The content of your submission is important. The title, description and abstract will appear in the conference time table and on the website, exactly as you enter them. These are the only sources of information for attendees deciding which talks to attend, so consider the words you use from your audiences point of view.
Be as descriptive and specific as you can. A common mistake is to be too general and vague, not explaining enough. The best submissions make it clear to someone who knows very little about your topic exactly what the talk will contain, and what they will get out of it. What will be shown? Why is that useful?
Check your spellings and capitalisation (capital 'P' for Python!) - mistakes give attendees the impression that you are slapdash.
A good talk submission will entice, explain and inform, making it easier to accept your talk, and attract more attendees to your talk. A bad talk submission will repel and confuse, making it easy to reject or ignore your talk.
What goes where
Snappy title
3-5 word title of your talk, that will identify to a lay person. This will appear on the time table. Unless your project is Django, the title of your project alone may not be enough.
Good: Frobnitz for web testing
Bad: Frobnitz
Bad: Web testing
Although this field accepts up to 56 characters, we're trying to keep them under 32 characters ideally, in order to legibly fit all talks on the timetable.
Description
A few sentences, summarizing the subject of your talk. This will appear on the talks page, be understandable and specific. If you use an acronym in your title, it is good to expand it here.
Good: Performance testing AJAX websites with Frobnitz library
Bad: Frobnitz implements FoobleBlar 1.4 for maximum speed
Bad: Web testing explained
Abstract
A few paragraphs, describing the subject of your talk and then giving the hard sell. Be careful to use plain language and avoid obscure terms, or to briefly explain those that you use. Expand any acronyms as you feel necessary. Mention the benefits, or knowledge attendees will gain from your talk. Don't waffle, don't just list the features of your project.
Good: Frobnitz is a Python library for performance testing websites. It features easy parallel execution and support for testing AJAX features. This talk introduces Frobnitz, explains the architecture and shows how it can be used to carry out a test. A case study will show how Frobnitz helped to improve one particular website's throughput by 50%.
Bad: Web site performance is critical. Frobnitz tests websites for performance. Handles JSON, AJAX, XML, SOA, JS, XSD, REST, PSP and WS-CDL. Intro, arch, benefits.
If attendees will require previous knowledge then mention that here (eg. If your talk is advanced Django, requiring that listeners already understand basic Django, or if your talk is 'part II', and listeners will really need to have attended 'part I'.)
Timing
It is important to do dry runs of your talk well in advance (reading it out loud to a potted plant works for me.) This is especially important so that you can accurately measure the length of your talk, and modify it to fit in the session length. We cannot allow talks to overrun, because this is unfair on following speakers and to the audience.
Bear in mind that EuroPython is traditionally fortunate to attract enthusiastic audiences, who often ask many questions - you must allow at least 5 minutes for this in your planning, and add 5 minutes for changeover; for example, a 30-minute talk will be 20 minutes of presentation, 5 minutes of questions, and allow 5 minutes for delegates to switch sessions.