Call for Participation

The call has closed - thanks to everyone who responded! This conference will be fantastic thanks to all your inputs, and we are excited to be working on the program now.

We will add more information about how and when we reach out about the committee's selections.

This page contains all information regarding the proposal process for DjangoCon Europe – we will update it regularly as new information becomes available.

Deadline is was 2019-01-20 🔥

Precisely speaking, that's January 20th, 2019, 23:59 UTC+1. You can edit your submissions up to this date, so don't hesitate to submit a preliminary version of your talk or workshop.

If you think you have something great to talk about – submit your idea! If you are unsure, talk it over with somebody, or see below for our mentoring section to find people to bounce your idea off of. If you already want to submit your talk, head over here, otherwise read on!

What we’re looking for 🌈

  • Talks (main track)
  • Smaller sessions and workshops (see last section)

Schedule 🗓️

  • Talks (+smaller sessions and workshops) - April 10-12
  • Sprints - April 13-14

Topics 📚

  • Django internals and challenges in modern web development.
  • Wild ideas, clever hacks, surprising or cool use cases.
  • Improving Django and Python developers’ lives.
  • Pushing Django to its limits
  • Fundamentals, in a modern light.
  • The Django and Python community, culture, history, past, present & future, the why the who and the what of it all
  • Security
  • Whatever you deem appropriate – it's your conference, after all!

Help! ⛑️

You may think that your idea is not suited to DjangoCon Europe, or that you couldn't possibly present it well, or that others will do it better. We want to prove you wrong. See the list of speaker mentors who are willing to help you develop your idea into a talk, and help you tackle all obstacles on the way. You should also consider reading Sasha's blog post on why you should speak at DjangoCon Europe! This blog post still holds true 3 years later.

If you would like to ask a question, you are always welcome to write the content committee: [email protected]

Speaker bonuses 🎁

As a speaker, you will not need to buy a ticket, since you gain free entrance to the conference. If you have bought a ticket in advance before being accepted, we will refund it, of course. According to current plans, there will also be a fancy speakers’ dinner!

We will not be able to cover travelling and accommodation costs for all speakers, but if you require financial support, please participate in our Opportunity Grant process – speakers will receive special consideration in the selection process.

For companies or employers: Talk content should not be influenced directly by commercial interests, but if your company or employer has supported your process for creating and giving the talk (for instance allowing you to prepare it in working hours), you are always welcome to mention this support during a talk. If your employer or company covers travel and accommodation costs, we have a sponsor recognition policy, meaning the company or organisation can join as a sponsor. Please get in touch with [email protected] to hear more.

Guidelines 📏

  • Submit your talk in time, no excuses.
  • All talks will be in English.
  • Read, understand, and agree to our Code of Conduct. As a speaker, your talk and your slides will need to follow our Code of Conduct – if you are not sure what that means, or have some issue you are not sure about, just ask us!
  • Make sure you spend some time and effort on your proposal. Typos, lack of formatting, and half finished sentences are unnecessary and make your proposal hard to be taken seriously. (Ask a mentor or a friend to help if this is difficult for you.)
  • Don't overdo it – two or three paragraphs are plenty of space to give us an idea of your talk, we don't require an entire thesis. ;)
  • Original content: Since we have little space and lots of submissions, we prefer original content. If your talk is so awesome that you want to give it in multiple places, we'd ask you to consider putting a new spin on it, if at all possible.

Talk Selection Process 🧐

Reviewing the talks and tutorials submitted to a conference can be a daunting task – there is much to consider, and usually there are more great submissions than there are slots available in the conference schedule.

We’d like to make our reviewing process and guidelines transparent to every submitter and attendee, both to show you what will await you during the conference as an attendee, and to help you understand our decisions regarding your submissions as a submitter.

We will document our selection process on this website and announce it as a blog post and via Twitter.

Composition 📜

First off, a warning: all of the following numbers are approximate and may change – we don’t know the future, and we may have to adjust to changed circumstances in a number of ways.

DjangoCon Europe has three conference days reserved for talks (followed by two days of sprints). Past experience shows that more than 10 talks per day (plus room for lightning talks) is a bit much, so we’re looking at about 30 talk slots we can distribute among submissions. Of these 30:

  • 3 will go to keynote speakers selected by us. We’re very much open to suggestions, so contact us if there is anybody you’d like to see or hear as a keynote speaker!
  • 2 talks focusing on languages or frameworks that are not Django.
  • 6 community talks. These are meant to show the struggles we face as a community, and as individuals. They can include talks on personal growth, or demonstrate problems that are still waiting to be resolved.
  • 4 project presentations. These talks show ways and areas in which Django may be used.
  • 15 talks about Django and working with Django:
    • 6 talks accessible to beginners, focussing on concepts, introductions, guides, and other material most useful to those new to Django, having used Django for about a year or less. Includes common workflows (like debugging and testing) and introductions to tools integrated with Django.
    • 6 more advanced talks, explaining concepts or implementation details in depth, for people who have used Django for more than a year. Includes uncommon workflows, and improvements on testing and debugging workflows.
    • 3 talks at a very advanced level on implementation details and planned features. We hope to offer a bit of the Django Under The Hood spirit here, to compensate for its termination.

If your talk idea does not match any of these categories, or matches more than one – don’t worry! This is not a strict list that every submission needs to fit in, it is just meant as a guide for attendees, submitters, and reviewers alike.

Reviewing 🕑

Our review team has not been assembled yet, but we’re working towards a mix of some organisers, some core developers and DSF members, and some Django Girls members/organisers. (Again, if you think we’re missing somebody, please get in touch!)

Reviewers will be asked to look at a set of submissions and submit a review (both a few words and a rough rating). After the review period is over, we will go through the talks by category and select the talks based on accumulated reviews. If we can’t make the decision among two or three talks, we’ll check back with the reviewers and ask them for their opinion.

We’ll of course notify you regardless of the review outcome with the result. We’ll probably send out some of the acceptance mails before the rejection mails, to give accepted speakers a chance to step back, in case they cannot attend after all. Regardless of our decision, feel free to ping us for feedback and we’ll give you an overview over reviewer opinions!

We value your feedback. If you have any concerns or suggestions on how we can improve the reviewing process, please get in touch!

Smaller sessions 🙌

The venue provides a number of rooms adjacent to the main hall, one of which will be setup for self-organised workshops. This is a chance to:

  • Discussions with fellow peers
  • Introducing Django applications
  • Find and tutor new developers and maintainers
  • Live demos

If the schedule permits it, sessions can be organised spontaneously during the conference. However, we encourage getting in touch about the session beforehand, such that the session can be advertised and scheduled for the convenience of everyone.

Note that there are also sprints in the weekend after the conference; hosting smaller sessions do not qualify for free admission.

Lightning Talks 🌩️

Not up for a full talk or tutorial? Looking to give your first talk at a conference? Lightning talks are talks of 5 minutes or less, with or without slides, on almost any topic you want! Even if you’re nervous or shy, remember: it’s a MAXIMUM of 5 minutes. Everyday of the conference will feature a lightning talk slot at the end of the day. Sign-ups will happen at the conference.