Call() for Speakers

Open until January 1, 2018

We are inviting the JavaScript community to submit talks for the upcoming JSConf EU (June 2 – 3 2018, Berlin). This Call for Presentation closes on Jan 1st.

Topics

To get a feel for what we are interested in hearing about, here is the programme for past years (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017).

We like to see anything that squarely fits into the spectrum of:

• Cutting-edge technological advances in the world of JavaScript or computer science in general, if somehow applicable to JavaScript
• Wild Ideas & Clever Hacks
• Improving JavaScript developers’ lives
• Mobile JS
• Embedded JS
• Hardware JS
• Fundamentals, in a modern light
• The JavaScript community, culture, history, past, present & future, the why the who and the what of what we’re all doing
• And finally: Whatever the hell you want; this is your conference

For further inspiration, check out the video recordings of JSConf EU 2017’s talks on YouTube.

And remember: Pick whatever you feel most passionate about. This is your conference!

PS: If you can’t find a suitable topic for JSConf EU, or you want to try your luck at more than one event, then consider submitting a talk to our partner conference CSSconf EU — it’s happening in the same venue on the same weekend, and you’re welcome to submit multiple talks.

We can help

Not everyone is a natural-born talent on stage. Not everyone can produce kick-ass slide decks. Not everyone is a live-demo master. Not everyone knows they have something great to talk about.

There are about a million reasons why you may not consider yourself a speaker. We are here to prove you wrong. If all you have is a gut feeling that you should be on stage, we are here to help you develop or hone the skills you think you lack to deliver a great presentation.

• We’re happy to brainstorm your interests and seek great hidden ideas.
• We’re happy to connect you with experienced speakers to help you prepare your submission.
• We’re happy to review and advise on how to produce a slide deck. If you don’t feel creative, just use our Keynote or PowerPoint templates.
• We’re happy to rehearse via video chat with you.
• We can hook you up with local groups so you can practice in front of a friendly crowd.

Again, whatever else you might need, we’re here to help. Get in touch: contact@jsconf.eu (just please don’t use this email to submit a proposal).

If you need more encouragement, see our blog post on How to write a great talk proposal for a tech conference.

Perks

If your proposal is selected, here’s what you’ll get:

Travel to Berlin — this means that we’ll pay for your plane or train ticket, and also cover all transport costs within the city.

Entry to the conference — please note that we may not be done with the speaker selections by the time tickets go on sale, so if you want to make sure you can attend, let us know in the form below and we’ll hold a ticket for you in case your talk is not selected.

Accommodation in a hotel — in close proximity to the venue and/or with a shuttle transfer arranged. For a day before and a day after the conference. If you’d like to stay longer, we can help you arrange things, just let us know. You will have to cover any extra nights, though.

If your employer can cover your travel and hotel, we’ll be happy to list them as a company sponsor. The money we save will be invested into the general running of the conference and scholarships for attendees from underrepresented groups.

You’re welcome to bring your family. If you need childcare, please get in touch. We want to make sure your stay is as enjoyable as possible.

The venue and the hotel will be accessible for wheelchair users and people with reduced mobility. If you have any concerns or questions about whether all your needs can be met, please contact us.

Selection Process

Here’s how we select our speakers:

1. All submissions are anonymized, so that there is no bias towards the submitter.
2. All submissions are reviewed and voted for by the conference organizers. Each talk is rated on a scale from 1 to 5, taking into account the following criteria:
   • relevance of the topic to the JS community
   • coherence and clarity of the proposal
   • novelty/originality of the topic
   • can the topic be reasonably covered in the allocated time
3. The top submissions are then de-anonymized so we can take speaker details into account. We wrote about this and more considerations that go into our curation and selection process here.

We expect a lot more excellent submissions than we have speaking slots. This process helps us select the best proposals, and hack our own unavoidable biases.

Guidelines

• Language: all talks are in English.
• Talk Duration: talks should be 30 minutes long (for longer talks we’ll get in touch with you directly). We will be on a tight schedule and will enforce the time limits rigorously. We suggest that you time your presentation accordingly in advance.
• Formatting: make sure you care, and make sure we see you care. Typos, sloppy formatting and all-lowercase submissions make our reading of your proposal tedious and will reflect negatively on the outcome of your submission.
• Brevity: don’t get too wordy. If you need more than two paragraphs to get to the point of your proposal, we ask you to put more time into focussing your application. With the amount of submissions we get, the quicker you can make a good first impression, the better.
• Originality: one of the things we want to do at JSConf EU is to push the community forward. We can’t do this if the same people talk about the same things all the time. Thus, we favor original content. If you want to present a topic that you have talked about elsewhere, try to add a twist, new research or development to it — something to make it unique.

Video Recordings

We plan to record and publish all talks online for free, along with a recording of the slide deck, live demo, and any on-presenter-screen activity. We do this for the benefit of the larger JS community and those who couldn’t make it to the conference. We hope you agree with us, but if you are uncomfortable with this in any way, let us know and we will work things out. Note that we disabled comments on our published videos by default.

Finally, since you retain full ownership of your slides and recording, we’d like to ask you to make your materials and recording available under a Creative Commons (we default to non-commercial reuse) or other open source license.

Code of Conduct

Our Code of Conduct aims to create a safe and welcoming space for our community members, and to protect every attendee, staff member and speaker from harassment. We thus need you to read, understand, and comply with our Code of Conduct.