Joining the PyCon Portugal Program Committee

Over the past few years, I have had the privilege to present at many conferences around the world. While I have never organized a public event like this, I do have experience co-founding and co-chairing an internal data science community, and that experience did plant the seed of one day giving back to the community and helping to organize one of these events.

In early June, I was approached to help the PyCon Portugal team review proposals for this year's event. I jumped at the opportunity to help an event that I've been fortunate enough to present at since its inception in 2022.

The plan was for me to help review some of the proposals, but in our first meeting, I ended up volunteering to serve as the team leader for the program committee 🙈 While I won't share the specifics here, it's been particularly interesting to peek behind the curtain and see how the selection process works.

After the team makes its way through the submissions, we will meet to finalize the schedule for the event. In addition, we will be responsible for making sure accepted speakers actually make it to the event (sometimes there are visa issues or scheduling conflicts), and coordinating with speakers onsite. Obviously, I have no say whether the proposals I submitted will be accepted, but I'm excited to see how this plays out either way.

See you October 17-19 in Braga, Portugal!