While we are looking for talks about Ruby and Rails, we are also interested in topics covering our broader community and technology interests. Please bear in mind that we prefer the additional topics to be language agnostic.

The actual day and time of any talk is likely to be influenced by themes apparent only after all submissions have been considered. When we chat to you about your accepted proposal, please let us know if you’d prefer a specific day. We’ll try our best to accommodate the request, because… MINSWAN.

Please specify the length of your talk in your submission(s), 20 or 40 minutes. We will not be holding any Q&A opportunities for talks at RubyConfAU 2018, so you will be speaking for the entire session. We welcome multiple talk proposals per speaker, selecting a maximum of one talk per person. So please submit away!

Lastly, it may be comforting to know that our panel conducts a blind review of submissions. To help us maintain a fair process, we ask that you please leave out any identifying information.

The selection process

We want a diverse lineup of speakers from different backgrounds, genders, sexualities and ethnicities, speaking on a wide range of topics. To help us accomplish this, here is the process for submitting and reviewing talk proposals for RubyConfAU 2018.

1. Submission: Submit your talk through Papercall (this ensures proposals are private) before midnight AEST on October 25th. Please include as much information as you can to give your talk the best opportunity to be selected. There is opportunity to enter information that won’t be publicly displayed.

2. Shortlisting: A group of 3-4 reviewers, with diverse backgrounds and experience levels, will read through all anonymised talk proposals. They will shortlist roughly double the amount of required talks.

3. Selection: The reviewers and organisers will trim this shortlist to the required number of talks, with a buffer in case selected speakers withdraw. To increase speaker diversity and experience, proposals at this step will be de-anonymised. We believe this is necessary to ensure that our lineup is as varied as possible.

4. Notification: Selected speakers will be notified via email. We aim to have all speakers selected before November 14th.

Pro-tips

Presenting a talk at RubyConf is an awesome opportunity to engage with the Ruby community. To help increase your chance of having a talk accepted, here are some ‘pro-tips’. Successful submissions in the past years have been succinct, focus on contemporary experience, applicable beyond a single implementation, considered diversity in viewpoints and personal background, and described novel experiences or developments in the chosen topic.

What’s in it for you

Selected speakers will receive a ticket to the conference. If you are selected and have already purchased a ticket, you will be refunded the amount that you paid. Additionally, speakers not from Sydney will receive:

• 3 nights of accommodation in a nearby hotel.
• Up to $2000 AUD reimbursement for travel costs.

Please note that Ruby Australia is a not-for-profit organisation. If you have a company willing to cover your travel and hotel expenses, we will include them as a sponsor of the conference.