What kind of proposals are you looking for?
We're looking for 45 minute talks and 90 minute workshops:

• Organisations: agile techniques beyond delivery teams e.g. how to change people's minds, applying agile practices in sales, compliance by design. See Agility in sales - rebooting business development by Brent Hurley in 2023
  
• Design & Product: service design, user research, user experience, product management etc. See My three favourite product discovery mistakes by Laura Morgan in 2023
• Engineering: microservices, data, GenAI, machine learning, architecture, testing, Continuous Delivery, platform engineering etc. See Winning at Continuous Deployment - the art of safe contract changes by Chris Simon in 2023
• Teams: ways of working, story telling, leadership, feedback mechanisms etc. See Squads assemble! keeping engagement high when teams go remote by Ella Schofield et al in 2023
• Workshops: ways of working, product experimentation, goal setting, learning through doing, empowerment

We're looking for a mixture of talks, deep dives (cover a single topic) and experience reports (share a single lived experience). With workshops, we favour games (all-session game about a topic e.g. murder mystery) over applied learning (interactive exercises about a topic).

What kind of speakers are you looking for?

All proposals are anonymised before being reviewed. Your name, gender, skill set, and location are all unavailable to reviewers. You are scored purely on the merits of your proposal.

We follow the Berlin Code Of Conduct. We'd gladly accept one or more proposals from you, whoever you are. We're looking for a range of speakers, so if you have never spoken at a conference before please don't be shy.

What makes a good proposal?

Do read these AOTB submission tips, from Andy Nesling (multi-year speaker and AOTB stalwart), and our speaker committee. Be sure to read them over, before sending in your proposals. It includes some reviewer marking guidelines... so it's worth checking out!

And to help out the reviewers, please don't ask for one proposal to be considered as a talk and a workshop (send them in separately), omit details of any previous speaker events (they have to be removed for blind review), and leave the Additional Notes field blank (we can't turn it off). Thanks

Do you provide speaker accommodation?

Yes, for speakers and co-speakers, in the student village on the Falmouth University campus. It's a scenic, eco-friendly campus and a 10 min walk to our AMATA venue. If you wish, you can choose alternative accommodation at your own expense.

Do you pay speaker travel expenses?

Yes, up to a point. We appreciate that speakers often travel long distances to be at our conference. We’re a not-for-profit organisation, and where possible we kindly ask speakers to cover travel expenses with their employer. We can't cover co-speakers, and we can only cover the European portion of long-haul travel e.g. from the Americas.

We cover as a flat fee:

• £150 from the rest of the UK to Cornwall e.g. Scotland
  
• £300 from Europe to Cornwall e.g. Germany
  
• £500 from slightly outside Europe to Cornwall e.g. Turkey

How does the review process work?

We have a multi-stage, multi-week process:

• Round 1 is blind review by ~40 members of the AOTB community
• Round 2 is blind review by the speaker committee
• Round 3 is final review

More details are in our annual CFP report.

When will I find out if my submission was accepted?

We will start to notify people from 10 December 2025 onwards, once our review process is complete. Once we have a confirmed schedule, we'll send out CFP feedback.

What if I'm successful and already have a ticket?

If this happens, we'll refund your paid ticket as soon as possible.

What if I'm unsuccessful?

We'll send you an email with aggregated reviewer feedback, and a ticket discount code for the event. We'll ensure feedback is as constructive and relevant as possible. It's for your personal benefit, and ours as well - we'd like to see you in next year's CFP. If you'd like to opt-out of feedback, let us know in advance.

What if I still have questions?

We're at cfp@agileonthebeach.com, ask away!