I understand planning is hard, but it’s counterproductive for #Python conferences to run CfPs before #PyConUS2023 has sent out talk acceptances.
ESPECIALLY ppl who spend extraordinary amount of time on talk preparations make it dependent on it whether they write a talk at all.
This way you’re optimizing your schedule for ppl who get paid to give talks vs ppl reporting from the figurative trenches.
@pganssle I guess you don’t spend 200+ hours preparing a talk then? The value of a talk for me is being able to transform it into social capital and later being invited to small confs that pay for my travel. But maybe that’s all a thing of the past anyway in 2020+ and the trade-off is broken for ppl like me.
@hynek I actually, non-rhetorically, don't understand the problem or the relevance of the amount of time spent on talks.
For me PyCon US is usually the "capstone performance" of my talk, not the debut - and that's not usually my choice, so whether or not PyCon accepts my talk this year has no real bearing on other conferences from this year, since usually a talk gets rejected once or twice from PyCon US before I actually give it. A lot of investment in the talk makes me *less* sensitive to the timing of when I give it, not more.
@hynek I think maybe reading between the lines, your process is you do not give talks unless you know they are getting into PyCon US, whereas I treat regional Python conferences as a "minor league" where my talks prove themselves out before graduating to the big stage.
@hynek Oh wait sorry I didn't realize the thing you said about getting invited to local cons based on PyCon performance.
That hasn't really happened for me, and invited talks I know about tend to be Keynotes where the social capital is "this person is a good speaker and will draw attendees" rather than "this talk they gave at PyCon was interesting we should have them do it here too"
@pganssle it’s 50% hoping to inspire someone to invite me, yes. But mainly it’s about KNOWING that I won’t spent 200h on something that 50 ppl will see. Kind of a guaranteed ROI if you will.
(Last year I got 0 invites not sure if it’s correlation or causation)
@pganssle we seem to be on very different pages indeed and I suspect it’s caused by social-economic status. My employer pays for PyCon US, EP, and if I’m lucky one more and that’s it. So worst case I submit a talk 3x and get accepted to the smallest one and spend 200h preparing a talk that I give once in front of 50 people. I realize that’s my problem but I’ve always posed it as such.
@pganssle as for this: once I know I’m giving the talk, I try to get into the minor league too (cf blog). That said I take smaller ones emotionally more serious since they usually go out of their way to accommodate me.
@hynek I have found that regional python conferences are more likely to accept new talks I've never given before, while PyCon US is happy to accept an encore presentation, so my pipeline usually ends up with say PyGotham 2023's talk being PyCon US 2024's talk.