There are two types:

1. A 30-minute talk presented during the conference, usually in the mornings.
2. An Ignite talk presented during the Ignite sessions (scheduling varies). These are 5 minutes slots with slides changing every 15 seconds (20 slides total).
3. Open Space: If you’d like to lead a group discussion during the attendee-suggested Open Space breakout sessions, it is not necessary to propose it ahead of time. Those topics are suggested in person at the conference. If you’d like to demo your product or service, you should sponsor the event and demo it at your table.

DevOps is a common culture being developed in many workplaces, we’d like to help convey how it’s possible to adopt for existing projects and improve the workplace culture and experience over time. Any DevOps related topic is also of interest.

What we’re especially looking for:

• How did you manage to initially start the transition?
  • What was managements perspective on this?
  • Were you able to show measurable improvements?
  • Did this start spreading after it was shown to work?
• What bumps did you encounter along the way?
  • Were there any approaches that got discarded?
  • Did anything get reworked a few times before it started improving?
  • What areas did you initially leave as-is despite the difficulties they were causing?
• Where on the path to DevOps nirvana do you think you are at?
• What advice would you share for those attending to prioritize and focus on?

Some topics that will be used to group talks to help ensure a wide range for discussions:

• Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Deployment
• DevSecOps
• Culture
• Best Practices
• Tooling
• Observability (logging, monitoring, metrics)
• Containers and Orchestrastion
• Cloud
• Configuration Management - event driven/immutability

Multiple proposals welcome… just follow the other guidelines!

Choosing talks is part art, part science; here are some factors we consider when trying to assemble the best possible program for our local audience:

• broad appeal: How will your talk play out in a room of people with a variety of backgrounds? Technical deep dives need more levels to provide value for the whole room, some of whom might not use your specific tool.
• new local presenters: You are the only one who can tell your story. We are very interested in the challenges and successes being experienced in our local area. We are happy to provide guidance/coaching for new speakers upon request.
• under-represented voices: We want to hear all voices, including those that may speak less frequently at similar events. Whether you’re in a field not typically thought of as a technology field, you’re in a large, traditional organization, or you’re the only person at your organization with your background, we are interested in your unique experience.
• original content: We will consider talks that have already been presented elsewhere, but we prefer talks that the local area isn’t likely to have already seen.
• no third-party submissions: This is a small community-driven event, and speakers need to be directly engaged with the organizers and attendees. If a PR firm or your marketing department is proposing the talk, you’ve already shown that as a speaker you’re distant from the process.
• no vendor pitches: As much as we value vendors and sponsors, we are not going to accept a talk that appears to be a pitch for your product.
• diversity: The initial review process will be based on an anonymous version of your submission(s), this includes removing name, gender, geography and company.