Data & AI

Welcome to the wonderful world of Data & AI!

This specialist track is all about the technology, skills and practices that engineers need when building, and building with, data and AI.

Call for Proposals

We’re looking for talks that cover a wide range of topics relating to data engineering and modern artificial intelligence. Here’s a grab bag of topic ideas that we’d love to hear from you about:

• Model training and tuning techniques
• Data pipelines and architecture
• Societal and ethical considerations
• Data privacy & regulation
• Governance, oversight and operations
• Security, supply chain and risk management
• Failure engineering and adapting to non-deterministic environments
• Standards and protocols like MCP
• Hardware, infrastructure & energy
• Concepts like context windows and context poisoning
• “LLMs” too, we guess.

Most sessions fit within a 30 minute talk slot, including if you’d like to take (moderated) questions from the audience. We’d also love to hear your suggestions and ideas for alternative formats that might make for fun, informative and engaging sessions.

If you’re not sure if your talk idea fits within the Data and AI track, let’s chat! Reach out to program@pycon.org.au with any questions you might have.

Don’t forget, our friends across the hallway are also running the Scientific Python specialist track! They’d love to receive your proposals more related to data analysis, data engineering, academic research, statistics, modelling systems etc. Learn more about Scientific Python

First time presenting?

We actively welcome and invite first time conference speakers to submit their ideas to the Data and AI track. PyCon AU is a friendly space to make your first debut into technical public speaking!

If you’d like feedback on your talk proposal, or to connect with a mentor to refine your CFP submission, reach out to program@pycon.org.au early and often

Tip: Don’t reach out the day before the deadline! Best results happen when you have time to iterate and refine your ideas into a high quality proposal.

Learn more about the CFP and review process.

Specialist Track FAQ

Can my talk cover non-python topics?

Yes! There’s no eligibility requirement that your talk must be exclusively about Python.

Be mindful that the audience in the room are people who use Python (either professionally, or as hobbyists). As such, your talk should communicate skills and ideas to a broadly technical audience.

Can I talk about a commercial product or service?

Possibly. To be upfront, it’s important that your talk is not just a product pitch or demo.

PyCon AU attendees are curious and actively looking to learn, explore and discover new and better ways to build and create software. That means they expect technical talks that are interesting and educational, above and beyond a product demo. We’d love for you to teach core concepts, principles, skills and tools that are applicable to a broad audience.

We also realise that modern software engineering is often a blend of open source, and paid or commercial licensed tech. If you work for a vendor and your product solves a specific problem, you’re welcome to mention or showcase it at the end of your talk. Just don’t open with a product demo

Some of PyCon AU’s most popular talks touch on commercial vendors, platforms or services, or were presented by employees of those companies. A great guideline for how they achieved that is that their sessions were designed to educate first, and sell second (or later).

Can I sponsor the Data and AI track?

Yes! Please reach out to [sponsor@pycon.org.au](mailto:sponsor@pycon.org.au] or grab a copy of the 2025 Sponsorship Prospectus. We’d LOVE to connect with technology vendors who are at the cutting edge of modern ethical AI.

I have a question that isn’t answered here, how do I contact you? Email any and all questions to program@pycon.org.au and the conference will put you in touch with the organisers? Alternatively, reach out to the track organisers directly via LinkedIn (details below).

Data & AI Track Organisers

This specialist track is organised by Jack Skinner & Nic Crouch.

Jack Skinner - (LinkedIn)

Principal Consultant, CTO for Hire Jack is an independent consultant CTO For Hire. He consults to small and growing software companies on patterns and practices for scaling teams and technology. He’s spent the past decade growing technical communities as a speaker, organiser, facilitator and coach. When not consulting or running meetups and conferences, he’s founding API startups like FrontGate.app.

Nic Crouch - (LinkedIn) Senior Performance Engineer - Snowflake Nic works in Snowflake’s Applied Performance Group, specifically working on Snowpark. He collaborates closely with engineers developing in Python, Java, Scala and JavaScript.