Humour is a funny thing (sorry).
Including humour in a presentation is a great way to engage an audience and keep them engaged. If you watch videos from previous PyCons AU on YouTube (which we also recommend you do because they are great), you’ll see that we and our audience absolutely appreciate humour in presentations, particularly but not solely for our lightning talks.
However, humour is a double-edged sword. It can be a highly effective and extremely rapid way of alienating your audience, or even of excluding some individuals or groups from our community. Humour delivered tactlessly or without care can turn a well-intentioned talk into a bad memory that outlives the conference – whether that’s your memory, someone else’s, or everybody’s. And we don’t want that to happen.
With that in mind, here are some general things to be careful of in both your proposal and your presentation:
Do not ‘punch down’. Mockery that attacks marginalised or less-privileged groups makes members of those groups feel unwelcome. It’s also not the case that such a joke will be OK if you combine it with some level of self-deprecation, even if you identify as a member of the targeted group. If you’re not sure it’s best not to use mockery at all.
Satire requires a clear purpose and target. Without that, it can come across as an endorsement of the viewpoint it’s satirising, even if that’s not intended. Not everyone has exactly the same context as you do and not everyone is able to connect that something is intended as humour.
Be aware of the context of memes and phrases. If a meme or phrase has been adopted by people, groups, or movements that hold views antithetical to those of a general PyCon AU audience member then they’re unlikely to be appreciated. One example is the use of the “Make [thing] Great Again” form as a title. Given the close association of that phrase with various political movements that exclude members of our community, the use of such a title is going to be considered inappropriate for our conference.
If you’re at all in doubt as to whether a given joke will land it’s definitely worth running it by other people, especially people who are part of any groups that the joke could offend, to ensure that it will have the impact you’re after. If you’d like someone to do a sensitivity read of your proposal or any of your content and you’re having trouble finding someone please reach out to program@pycon.org.au and we’ll do our best to connect you with someone.
This advice is aimed at trying to give you the best chance of both having your proposal score well and, if your proposal is selected, making sure your presentation gets the reaction and response you want.
We want us all to be laughing together.
This is a guest post initially authored by Benno Rice, emeritus Program Chair (2025) and Assistant Director (2024). It is co-signed by Jack Skinner, Director (2026), Sophie Quinn-Graham, Co-Director (2026), Nic Crouch, Co-Director (2026), and Rhydwyn McGuire, Program Chair (2026).
