[pycon-za] Confirming first few speakers

[Simon Cross]

Hi Jonathan

On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 7:56 AM, Jonathan Endersby
<jonathan.endersby at praekeltconsulting.com> wrote:
> I would suggest that you get all the potential speakers to submit an intro
> paragraph and then have a committee decide after the submission deadline...
> This of course does not apply to invited speakers.

This is the plan for later on. Their are a couple of issues for *right
now* though:

* International speakers need to make travel plans.
* We need to confirm some cool speakers to advertise.

It's worth bearing in mind that because we have two tracks we have
something like double the talk slots that ScaleConf had.

> The selection criteria is not just "Is this a good talk?", but also, have we
> covered all our bases? It's quite possible, for instance, that no one wants
> to talk about Django because the topic is so broad. Do we get a "Intro to
> Django" talk (which I think we should have) or/and a "Timing attacks using
> Django Signals on virtual hosts" talk.

Agreed. And agreed about Django.

> If we say yes early-on we run the risk of having to say no to someone really
> awesome because their talk overlaps too closely with another talk we've
> already said yes too.

Agreed in theory. I don't see that being likely with any of the three
speakers mentioned though.

> Lastly, I think it's important that we push people who we know are
> awesome/interesting to submit a talk proposal. Often the really awesome
> speakers are too busy being awesome (or just genuinely humble) to suggest
> themselves.

Completely agreed -- everyone push these people to submit proposals. :)

Schiavo
Simon