North Bay Python, a one-track conference to be held in Petaluma, California on July 29th and 30th, is looking for talk proposals for our 2023 event. Our friendly, welcoming, and engaged audience has a diverse range of life and career experience: we’re looking for talks that will broaden our audience’s perspective on using Python, making the Python ecosystem better, and the impact our work has on the world.
Key Dates
Talk format
Speaker benefits
Important information
If you’ve read enough, and want to submit a talk proposal, a large and clickable button is available following this paragraph.
If you want to find out more, so you can better tailor your proposal to our audience, read on!
North Bay Python is a one-track conference, for people who like Python.
This can be different to larger events with multiple tracks, and generalist conferences. The best talks at North Bay Python embrace our format and our audience, so let’s give you an idea of what to expect!
At one-track conferences, there’s only one talk on stage at a time. Most of our audience will be in the same room, hearing the same talks. That means your talk could be heard by anyone from students taking their first steps in Python, through to seasoned professionals who actually develop the language and frameworks that Python developers use every day, not to mention people with all levels of experience in between.
Talks at North Bay Python set the tone of our event by prompting thoughtful questions in the breaks in our schedule and lively conversation over lunch or dinner, all inspired by a shared experience of hearing the same talks in the same room, but shaped by our diverse perspectives.
Everyone at North Bay Python is there because they like Python, so the talks we select will be interesting to people who like Python. This doesn’t mean your talk has to be about Python, but that people who like Python should be able to find value from your talk.
In the past, we’ve had talks about weird uses of Python’s importlib, distributed systems programming, blameless postmortems, making your environments more welcoming to introverts, how to name things, and many many more. Your talk could be about any of these topics, or something else you’re passionate about.
Talks at North Bay Python last no more than 25 minutes. The best 25-minute talks leave your audience with an understanding of why your topic is important, and sharing some of your enthusiasm for your topic. They should leave your talk knowing what to research, what’s important in your topic area, what’s not, and a curiosity to learn more.
Don’t be afraid that you’ll miss an important detail, because that’s an opportunity for a great discussion over lunch or dinner during the weekend.
That said, make sure your proposal convinces our program team that you can fill 25 minutes of time, and that you aren’t trying to cover too much ground in too little time.
Being interesting to people who like Python is more important to us than just being about Python. If your talk doesn’t naturally have a Python angle, you don’t need to force one in. We’d rather see the enthusiasm you actually have for your topic.
On the other hand, the less your talk is about Python itself, the more clear you should make it to us why your talk will be interesting to people who like Python.
Be enthusiastic in your proposal! Show us why you think your topic is important, and why you’re the right person to talk about it!
Our review team will look over more than 100 proposals in a very short timeframe. They’re doing their best with limited information to figure out which talks will collectively make the best North Bay Python program.
Good abstracts are usually three to six paragraphs (comprising around 200-400 words total).
Your proposal needs to give the review team enough information to understand what the audience will learn, and why you’re the right person to share that knowledge. However, being too information-dense can be difficult to read, and might make it harder for a reviewer to understand what bits you really care about.
Don’t hold back “spoilers”: if a detail is missing from your proposal, our reviewers will guess that you won’t be talking about it. There are sections for private notes where you can leave information for the reviewers that the audience won’t see when we publish your talk. These private notes are in addition to your abstract, but filling that section densely with notes will make it harder for time-strapped reviewers to figure out what you’re talking about.
Be enthusiastic, and communicate your enthusiasm in your proposal. Show us why you care about your topic.
The initial phases of review are judged anonymously: our reviewers will not know who you are, and we will redact any mention of your own name, the names of your employer, or any non-essential information that could identify you to a reviewer.
Make sure that your proposal stands out just as well if you don’t mention those details.
We want every proposal to have a great chance of being accepted: the more high-quality proposals we have, the more choice we have when assembling our program!
Members of our review team will be on the North Bay Python chat channel (#nbpy on irc.libera.chat, or use the direct link), once per week until our call for proposals closes. We’re happy to help you come up with topic ideas, or give you feedback on how to improve your proposal.
Our office hours schedule will be available by April 24th, 2023.
North Bay Python’s organizers share our community’s changed expectations of event safety during the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic. We believe that nobody should need to take undue risk to their health to benefit from professional development opportunities.
This year, we have a Health and Safety Policy, which acts as a framework for us to respect the health of our fellow attendees, and to ensure that we can continue meeting safely at events into the future. In particular, attendees are required to wear a CDC-recommended mask while in the presentation space, but an exception is made for presenters while on stage.
As with past events, all presenters are bound by our Code of Conduct both in attendance, and in terms of the content that they present during their talk.