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.
• 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