We have a couple of notes for our prospective speakers. Please take a moment and read the following before submitting your response: A/V and Tech Check notes.

We will have Office Hours for 2023 talks Wednesdays at 1 pm CDT (at the link that will be sent to you confirming your submission) till April 12th, 2023. If you would like to attend Office hours to polish your CFP before submitting it, please email austin@devopsdays.org, and we will send you an invite with a zoom link.

The Call for Proposals is your chance to take a more active part in the DevOpsDays Austin conference and place your mark on the Austin DevOps community. We encourage a wide range of original material, focusing on new and local presenters.

What kind of proposals are we looking for?

• Ignite lighting talk: A 5-minute, 20-slide talk, with slides automatically forwarding every 30 seconds, delivered to the entire conference audience. If you are not familiar with ignites, take a look here.
• Presentations: A 20-minute talk on the topic of your choice, optionally with some time for questions, in one of our three parallel talk tracks.
• Workshops: A 90-minute interactive session on the topic of your choice in a dedicated room, hosting up to 30 attendees. Great for hands-on learning!

What do the organizers what you to know before submitting a talk?

• Be concise.
• But on the other hand, be specific and detailed. It’s hard for us to greenlight a “mysterious” pitch given there’s usually a 10:1 proposal to talk slot ratio. What exactly will someone get out of this talk?
• Up to 2 entries per person are welcome.
• No “vendor talks” - we don’t allow talks that are product pitches. Submissions that seem like sales talk will be declined, so please ensure your summary doesn’t come across that way.
• All speakers and presentations must conform to the DevOpsDays Austin code of conduct.
• We are interested in showcasing the less-heard voices among us, and priority will be given to submissions by members of underrepresented groups in tech. Please submit a talk!
• Do not submit talks on behalf of someone else. In our experience, these usually end up falling through and are not tailored to our audience when they don’t.

What should I include (or not include) in my proposal?

The kind of talk best received at DevOpsDays Austin is the real-world experience talk, and that's what we're looking for this year. We experienced change X; we did Y to address it, here’s how that turned out, both the good and the bad. Sometimes people feel they should dilute their experience and turn it into a more generic presentation. This almost always makes for a weaker submission. Genuine implementations and personal lessons learned are what our audience has consistently found the most compelling.

Make it personal, we care to learn about you and from you.

Write about changes you have experienced or implemented in any area we talk about in the DevOps community - culture, process, technology, tooling, sharing... How did changes affect other areas of your business? What wisdom can you share with your community, and what can you build on in this current period of uncertainty and change?

We want to thank DevOpsDays KC and DC for the inspiration for this CFP, like in the DevOps spirit we took something that worked well and iterated on it for the Austin Community!