Conference App
==============

The overall conference settings are managed via the ``conference`` app.

Conferences and their sections are added and configured via the Django admin.


Models
------

Each conference needs an instance of a ``Conference`` model. In most cases you
will only need one of these but Symposion does support multiple conferences
sharing a database. Similar to the Django Sites framework, the conference your
project is for is selected by the ``CONFERENCE_ID`` setting which defaults to
``1`` but can be changed to the pk of another conference if you have more than
one.

The conference model has an optional ``start_date`` and ``end_date``
indicating when the conference will run. These are optional so you can begin
to configure your conference even if you don't know the exact dates.

The conference model also has a ``timezone`` field which you should set to the
timezone your conference will be in.

There is also a ``Section`` model. This is useful if your conference has
different parts to it that run of different days with a different management,
review or scheduling process. Example of distinct sections might be
"Tutorials", "Talks", "Workshops", "Sprints", "Expo". Many aspects of
Symposion can be configured on a per-section basis.

Each section has an optional ``start_date`` and ``end_date`` similar to the
overall conference.

Proposals
---------

Create different kinds of proposals, e.g. `talk` or `tutorial`, by creating
ProposalKind objects. You'll also need to create a Form in the code for
that kind of proposal, and update the setting ``PROPOSAL_FORMS`` with
the ProposalKind's ``slug`` as key, and the full package path to the form
to use as value.  For example::

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

To allow submitting proposals for a particular Section of the conference,
create a ProposalSection. The site will allow submitting proposals for that
Section between the ProposalSection's ``start`` and ``end``, unless
``closed`` has been set.


Helper Functions
----------------

A ``conference.models.current_conference()`` function exists to retrieve the
``Conference`` selected by ``CONFERENCE_ID``.