Hello! Have you missed me? It’s been a while since I’ve updated you all on what’s happening in the world of PyCon Australia, so I figure it’s probably about time we did that. And it’s good that I’m doing so, because a lot of things have happened since the last time I did so!

Talks, talks, and more talks

Our Call for Proposals closed its doors on Friday 4 May, and we’ve been absolutely blown away by the level of response that we’ve got from Python developers around Australia and the rest of the world. We received 59 proposals to speak, across three categories of presentation, which is far and away the biggest response this conference has had in its short history. So, to all of you who proposed presentations, give yourselves a pat on the back.

To put this into perspective — we have approximately 30 positions that we can fit presentations into. Our review team (who are, by the way, doing an incredibly awesome job) have the mammoth task of figuring out which talks will actually make it into the conference: they’ll need to cull approximately half of the proposals that we’ve received. It’s something that we really weren’t expecting, but I think the review team are up to the task.

With this in mind, it’s going to take us a few days more than expected to sort through the proposals, and we won’t be meeting our deadline of 18 May for sending out notifications. It won’t be too much later than that, but we still apologise for the delay. If you did submit a talk, don’t worry too much about missing out on Early Bird registration rates — we’ll be extending Early Bird pricing through to June 30 for everyone who has submitted a talk. I hope this is OK by you!

We want you to come to our conference

And the best way to make sure that you can actually come to the conference is by signing up for our Early Bird registrations! These have been open for just over two weeks now; and with three weeks left to go, just over a third of our available early bird tickets have been sold. Our early bird registrations represent a substantial discount on our normal registration rates, and they also guarantee you a spot at our conference dinner (which is both space-limited, and is seriously not to be missed).

Early bird regos are available for the first 60 Enthusiast or Professional tickets sold; all the relevant info is at our website.

… and that means all of you!

We’ll be reprising the very successful gender diversity grants programme that PyCon Australia launched with Google last year; in a much-expanded form. Last year these grants helped many deserving women attend the conference with subsidised registration, and some travel allowance. This year, the grants programme will offer travel assistance to many more deserving female delegates. We’ll reveal more details later, but needless to say, we’re very excited.

fin.

Well, that’s it for now, I hope you’re as excited about the conference as I am. It’s shaping up to be really quite special, and I can’t wait to share more of our plans with you. See you in August, and get registering!