A talk is where you talk using slides and demos to an audience that listens. A talk is either 25 minutes (including 5 minutes Q&A) or 50 minutes (including 10 minutes Q&A) long, make sure you reserve time at the end for Q&A. If speakers wish to continue with the Q&A after their time slot, there will be a dedicated place for it. A talk has one primary speaker, optionally another (secondary) speaker.

A talk should be bite-sized and focused on a certain topic. This means that you should not expect to be able to cover multiple broad areas in one talk. You can submit more than one proposal, to cover a set of topics, but we cannot guarantee their final scheduled order. Therefore, we recommend topics be structured in a way so as to minimize their interdependence so that they do not need to be presented in a specific order.

A discussion is a bit where you lead/moderate a discussion with a group of knowledgeable panelists where they answer prepared questions or questions from the audience as selected by you for appropriateness to your topic and session’s goal. It is more interactive than a talk because you could engage with the audience during the session. If you are willing to open the discussion to attendees, consider holding a fishbowl discussion where you start with a group of speakers and an empty “seat” which could be filled by active audience members in the course of a discussion.

A discussion is 55 minutes long. If speakers wish to continue after the 55-minute slot, there will be a dedicated place for it. A discussion has a dedicated moderator and up to 5 active speakers

A workshop is a hands-on demo where you and other workshop leads interact among each other and with audience members, sharing your knowledge and experience on a particular bite-sized topic. The goal of a workshop is to teach or practice a skill. You should not expect the audience following each step of the workshop live, however, they should have all necessary instructions if they wish to. As a result workshops should be actionable and goal oriented.

We allow up to 3 active presenters in a workshop. You must designate one of them to be the primary session leader. Feel free to recruit your colleagues to interact with people in the audience while you are talking.

Meetups and booths are open to all participants, they serve as a place for open discussions, sharing the latest project developments and interaction with contributors and attendees.

We hope to release the schedule by June 2022.

We receive a large number of high quality submissions. We hope to send out acceptances by mid May 2022.

We have put together a document with guidelines on how to write a good proposal. You can ping us on the #cfp-help channel on our discord server with further questions.

Admission to DevConf.US is free and only requires that you register. Registration details will be available by June 2022.

We use registration to manage several logistics issues around DevConf.US.

Yes, please indicate on the CfP submission if you'll be co-presenting. If you'd like to add a co-speaker to a submission or an accepted session, no worries! Please email us at info@devconf.us with your update.

We will be publishing our schedule there and having your preferred email address for that service lets us give you some editing rights for your session. Some speakers may use a different address for sched.org so we want to collect that from them. If you don’t have a preference or don’t have one already, just provide any email address you read and we will do the rest.

Yes! When you confirm your session acceptance, you will be asked whether you would like to have a speaker coach and will be matched with one.

The speaker confirmation form invites new speakers to sign up for practicing their talks via a video conference ahead of DevConf.US and invites experienced speakers to coach new speakers through such practice. We hope that participating in this program will improve the experience of new speakers and improve the quality of talks at DevConf.US, and highly encourage experienced speakers to sign up as coaches. We have a speaker guide and a speaker coaching guide available to support speakers and coaches. People who sign up, will receive their coaching matches by mid June 2022, with the expectation that they will schedule practice sessions between mid June 2022 and early August 2022.

We ask the coaches to take the lead on scheduling the practice session via a video conference (BlueJeans, Talky.io, Jitsi Meet, Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, etc). The speaker can choose to invite other audience members to the practice. In the practice session, the speaker delivers their practice talk, and the coach and other audience members provide feedback on the talk and slide deck.

Speakers and coaches agree to abide by the DevConf Code of Conduct both during the conference and in any pre-conference coaching, practice, or other program related activities.

Yes. Our intention is to record every talk and make it available on YouTube and via a live-stream. If this is a problem, please contact us at info@devconf.us as soon as possible so we can determine if we can accommodate your request.

Yes! When you register for the event, you will be asked whether you would like to be a coach or an apprentice and what topics you have experience in or are interested in. Coaches and apprentices will then receive their matches via email. We always get a lot of interest from people to be coached, and encourage people who have attended more than ten technology conferences to sign up as coaches. If you have attended fewer than three technology conferences, please consider signing up as an apprentice.

1. Ensuring that apprentices have a friendly contact who can orient them to attending an open source technical conference. Additionally, introducing apprentices to ideas and skills that will be useful at future in-person conferences, such as how to find and participate in the hallway track.
2. Offering apprentices an opportunity to learn more about the topics they are interested in, be introduced to open source projects they might like to get involved in, and possibly receive advice that might be helpful for their career.

Apprentices will be paired with coaches, with our best efforts being made to pair apprentices with coaches who have experience with one or more of the technical topics apprentices selected a preference for when registering. The coach will contact the apprentice prior to the conference to arrange a virtual meeting prior to attending the conference via a video conference (BlueJeans, Talky.io, Jitsi Meet, Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, etc) or a voice call. This meeting will give you a chance to exchange introductions, answer any questions the apprentice has as they prepare to attend the conference, learn about the apprentice's career goals, review the conference schedule together, and plan to attend some sessions together. During the conference, you will be invited to meet other apprentices and coaches.