Hi folks -- I'm the program chair for PyCon 2013. I can see you've got some questions about how the talk selection works, so I'm hoping I can chime in and answer some of the questions.
First, Joe Barnhart asks "[w]ho in the overall structure of PyCon decides these things? Do they live in the Bay Area?" There isn't a single person who makes decisions; the decision is made by the PyCon Program Committee. This year we had about 80 members on the committee. I know we had at least a couple who lived in the Bay Area, but I think most don't. Membership on this committee is open to anyone who wants to join. We had a call for membership in July (http://pycon.blogspot.com/2012/07/i-want-you-for-pycon-program-commitee.html) and started our work in August. Everyone on the committee (myself included) volunteers their time, and the time was substantial -- we met daily for most of August and all of September and October. It's a lot of work, and made quite hard by the volume of submissions we have to weigh, but it's actually quite fun most of the time. If anyone here's interested, please consider joining next year. It's a great way to give back to the Python community! Next, let me try to answer questions about how the process itself works. I'll point you to https://us.pycon.org/2013/pc/guide/, where I've done as good a job as I can documenting how the review process worked this year. If anyone has questions about specifics after reading that I'd be happy to answer them; fire away. I do specifically want to address something Massimo claims: he writes that "one negative vote by a self appointed reviewer could kill a talk". This isn't true: the decision really is made by the committee. We have several rounds of voting, and it takes a strong majority of votes to decide a talk in either direction. It has to be this way: no single person can be counted on to be totally dispassionate, so when we pull together a large committee we can hopefully balance out our various biases. I understand there's a lot of disappointment about web2py not being on the program. We had nearly 500 proposals for just over 100 slots on the schedule, so we simply couldn't fit in all the good talks that were proposed. We did the best we could, but ultimately some things are always going to be left out. Many of my favorite topics aren't represented in the program, either. However, the main conference track is just a part of PyCon -- and a relatively small one at that. We have many other events, including lightning talks (short, informal presentations), open spaces (ad-hoc talks and gatherings) and sprints (focused development efforts). For many people, these less formal parts are actually the highlights. I'm one of them: my favorite part of PyCon is the annual testing meetup, and event you won't find on the official schedule because it's far from formal. I expect web2py to be represented in this spaces, and I'd encourage you to come and help make that happen. In the end, though, I understand your disappointment, and I doubt there's much I can tell you that'll change that. I hope you'll consider this added impetus to submit awesome web2py talks to PyCon next year. Ultimately, that's the only way to make sure your favorite topic is covered: submit proposals! Once again if you've got any more questions I'm happy to answer them -- either here or in private email (ja...@jacobian.org). Thanks for your understanding, Jacob Kaplan-Moss Program Chair, PyCon 2013 --
