PyCon India is a community run event. What that means is, there is no one person or organization behind the event. People who love the language come together and help in ways they can, to run the event. And here is the opportunity for you to be a part of the community.

But before you register to volunteer, there are few things you should be aware of -

• Volunteering takes time and effort, sometimes a lot of it. Online activities like handling social networks or handling registrations etc take a lot of time. So if you're volunteering, make sure you can allocate sufficient time.

• If you're volunteering for offline activities e.g. on spot registration or settings up stages or handling video recording, anything that has to be done on the venue during the event, there is a good chance that you won't be able to attend the sessions. If someone needs you, you have to be there.

• Volunteering is not a free way into the event. At PyCon India, everybody buys a ticket. Even the event organizers buy tickets. We volunteer because we love Python and PyCon, and want the event to be awesome.

If you're still interested in volunteering, here is what you should do next:

• Subscribe to the mailing list.

• Register for volunteering in this form. The corresponding workgroup lead will get in touch with you, when he / she needs support.

• You can pro-actively "Watch" the following repos for activity and track the progress being made. If you can contribute to any of the issues, please feel free to pitch-in.

  • Workgroups task tracking: https://github.com/pythonindia/inpycon2019-tasks
  • Website: https://github.com/pythonindia/inpycon2019
  • Blog: https://github.com/pythonindia/inpycon-blog
  • CFP software: https://github.com/pythonindia/junction

Hope this article has served as a starting point for volunteering. If you have any questions, please drop a mail to the mailing list, but make sure to check the mailing list archives, for answers, before posting.

Happy volunteering!

Credits: Parts of this article were derived from the 2015 article, Volunteering for PyCon India

The vision of PyCon India 2019 team is to create a responsible and inclusive framework, that brings together Pythonistas from diverse backgrounds and provides them multiple avenues to interact effectively, so that the beauty and the magic of the community can happen.

Responsible

As much as we want to run a great conference, we would also like to take all possible steps to ensure that the impact on the environment is minimized. We will take steps to ensure that food wastage is reduced, single-use anything is avoided, and we will proactively recycle waste generated during the conference.

Inclusive

We would like to ensure that the conference approaches everyone with respect, and that we resolve differences peacfully. In particular, we will proactively extend our invite to women, provide support for students, and ensure that people with disabilities feel welcome at the conference.

Diverse

Python as a language has become an indispensible tool, not just to programmers, but to people from various backgrounds like system administrators, security researchers, test automation engineers, educators, hardware designers, doctors, scientists, mathematicians, accountants, etc. We would like to ensure that the conference reflects the diverse nature of the community itself. We believe that diversity will result in cross-pollination of ideas, knowledge, and experiences, making the conference richer, and the community stronger.

Multiple Avenues

While talks form the core of the conference, we understand people have different ways of expressing themselves. Some would be good at doing a talk, others would prefer showing a demo of their work, there will also be some others who would like to just interact by writing more code. So apart from the talks, the conference will have posters, workshops, dev. sprints, lightning talks, open spaces, and a lot more ways for people to interact, and benefit from the event.

Beauty and Magic of the Community

We all know that during the conference, people get to share their ideas and learn from others. But that benefit is just the tip of an ice-berg. There is lot more to it, people get inspired from other people's work, they make new friends, reconnect with old friends, get their first job, these bonds and relationships open up doors to endless possibilities. After the conference, the world will not be quite the same place, and we are teaming up to make that magic happen!

If you are coming to PyCon India 2018 and attending conference, then please read this blog to understand some dos and don'ts along with lot of useful info.

Hope you're all set for PyCon India 2018.

Here are a few things we would like to bring to your attention.

Reaching to Hyderabad:

Please find information at https://in.pycon.org/2018/travel.html.

At the Registration Desk:

The first step is to register and collect your kit from the front desk. Please carry your ticket as the team would be looking for the registration number on it. The queues will be organized by Registration Number.

Lightning Talks:

• On each of the conference days, we are conducting lightning talks and we encourage you to participate.For those who would like to talk, please ask for the form at the registration desk and drop it in the drop box near the registration desk. Organizers might have to curate, in case of an overwhelming response. All selected speakers will be reached out to by 2:30 PM on both days.
• Of course, you are always welcome to reach out to the audience using open spaces, for further details look at [@openspaces](https://in.pycon.org/2018/open-spaces.html).

During the conference:

• Want to meet new people and learn to explore python in wholly different ways? Then don’t forget to check out the open spaces on the second floor. Please look [@openspaces](https://in.pycon.org/2018/open-spaces.html) for further details
• Please NOTE: Internet will be provided at the premises. However, due to a large number of delegates, there is a high possibility of connection or bandwidth issues. We strongly recommend you to carry your own data card/hotspot as a contingency.
• Please NOTE: Water will be provided at the premises. However, please get a water bottle to hold it during the sessions.
• In case, any of our halls are full for any particular talks, we encourage you to check out other talks/sessions. All talks are curated to keep it interesting and engaging for you. No matter where you come from. Sometimes, Serendipity works magic.
• Subscribe to the official [slack channel](https://pyconindia2018.slack.com/shared_invite/enQtNDQ3NDI0OTk5NDk0LWM0ZGE3ODEzNjlkN2MwZTEyYjhkM2YwY2MwZmFkZTQzZWZkY2ViMjhiMGFmZDY3NzFmYmRmNzI1OTE3YWQyZmI) for all sorts of announcements and communications.

Code Of Conduct

• Be kind and sensitive to the people around you and avoid any kind of offensive behavior. Sexist, racist or any other form of exclusionary or offensive jokes or excessive public swearing are not appropriate at any venue of PyCon India.
• Attendees violating these rules may be asked to leave the conference without a refund at the sole discretion of the conference organizers.
• Thank you for your consideration and help in making PyCon India a welcoming, friendly event for all of us.
• The long version is available [here](https://in.pycon.org/2018/coc.html).

We're happy and excited to have you at our conference and hope to make it a great experience for you. Feel free to contact us for any assistance.

Team PyCon India.