pretalx Conference Monitor

Discover public pretalx events and export normalized event/session metadata for DevRel, conference speakers, sponsorship teams, recruiters, open-source researchers, and event-intelligence workflows.

pretalx powers CFPs and schedules for many technical, academic, and community conferences. This Actor turns public pretalx data into clean Apify datasets you can monitor, filter, export, or plug into downstream automations.

What it does

• Discovers public events from a pretalx instance, defaulting to https://pretalx.com.
• Filters events by keyword and start-date range.
• Fetches event detail metadata such as dates, timezone, locale, contact email, logo/header image, and public event URL.
• Optionally tries public schedule export endpoints and outputs normalized session/talk records when an event has published its schedule.
• Supports specific event slugs or URLs, so you can monitor known conferences directly.
• Works with self-hosted pretalx instances by changing baseUrl.

Use cases

• Find upcoming conferences by keyword, region, ecosystem, or year.
• Build a CFP/conference lead list for DevRel or sponsorship outreach.
• Track public conference schedules and talks once published.
• Export event metadata to Google Sheets, Airtable, CRM, or internal dashboards.
• Monitor self-hosted pretalx communities without writing custom integration code.

Input

Example input:

{
  "mode": "discover",
  "search": "python",
  "fromDate": "2026-01-01",
  "toDate": "2026-12-31",
  "maxEvents": 50,
  "includeDetails": true,
  "includeSessions": true,
  "maxSessionsPerEvent": 200,
  "baseUrl": "https://pretalx.com"
}

Fields

• mode: discover, events, or both.
  • discover: scan the public pretalx event API.
  • events: fetch only the supplied eventSlugs.
  • both: combine discovery and explicit event slugs.
• eventSlugs: pretalx slugs or URLs, e.g. robocon-2027 or https://pretalx.com/robocon-2027/.
• search: optional case-insensitive filter for event name and slug.
• fromDate: optional ISO date filter for events starting on or after this date.
• toDate: optional ISO date filter for events starting on or before this date.
• maxEvents: maximum event records to output.
• includeDetails: fetch each event's detail endpoint.
• includeSessions: try public schedule/session exports where available.
• maxSessionsPerEvent: cap session records per event.
• baseUrl: pretalx instance base URL. Defaults to https://pretalx.com.

Output

The Actor writes records to the default Apify dataset.

Event records

{
  "record_type": "event",
  "event_slug": "robocon-2027",
  "event_name": "RoboCon 2027",
  "is_public": true,
  "date_from": "2027-03-08",
  "date_to": "2027-05-14",
  "timezone": "UTC",
  "locale": "en",
  "email": "info@example.com",
  "source_url": "https://pretalx.com/robocon-2027/",
  "api_url": "https://pretalx.com/api/events/robocon-2027/",
  "fetched_at": "2026-07-03T00:00:00Z"
}

Session records

When a public schedule export is available, session records include:

{
  "record_type": "session",
  "event_slug": "example-conf",
  "event_name": "Example Conf",
  "session_id": "ABC123",
  "session_title": "Building reliable data pipelines",
  "speakers": ["Jane Doe"],
  "track": "Data",
  "type": "Talk",
  "language": "en",
  "room": "Main Hall",
  "starts_at": "2026-04-10T09:00:00+02:00",
  "duration": "00:30",
  "source_url": "https://pretalx.com/example-conf/talk/ABC123/",
  "schedule_url": "https://pretalx.com/example-conf/schedule/export/schedule.json",
  "fetched_at": "2026-07-03T00:00:00Z"
}

Notes and limitations

• This Actor only uses public pretalx data and does not log in or bypass access controls.
• Some pretalx events do not publish schedules yet. In that case, the Actor still outputs the event record and skips sessions.
• Speaker/session endpoints in the pretalx REST API may require authentication for some events; this Actor relies on public schedule exports where available.
• CFP deadlines are not consistently exposed through the public API. Use event dates and public event URLs as leads, then verify CFP state on the event page.

Local development

python -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
python -m src

With Apify CLI:

apify run
apify push

Ethical use

Use this Actor for public event research, monitoring, and outreach. Respect each conference's contact policy and avoid spammy bulk outreach.