First of all, great idea! But I think it would make for a fairer process if the current votes weren't displayed. I added a "display:none;" to the "baloon_counter" class via firebug so that my votes aren't influenced by other people.

I find it really cool to see what people like! The process is fair anyway imo :)

Most sites take care of this by not showing you the totals until after you've voted.

A litte suggestion: It would be very useful to have author name (with a link to bio probably) next to the submission title. Knowing who will give the presentation is as much important as knowing its title.

The voting is deliberately anonymous at this first stage. There will be a final round where the speakers for the talks are displayed along with their submissions.

<snark>Sounds like a secret plot to deflect criticism of a lack of diversity among presenters!</snark>

I find the page design and voting buttons a bit too distracting. Also considering the number of talks, some kind of tagging/categories would help.

thanks for your feedback! Code for the site is here https://github.com/djangocon/2013.djangocon.eu , we'll be more than happy to accept any pull request that improves the voting system. As far as the rich layout is concerned.. some people will like it, some not, let's keep it that way

If you're crazy like me and constantly refresh the page to see if your favourite talk will make it to the next round, here is a simple Python script to do it for you: https://gist.github.com/4502077

Thank you, Marek!

Disclaimer: I am from the DjangoCon Europe 2013 organizers team

how's the location search going? have you already got anything in mind where will the circus be here in Warsaw? :)

yes, we know this already, we're planning to announce it soon, just need some time to close the negotiations

cool, can't wait

This is great - not just the openness and 'listen to your audience' thing, but also the number of submissions on which to vote.

Needing a GitHub account to vote is quite obnoxious. It's no different than those sites which require a Facebook login, for instance.

At least give us the option of using an email address, even if it may mean implementing this voting some other way.

Using GitHub seems like a pretty good way to try and filter out fraudulent votes (almost impossible with email address logins) - and it isn't really that much of a imposition given the nature of the conference - if you want to contribute pull requests to Django you need a GitHub account these days anyway.

> if you want to contribute pull requests to Django you need a GitHub account these days anyway

technically, you don't.

Hey, thanks for your opinion. We try to keep it simple. We know that when someone has a Github account he's probably a programmer.

It's not a bad approach, but I wonder if the talks oriented toward novices who may be new to Python/Django or programming in general are willing to sign up for a GitHub account (or even know what it is) to vote. Maybe this should be taken into consideration as these vote totals will probably trend lower than other talks.

Really? Is there a test? What if I like Mecurial and use BitBucket? Does everything have to be based/hosted on Github?

I use Bitbucket too, but get over it, it's just a poll, not that this breaks your workflow or prevents you from using tools or anything. It's a throwaway use case.