PyCon India Reviewers Guidelines

This document provides set of guidelines for reviewing the proposals.

Role of Reviewers

• Reviewers are pillars for selecting quality talks. As a reviewer you will be interacting with proposers through junction setup for CFP (http://in.pycon.org/cfp/pycon-india-2015/proposals/)
• Reviewers will be judging the proposal purely based on content.
• Reviewers shouldn't discriminate proposers based on previous experience as first timers are allowed if the speaker has adequate hands on experience on the topic.
• Reviewers are recommended to provide feedback from the early stage of submission to help improve the quality of talks and ease the selection of final list of talks.
• The final schedule of talks would be prepared by the organizing team. Reviewers are encouraged to provide suggestions based on the proposal content.

Expectations from Proposals

• Proposal should mention clearly on the topics covered. If any proposal lack enough information, reviewers should comment on the proposal.
• Proposers should give ample details about their work on the topic, for eg., blog posts or open source contributions if any.
• If a proposal is too broad and 40 minutes is too less to cover, reviewers should give feedback about it.
• Plagiarised proposals shouldn't be encouraged.
• Repeated proposals from last year is discouraged. Exceptions are fine in case the coverage depth is more compared to last year.
• Good to have : Single proposer per proposal is encouraged.

Mode of Communication

• Reviewers should use junction to communicate with proposers (instructions on how to use it will be shared soon) .
• Using different mediums like Phone/Email/Skype aren't encouraged.
• If proposers aren't communicating back after repeated follow ups, Reviewers team with organizing team will make a final call.
• It would be good if reviewer can provide sample presentation template which proposer can use if they wish to.
• Reviewers are expected to update status with organizing team so that the organizing team would be able to update the progress to public.

Criteria to Accept/Reject proposals

• Talk without presentation shouldn't be selected under any circumstances.
• Talk should only be selected based on content not on Employer request/popularity of the speaker.
• Previous year's feedback on talks or speakers should be considered before selecting a talk.
• Presentation shouldn't be using employer's template and also it should not advertise about the employer.
• Feedback on why a proposal is accepted/rejected should be updated in junction.

Workshops

• Workshops are for 2 hours and 30 minutes. This requires hands on experience. Scope of the workshop and the take away from attending the workshop need to be carefully crafted.
• It is highly recommended for proposers to upload the workshop content.