2009/10/28 Michael Foord <[email protected]>: > Zeth wrote: >> >> 2009/10/28 Michael Foord <[email protected]>: >> >>>> >>>> Both will likely have a nice side-effect of people signing up >>>> early and speakers submitting their talk proposals earlier >>>> than just before the deadlines. >>>> >>> >>> I wouldn't count on earlier submissions. PyCon accepts only about 50% of >>> submitted talks and still *most* of them are submitted on the last day. >>> >> >> Well since last year in EuroPython we managed to provisionally accept >> talks as we went along, I don't see what is wrong with saying that we >> are full when we have enough. So instead of having a submission close >> date, we have a submission period, and when we have enough talks we >> just stop and organise something else. >> > > Because many folk work to a deadline and if we close off submissions before > the deadline (or have no fixed deadline) we are *likely* to miss out on many > of the good talks.
Well as long as the date that submissions will open is known in advance, then that is the deadline. Everyone who gets their talk then will have the best crack at the whip. For those people you mention "submissions open on X date" is the deadline. EuroPython has been happening every summer for quite a while, so people should not be surprised that it is happening in 2010, 2011, 2012, etc. It depends of course how you define "good talk". I think we are lucky that in the Python community, talks seem to be of a very high quality, a much better signal to noise ratio than some other conferences I have been to. I have not heard a talk at any Python conference that was so bad that I had felt I wasted my time. I may have heard a talk or two that taught me nothing new or that wasn't directly applicable to me, but they were no doubt fantastic for someone else and I have the option of moving to a different room. To this point, it hasn't really been a matter of lining up talks in a range from bad to great (like a lazy lecturer might mark essays) and talking the top; it has more been a question of eliminating duds: * Does the talk have nothing new to say? * Has the person not given us enough information? * Did the person randomly not show up without notice when they were booked in a previous year? * Is there other reason we have to think this person is not going to show up and give a good talk? If the talk passes those tests and we still have room then it is in. Accepting talks as they come in also reduces the amount of work at the end, although of course, anyway you do it will result in a huge pile of post-it notes on Laura's dinner table! Best Wishes, Zeth _______________________________________________ Europython-improve mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/europython-improve
