As you know, PyCon India 2020 is going online and completely virtual this year. Hence, the team wanted to take the unique opportunity to make the conference bigger, more inclusive, and much more accessible to our attendees the world over. And, we were successful. We were so glad to see the community's response to our efforts, with outstanding submissions to our call for proposals. We finally ended up with a total of 243 talks submitted under 12 primary domains with talks pouring in from all over the world.
The only downside to getting excellent talks each year at PyCon India is that we end up rejecting many talks. This is because, we are almost always under the burden of limited slots available for the conference. The review team is under great stress of having to consider various factors while selecting the talks, including a proper mix of beginner and advanced topics, providing an opportunity for first-time speakers, diversity, all the while maintaining talk quality, etc.
Over the last few years, PyCon India 2020 has been a three-track event. Seeing the quality of the talks this year, we felt inclined to make this year's PyCon India's lineup our biggest ever with an additional track for the event this year!
Hence, PyCon India 2020 will now be a four-track event effectively increasing talks selected for the conference by 33%. This would mean more people getting the opportunity to present, and more talks for us to watch right at our home. Right? Right? We didn't stop there, presenting...!
.extend(), a unique track for talks rejected this year!We believe that no talks are worthy of being rejected anywhere. And, with that ideology comes to the concept of a track that would cater to the awesome proposals that unfortunately get rejected. Well, not anymore. With .extend(), we are giving a second chance to each speaker who submitted their talk to PyCon India to still present their ideas and insights at the conference. We thank Cloud Native Rejekts for the inspiration behind this new track!
Our team's constant efforts to improving talk quality and not undermine anyone's efforts to submitting proposals at PyCon India motivated us to initiate the 5th track for the conference. All of the tracks are equal to our eyes and we expected the attendees to feel the same. Hence, PyCon India will now be a 5 track conference, with 4 usual tracks and the 5th one being our new, .extend() track!
The track is very similar to the other 4 tracks. The only difference being the process of talk selection. Instead of the talk selection done by our esteemed review committee, we will be holding a raffle to select and schedule the talks. Any person who submitted their talk at PyCon India 2020 and attending the conference is allowed to take this opportunity head-on!
This initiative is not to have a separate conference but this becoming an integral part of PyCon India for the years to come. The track will be scheduled in parallel to all the other items in the conference schedule. The talks will be delivered through the same channels as the other tracks. The talks will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube after the conference, along with the other talks and workshops.
At first, we headed out to by naming our new 5th track refusals.py. With valuable feedback from our attendees, we realized we can have a better, more apt name for our track with which people are comfortable, although we received considerable interest in the new track. Hence, this helped us rethink our approach, and considering the feedback, the team decided to name the 5th track .extend() signifying our idea and initiatives of including as many talks as we can. We hope that the community welcomes this initiative with a positive mindset as we continue to work towards a better PyCon India each day!
We would encourage each and every attendee whose talks weren't selected to fill the interest form that they have received in the that were emails sent out yesterday. As always, looking forward to seeing you at the conference!