Call for Proposals - PyconAU Student Showcase 2019

After the success of last year’s inaugural Students Showcase, the PyConAU ‘Education Track’ will have a dedicated session for student presentations.

We are calling for proposals from Australian high school students who are using Python in a project, class assignment or who are hacking on something cool. All levels of experience are welcome from complete novices to Python pros.

The PyCon AU Conference Education Track is a pre-conference stream that focuses on the use of Python for teaching beginner programmers at high school. The student showcase is an opportunity for your students to exhibit their projects and tell the story of how they were made, and the problems they had to solve.

From the main PyCon AU website:

“We think that speaking at PyCon AU is a great experience, and prioritise having a broad cross-section of both presenters and topics. Our speakers come from a diverse range of ages, backgrounds, technical knowledge and experience. The topics covered are similarly broad, including different technical areas, topics of general community interest, education, introductory material and specialised areas such as data science and machine learning.”

We are accepting 10 minute talks from students from year 7 to 12.

Important Dates

Speaker Benefits

Accepted students will have the opportunity to present their work in front of interested and supportive industry professionals and teachers from other schools. They will be provided with free registration for the specialist events day and both days of the conference main track. Should a speaker also wish to attend the sprints and workshops these will attract a small charge.

If you are able to pay for a full registration, then please consider doing so. The funds from registrations contribute not only to conference costs, but also the financial aid program. Every extra dollar makes it easier for someone else to attend.

Financial Assistance

PyCon Australia offers a generous financial assistance program, so that some attendees and speakers have some (or in rare cases, all) of their expenses, such as accommodation or flights, reimbursed to them from the conference budget. PyCon Australia strongly encourages people to apply for financial assistance, take a look at the application process on the financial assistance page. We don’t want to lose a good talk due to financial need.

As with previous years, speakers will be given priority for financial aid requests within reasonable limits. Financial assistance requests are evaluated separately and cannot be considered guaranteed even if your talk is accepted.

Some speakers may have attended other conferences where full costs have been met, including travel and accommodation. As a not-for-profit, community-run conference, this is generally not the case at PyCon AU.

Code of Conduct

PyCon Australia 2019 has a Code of Conduct which outlines expectations of behaviour and appropriate presentation content. The goal of the code of conduct is to facilitate a safe, welcoming and inclusive environment. Presenters are required to be familiar with and abide by the code of conduct. If you have any questions about the suitability of any aspect of your proposed talk or require any additional information, please email us at speakers@2019.pycon-au.org.

Presentation Length

The length for talks is 10 minutes.

Presentation Video Recording

Every session at PyCon Australia will be professionally recorded and the video uploaded on our YouTube channel. If there are concerns with this please raise them and we will endeavour to work with you.

How to Submit

Fill in this talk submission form.

Proposal Selection Process

Selecting the proposals to include in the conference is complex. We take the process very seriously, and respect and value the effort that every submitter has taken in preparing their proposal. This means that the selection process takes some time to get through, although we endeavour to be efficient and well-organised.

We will let students know whether their talks have been accepted, not selected this year, or waitlisted by . It might seem obvious, but the main reason a talk might not be selected is simply because of the constraint on the overall number of talks we can include at the venue.

If you would like feedback on your proposal

If you have not yet submitted a proposal but would like feedback on your ideas before submitting, get in touch by emailing events@aca.edu.au or speakers@2019.pycon-au.org. Or, if you are feeling particularly brave, just tweet the question and mention @pyconau and @auscompacademy!

Alternatively, if you want to go ahead and submit a new proposal, please put any questions you have in the form, and the reviewers will see this and respond.

If you wish to ask for feedback on an existing proposal, then please email us directly at events@aca.edu.au or speakers@2019.pycon-au.org, as we may not be alerted to changes in the proposal and therefore may not realise in a timely manner that a response is required.

Questions, Clarifications and Comments

If you have any questions, are unsure of anything, or need more information, please don’t hesitate to email events@aca.edu.au or speakers@2019.pycon-au.org and we will happily do our best to help you out.