DjangoCon US 2024 is in the proverbial books. I’ll have a more detailed retrospective… eventually.

At the speaker appreciation dinner, a frequent speaker approached me asking what I think makes a good keynote for DCUS. It really inspired me to think more about what I think makes a good keynote. This is not intended to be a comprehensive how-to-make-a-keynote guide, but rather my own personal preferences, which matter less now that I’m stepping aside as Program Chair. After 4 years, it’s time to let someone else take the reins.

I’m going to split this into two sections, one about the topic and one about the speaker.

Topic

In my mind, good keynotes fall into one of a few buckets:

• Deep dives into a component of Django that go further than a typical 25- minute talk will and further than most 45-minute talks will. Examples of these include Ana’s talk on testing in 2017, Simon’s talk on the state of the ORM in 2022, and Pandy’s talk on web testing in 2023.
• Talks about improving yourself and your career
• Talks about community growth, especially in underserved areas
• Talks that challenge the community to fix their shortcomings

Deep dives

These can be a look deep into what happens in Django, whether it be the ORM, views, forms, testing, etc., or a deep look at how something happens in the ecosystem, such as managing GitHub workflows in CPython, Natalia’s excellent 2024 keynote. Do you have some part of Django that you think is really awesome and you wish the world knew more about how it works? Here’s your chance.

Self-improvement

How do we as developers make ourselves better, not just as developers, not just as a community, but as people? Whether it be ways to strengthen your career trajectory, a reminder to know when to step away and take care of yourself, dealing with mental health or something else entirely, these can often be the most impactful.

Community growth and mentorship

As our 2024 panel phrased it, the community strives to be open, friendly, and welcoming. How do we spread this to more places and people? The people are what makes Django great, and we need to find ways to reponsibly and sustainably grow the community, both in the US and worldwide.

A few examples:

• Matt Mitchell in 2019
• Anna Makarudze in 2018
• Alicia V. Carr in 2017
• Ruth Ikegah in 2022
• Abigail Mesrenyame Dogbe in 2023

Calling out shortcomings

A massive part of community growth is learning where we’re falling short. Sometimes that can be done through introspection, and sometimes you need a voice from outside telling you “hey you’re doing this wrong. Here’s what you should be doing instead.” A marvelous example was Jay and Melanie’s keynote from DCUS 22 pointing out the racial makeup of host cities for both PyCon US and DCUS over the years.

The speaker

A good speaker has to have several qualities that I look for, but the most important one is passion. If you don’t care about your message, your audience won’t either. Further, I look for someone who has shown that they can deliver a good talk that really drives a message home. You can be an excellent speaker and still not quite have that special spark that lets your message really sing.

Finding speakers

I have 4 main buckets that I use for finding speakers, and they somewhat overlap, which is good:

1. Previous keynote speakers: often times, the previous years’ keynote speakers have a great insight into what goes into making a good keynote, and that translates well into finding people who understand that effort and can also help guide and mentor the newer keynote speakers. I’ll often ask prior years’ keynote speakers if they have recommendations, and they’re usually excellent. That’s how I found both Ruth (DCUS 22) and Abigail (DCUS 23) as keynote speakers.
2. Community leaders: look to places like Djangonaut Space, Django Girls+, Black Python Devs, and PyLadies, all of whom have produced lots of strong, opinionated community members who know what it’s like to start from the very basics and grow into contributing developers. Jay Miller recommended Mario this year, for example, and Carlton Gibson recommended Simon Charette.
3. Previous speakers: sometimes someone submits a great talk that really resonates with you and you want to give them that window to present their vision. Sheena O’Connell, Pandy Knight, and Mario Munoz were both previous DCUS speakers who fit this path.
4. Local leaders: I invited both Melanie Arbor and Trey Hunner to keynote DCUS 22, and it ended up being Melanie and Jay (who also lived in San Diego at the time) presenting their excellent keynote.