviewer¶
- Read talk abstracts once they’ve been submitted for review
- Provide feedback on abstract contents
- Give a Accept / Decline opinion for each talk reviewed.
Talk Schedule¶
- Draw up dummy schedule as soon as possible
- Use placeholder pages for talks & other events
- Important to capture the intended structure of the conference, and update it as things evolve.
- Once enough talks have been accepted, start adding them to the schedule.
- Look for common themes that would help group related talks.
- Guess at talk popularity for different venue sizes
- Bear in mind any scheduling constraints that apply.
- Update schedule based on feedback from talk submitters and the talk coordinator.
- Manage on the fly updates during the conference. Common changes include
- Emergency talk deployed.
- Adjusting slot times due to technical issues.
Lightning Talks¶
- Respond to lightning talk submissions as they come in.
- Generally accept submissions, unless the schedule is full or there’s some obvious reason to reject (such as duplicate topics)
- Add accepted lightning talks to the web site
- Let accepted speakers know when their talk has been added
Funding Committee¶
Description¶
Manage allocating possible funding for speakers and attendees.
Details¶
Budget¶
Swag¶
Session Chairs¶
- Attend the session chair briefing at the start of the conference.
- Ensure you have been added to the Session Chair WhatsApp group
- Try get to your venue about 10 minutes before your slot to introduce yourself to speakers (who may want to test their equipment in the room) and check that all is well.
- If required for the venue, ensure there are volunteers to run the microphone around the room during the question session.
- Introduce each speaker.
- Give your speakers time notifications – usually for 10 minutes to go and 5 minutes to go.
- Open the floor for questions at the end of each talk.
- Point out questions to the mic runners when required, since they are often poorly placed to observe the whole room.
- Close questions with enough time for the next talk so set up and start.
- Make any announcements that need to be made.
- Watch the Whatsapp group for anything that comes up during a session
- Respond to any unusual circumstances (sound problems, for example.)
- Contact appropriate people (usually video team) if problems can’t be resolved quickly.
- Inform other session chairs and organisers of any significant delays via the WhatsApp group when they happen
Video Team¶
The video team mostly uses the same structure and roles as the DebConf video team. We rely on volunteers to fulfil the various roles during talks. They have also documented the layout and hardware they use and that PyConZA bases our set-up on. The main difference is that we hire all the equipment we need and only use one camera per talk room.
Instead of the Talk Meister used at DebConfs, PyConZA uses a Session Chair. This role has the same responsibilities of a DebConf Talk Meister, as well as some extra responsibilities.
System Administration¶
Website¶
The PyCon ZA website is hosted on the CTPUG server, with the wildcard domain entry provided by the FSF.
The website is powered by a wafer instance.
The sysadmin team is responsible for maintaining the infrastructure needed for the website, which includes updating and maintaining the wafer installation and deploying any site updates that require access to the system.
Organiser Repo¶
For sharing information amongst the committee, we host per-year private git repos on the CTPUG server.
This repo is administered using gitolite. The sysadmin team is responsible for setting up the repo, managing the access keys to the repository and managing any notification settings (irker, slack, etc) required.
PyCon ZA theme repo¶
We create and run a repo for the theming and additional features needed for PyCon ZA. This is created under the CTPUG organisation on github.
Email aliases¶
We maintain a number of email aliases for the conference.
The core email aliases are:
- team@za.pycon.org - This is the general catch-all contact address. The core organising committee should recieve email sent to this address.
- talks@za.pycon.org - The talk contact address. The core talk review committee should recieve mail sent to this address.
- funding@za.pycon.org - Contact address for funding / bursary applications. The funding committee should be on this aliases. For historical reasons, the bursaries@za.pycon.org alias forwards to this address as well.
- services@za.pycon.org - Email for subscription / service management. The sysadmin team should recieve email to this address.
- conduct@za.pycon.org - Code of conduct contact address. The members of the code of conduct committee should be on this alias during and after the conference.
Other email aliases can be created as needed, for specific side events or so forth.
PyConZA Timeline¶
Contents:
PyConZA Timeline¶
Well before conference date¶
- Update za.pycon.org to mention intended year
- Form conference oganising committe and assign roles
After committee is established¶
- Source a venue, and provisionally book it
- Start nagging sponsors
- Setup a new wafer instance on za.pycon.org
- Sort out basic theming and design for the site for the year
Once venue is secured¶
- Open talk submissions
- Announce talk submission deadline of 1 month before the conference date
- Announce tutorial submission deadline of 2 months before the conference date
- Decide on a travel funding submission deadline and announce it
- Announce talk and tutorial submissions everywhere (python-conferences, local PUG lists, various meetups, etc.)
- Add za.pycon.org to appropriate calendars (LWN, python-events, OfferZen, etc.)
- Decide on ticket prices and types.
- Decide on date for ticket sales to open.
- Decide on early bird ticket criteria (dates, numbers, etc.)
- Draw up draft schedule, so everyone is clear on rooms and times involved.
- Announce conference on various channels.
Ongoing once talk and tutorial submissions are open¶
- Reponse to new submissions (talk chair).
- Try source tutorials that match requests from previous years.
- Decide on any early talk decision requests.
- Start collecting travel sponsorship requests.
Conference date -2 months¶
- Close tutorial submissions.
- Decide on which tutorials to accept.
- Set tutorial prices with submitters and venue chair.
- Open ticket sales for tutorials.
- Announce tutorial ticket sales everywhere.
Conference date -1 month¶
- Extend talk deadline if required.
- Decide on talk submissions already recieved.
- Notify speakers of provisionally accepted talks.
- Start work on filling in schedule as speakers register.
Conference data -2 weeks¶
- Announce schedule details to registered attendees