Hmm for some reason I'm not seeing responses on this thread. Sorry for the delay.
There's no "have to" about any part of this! You don't have to attend at all, of course, and if you do attend you don't have to present. Yes, it'll be on Zoom. We are actually thinking of keeping it all-virtual even after travel is possible again, because for an in-person conference you'd have to pay travel costs plus room and board (either directly or included in the conference fee). It's a lot easier for everyone if it's virtual. The only disadvantage is that if you travel to a conference it's worth your while to get in phase with the time zone in which it takes place. As it is, the conference is way early in the morning for us Californians, and way into the evening for Europeans and Africans. East Coast America has it at the most reasonable time of day. Asians and Australians, I'm afraid, suffer.
The conference is primarily directed at adults. For those of you coming to us from Scratch, think Scratch Conference rather than Scratch Day. But we welcome younger people to attend the conference and/or the Young Thinkers event that comes before it, sponsored by SAP, and not entirely Snap!-based. I expect that the conference would be of interest to ages 15+, and maybe for 12-15, and less likely for below 12, but I know there are 8-year-olds among our gang with a sophisticated knowledge about programming, so I don't want to dissuade you from attending.
@earthrulerr: I don't understand "do we have to attend them." What would it mean to attend the conference and not attend the sessions? Especially at a virtual conference where you can't buttonhole people in the corridors! If the issue is that your parents are worried about security, you can attend with your audio and video off, if that helps. Most of the time, whoever is presenting will be screensharing anyway, so that's all anyone will see.
As for presenting, there are two possibilities. If you're a young person and want to present to other young people, I expect we'll organize a youth-to-youth lightning session in parallel with some boring adult thing. :~) Or you can sign up to present a workshop at the Young Thinkers event. "Workshop" means that most of the time should be the attendees doing stuff on their computer, rather than listening to you talk. For instance, the people who like to invent new Snap! blocks could think of a project in which they'd be useful and have participants load your library and work on that project. But if you're a young person and you have something to present that you think will be of interest to a largely adult audience, by all means make a proposal.
Last time we had, I think, three "proposals" from young people who were just messing around, and one serious one, which we accepted and which was very well received. (It was about a project to display a pie chart from a data list.) I'd personally be delighted to have more participation by y'all.
What would you present? Well, last time, there were presentations about extensions to Snap! or libraries written in Snap!; those were probably the most interesting to young people. There were presentations about curriculum using Snap!, which could be of interest if you're studying computer science or computer-based math or science curriculum. There were some lightning talks (five minutes, strictly enforced) about "here's a project I made," but they had to be pretty cool projects. I think there were one or two about "here's something I wish I could do in Snap!." Umm, other staff people, what categories am I forgetting?
If you want to attend and the $25 is a serious obstacle, send an email to conference@snapcon.org and we'll see what we can do. I'm pretty sure the Young Thinkers thing is free -- does it have a web site yet? Stay tuned.
