[Terry Jones]
The obvious suggestion is to anonymize the review process.
FWIW, that was tried and the people complained about that too. Who would you rather hear speak about the future of Python, Guido and someone else? About the state of Twisted, from someone on that team or from a user who read the Twisted book? About UnladedSwallow or AppEngine, someone on Google's team or someone who has played around with it for a while? Also, there are some folks like Alex Martelli whose talks I will seek out no matter what he's talking about (because it's always worthwhile). Likewise, it's not irrelevant if a speaker previously gave a talk that sucked. Surely, the review process has room for improvements and better balance but anonymizing is a step too far IMO. Raymond