It feels like DevConf.CZ 2021 has just ended and we are already preparing for next year's event. For DevConf.CZ 2022, we are aiming for a hybrid conference, with both an in-person and a virtual presence to ensure that everyone who wishes to participate is able to do so.

What we know so far

We will stick to our usual dates at the end of January and our usual venue, the Faculty of Information Technology at Brno University of Technology. We are currently discussing all the possibilities with the faculty and we are very excited to return to a familiar venue.

These are the plans, however we can plan all we want but we still don't know what January 2022 is going to look like. We are prepared to adapt along the way. All we know for sure is that we will organize DevConf.CZ again, we are looking for speakers, we will welcome attendees and we will celebrate volunteers that make the conference happen. It’s not going to be easy, but hey, this is DevConf, we love trying new things and experimenting!

Fewer themes; more focus

Speaking of experiments, we’ve decided to reimagine our conference themes for DevConf.CZ 2022. Over the last several years, DevConf.CZ has amassed a long list of conference themes, which we developed over time through discussions with various communities, Red Hatters and other open source contributors outside the company. We’ve received feedback that as the number of themes has grown, the conference has gotten way too broad and spread in too many directions. It is exhausting to attend (and run) a 3-day conference with 12 thematic tracks, often running in parallel, especially in a virtual environment.

For 2022, we’ve chosen to pare down the list of themes to better focus on current trends in the software and hardware industry. We want to focus on the sorts of topics that we all keep hearing about, but that we wish we could explore in more depth.

We plan to open a Call for Proposals with the new set of themes, and include in our schedule only those that receive enough quality submissions. We may keep some of the topics for the future because we believe DevConf.CZ has reached a level of maturity that will allow us to rotate the focus of the conference every year. This will hopefully help us to structure the hybrid conference more effectively and keep it focused on current and emerging trends.

What could you present?

This is the updated list of conference themes and what we envision would fit into them:

• Cloud & Hyperscale - Topics around Kubernetes, quantum computing, high availability, *aaS, anything that powers large data centers or small private clouds, best practices for development, and operations at scale, resource efficiency, etc.
• Future Tech and Open Research - What’s next? Any topics that are currently being discussed or actively researched yet their impact is still potential. Best practices and great examples of open source research collaborations are welcome.
• Edge Computing - Modern embedded systems, microcontrollers, management of embedded systems, infrastructure for embedded systems, resource optimization, peripherals, tools, and edge in automotive are some of the topic ideas appropriate for this track.
• HPC, Big Data and Data Science - High performance systems, data storing and processing, best practices for data lakes/data mesh, and parallelism and vector computing.
• Open Source UX/Design - Open source practices for UX and UIs, Design Thinking, Service Design, UX and Customer Experience. How to get users and customers involved in software design and other best practices.
• Open Source Education - Improving how students learn—and how instructors teach— withOpen Source. Open Source tools that facilitate education, as well as the overall education community that operates in an open source way (MOOC's, free bootcamps, university relations, etc).
• Modern Software Development - Trending topics from software development, application modernization, new trends, microservices, distributed computing and continuous improvement. Development of secure code, code validation and verification.
• Analysis, Testing and Automation - Embedded intelligence in products for automation, IoB - internet of behaviours, analytics and automated remediation capabilities, risk and change analysis, AI powered orchestration, and machine learning in analysis and test automation (i.e, test failure analysis, test generation, and test selection).
• Linux distribution - Firmware, Linux kernel, base platform for containers, desktop, Silverblue, and upgrades.

Think about what you’d love to talk about and how it can fit into these themes. We are always seeking technical sessions and speakers who are not afraid to dive deep into details of the area of their interest.

If you feel like your session does not fit into any of these themes, do not hesitate to submit a proposal and let us know why you think it is worth discussing. We drafted the list of themes we believe are attractive for attendees as well as speakers, but we will find space for all high quality talks.

Submit your proposals at https://cfp.devconf.info/ by October 24, 2021.