We Want You!

We don’t just want to hear from the experts or famous names - other perspectives are just as valuable, so don’t let the idea that you’re not expert or famous enough stop you because it won’t stop us from selecting your talk or the audience from enjoying it. If you’ve done something that you think other people might be interested in, or that you think they should know about, please tell us about it!

We especially want proposals from people who reflect the diversity of our community. Our community is made better by a diverse set of voices, perspectives and opinions. We’d love to have an intersectional and diverse group of speakers. Please submit your proposals today, and ask people you think might not normally submit to, or be represented at, a tech conference to submit as well! We can’t wait to hear from you.

If you haven’t spoken at a conference before, this is your invitation to do so. We want to be remembered as the conference where you started your superstar speaking career!

The deadline for submissions is April 18. Apply now!

Here is an example talk proposal, along with the talks from the last several years, so you can get an idea of what we’re looking for. Don’t let these examples limit you, however!

The preferred length for talks is 20 to 25 minutes or 40 to 45 minutes, but proposals requiring 45 minutes will be reviewed more stringently.

You should budget at least five minutes for questions; for example, a 25 minute talk will be 20 minutes of presentation and 5 minutes of questions. Audience questions are optional and completely up to the speaker’s preference.

Speakers Eat Free!

All speakers and tutorial presenters will receive free tickets to DjangoCon.

Grants to assist speakers with their travel expenses are available. Fill out the Financial Aid application by April 25!

Submitting a Proposal

Just log in or create an account and get started! There’s a proposal form for talks and a proposal form for tutorials and demonstrations. Take a look at them - they’ll make it clearer how this works.

Don’t agonize over your proposal. Just get it in. We’ll get back to you if anything’s not clear. Don’t hesitate to submit more than one proposal either.

The deadline for submissions is April 18. We’ll let you know if your talk is accepted by May 16.

Speaker Mentors

Speaking in front of a large audience doesn’t come easily to many people. Our conference audiences are full of interesting people with interesting things to say, but who remain in the audience because for whatever reason, they didn’t feel confident enough to submit a talk proposal.

If you’d like any help in proposing, preparing or presenting your talk, whoever you are and whatever kind of help you’d find useful, feel free to contact one of our speaker mentors! A speaker mentor is an experienced speaker who has volunteered to help other speakers. For first-time speakers, non- native English speakers, unconfident or uncertain speakers or simply anyone who’d like some help with a talk, here are some people who’d like to help you. You’ll get the best results by forming a relationship with one mentor, rather than contacting several.

And if you’d like to be a speaker mentor, let us know!

  • Adrienne Lowe, DSF Director of Advancement, DjangoCon US and Django Girls Atlanta organizer, Your Django Story leader.
  • Anna Ossowski, PSF director, PyCon US and DjangoCon US organizer, PyLadies Remote group leader.
  • Barbara Shaurette, Django Girls Austin organizer, PyCon Young Coders teacher.
  • Justin Abrahms, BetterDiff, mentor, woodworker.
  • Kojo Idrissa, DjangoCon US organizer, Code Newbies, author.
  • Mark Lavin, Django Girls RDU organizer, runner, author.

Tutorials

We’re open to all kinds of ideas, especially ones we haven’t thought of!

If you are interested in sample proposals, here are some examples of what has been accepted over the last few years:

Recording

Every session at DjangoCon US will have professionally-produced video recordings published to our YouTube channel.

If you do not wish to have your talk recorded, please note this in your submission. Doing so will not influence the selection process in any way.

Lightning talks

Lightning talks are talks under 5 minutes with or without slides on any topic you want! Anything goes, as long as you can keep it under 5 minutes. Sign-ups will happen at the conference.

Selection Process

We’ll choose a selection of talks and tutorials that we feel add up to the most enjoyable and interesting program for our attendees.

We’ll publish the list of selected talks as soon as we can after the deadline.