Proposals App

Models

ProposalSection

Recall that a symposion instance consists of one or more ``Conference``s each made up of one or more ``Section``s.

Different sections can have different open / close dates for proposals. This is managed through a ProposalSection which is a one-to-one with Section where you can define a start date, an end date and/or simply toggle proposals for the section closed.

A section is available for proposals iff:

• it is after the start (if there is one) and
• it is before the end (if there is one) and
• closed is NULL or False

In other words, closed can be used as an override, regardless of start and end and, if you want, you can just manually use closed rather than setting dates.

This model is currently managed by conference staff via the Django admin although given it’s part of “conference setup”, it may often just be a fixture that’s loaded.

ProposalKind

A conference, even within a section, may have different kinds of presentations, e.g. talks, panels, tutorials, posters.

If these have different requirements for what fields should be in the proposal form, they should be modeled as different ``ProposalKind``s. For example, you may want talk proposals to include an intended audience level but not require that for poster submissions.

Note that if you have different deadlines, reviews, etc. you’ll want to distinguish the section as well as the kind.

This model is currently managed by conference staff via the Django admin although given it’s part of “conference setup”, it may often just be a fixture that’s loaded.

ProposalBase

Each proposal kind should have a subclass of ProposalBase defining the fields for proposals of that kind. We discuss below how that association is made.

ProposalBase provides fields for a title, a single-paragraph plain-text description and an abstract which can contain markup.

There is also an additional_notes field which can be used for speakers to communicate additional information about their proposal to reviewers that is not intended to be shared with others.

This base model supports each proposal having multiple speakers (although the submitting speaker is always treated differently) and also supports the attachments of supporting documents for reviewers that are, like the additional_notes not intended to be shared with others.

A cancelled boolean field is also provided to indicate that a proposal has been cancelled or withdrawn.

AdditionalSpeaker

Used for modeling the additional speakers on a proposal in additional to the submitting speaker. The status of an additional speaker may be Pending, Accepted or Declined.

SupportingDocument

Used for modeling the supporting documents that can be attached to a proposal.

How to Add Custom Proposal Kinds

For each kind:

• create a ProposalKind instance
• subclass ProposalBase and add the fields you want
• define a Django ModelForm for proposals of that kind
• make sure your settings file has a PROPOSAL_FORMS dictionary that maps the slug of your ProposalKind to the fully-qualified name of your ModelForm.

For example:

PROPOSAL_FORMS = {
    "tutorial": "pycon.forms.PyConTutorialProposalForm",
    "talk": "pycon.forms.PyConTalkProposalForm",
    "poster": "pycon.forms.PyConPosterProposalForm",
}