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.

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 with tutorials on the side). 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 last year’s DUTH pause.

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 organizers, some core developers and DSF members, and some Django Girls members/organizers. (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!