Getting More Women to Submit Talk Proposals

August 17, 2013 | Tag: » conferences, PyCon

Getting More Women to Submit Talk Proposals written by Celia La, for NYC Pyladies

The deadline for PyCon 2014’s call for proposals is quickly approaching, and NYC PyLadies is organizing a workshop on Thursday, August 22nd to walk attendees through the process of submitting a talk proposal.

In the 2-hour workshop, each developer will discover her expertise, find potential speaking topics, write a proposal, and submit it to PyCon. The workshop is based off Anna Ravenscroft’s talk “You can be a speaker at PyCon”, and the agenda from Write/Speak/Code, which emphasizes accomplishing concrete tasks through timeboxing and iterative feedback. Here is our format:

  1. Individuals spend no more than 5-7 minutes filling out a brainstorming worksheet from Write/Speak/Code
  2. Attendees pair up and take turns finding potential topics for their partners, using the brainstorm worksheet as a starting point for further discussion
  3. Individuals spend no more than 5-7 minutes writing a rough outline for one of their topics
  4. Attendees pair up, go over outline, give feedback based on PyCon’s proposal advice
  5. Individuals incorporate feedback and convert their outlines into a proposal
  6. Individuals submit completed proposals to PyCon

We welcome all women coders to attend our workshop on August 22nd, but if you aren’t in the NYC area, we encourage you to try this on your own! The group setting is ideal because we will share and discuss results which may inspire more ideas, but the above format be done with just one other person.

We hope that by sharing the thought process and concepts that went into the workshop, others will not only submit their own proposals, but enlist a fellow developer to do the same!