Call for Speakers
Open edX Conference - 2026
19 May 2026
22 May 2026
Little America Hotel, 500 Main St Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
con.openedx.org/
The Open edX Conference is where the Open edX community and leading experts in ed tech discuss the latest in industry research, new applications of technology to enhance teaching and learning, and product & technical advances to the Open edX platform. As a practitioners' conference we are looking for peer-to-peer information and collaboration. Sponsorship is available for companies with products of interest to our attendees; please email conference@openedx.org for more information.
We welcome you to submit a session proposal for the 2026 Open edX Conference. We are accepting proposals for 30-minute breakout sessions (held on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, May 19-21), and 10-minute lightning talks (held on Wednesday & Thursday, May 20/21), Note that this year, the lightning talk session type will only be available for the Developing and Operating track. If you have any questions, or would like to discuss other possibilities, please send us an email at conference@openedx.org .
Submissions are due by Friday, March 6, 2026. Additionally, submissions received prior to January 15, 2026 will get a preliminary review from conference organizers and a chance to re-submit.
We are particularly interested in proposals in the following areas:
1. Case Studies
Audience: Institutions and individuals new to or experienced users of the Open edX software
Example Topics of Interest:
- Projects leveraging the Open edX platform to create impact in the lives of learners
- Successful ways of marketing/promoting your courses, instance, or the Open edX platform
2. Pedagogy and Instructional Design
Audience: Educators, Course Teams, and Course Operators
Example Topics of Interest:
- Course authoring and production techniques
- Innovative courses, especially ones in the fields of higher education, social impact, or professional development & training
- Challenges and solutions for successful online education - what works best in online learning?
3. Product Development and Usage
Audience: Product and technology leaders. Deeply technical presentations are likely more suitable for the Developing track.
Example Topics of Interest:
- Overview and/or deep dives into new and upcoming features and changes, including how these features are used and what problems they solve
- Trends in online learning and training, for instance: online credentials, professional development, lifelong learning
- Analytics and research
- Where are we now and where do we need to go? How will we get there?
4. Developing and Operating
Audience: Developers working on the platform, those running/operating Open edX instances, technology leaders
Example Topics of Interest:
- Technical deep dives into the code or tools used to build and run the platform - assume your audience can read, follow, and create code
- Extending and integrating the platform
- Latest best practices for operating a site
Call for Speakers
24 Nov 2025
06 Mar 2026
Instructions for Filling Out Your Proposal
The deadline for submitting a proposal is Friday, March 6, 2026.
Proposals received before January 15th, 2026 will receive feedback from conference organizers and a chance to resubmit their proposal.
Note: Proposal submissions that are solely or to a large extent written or include AI-generated text by a large-scale language model (LLM) such as ChatGPT will not be accepted and disregarded without a second chance to submit.
There is a 5 proposal limit per speaker (including being listed as a co-speaker) and counts across all track types. Submissions beyond 5 proposals will be automatically rejected.
There is a 2 speaker per talk limit.
The proposal form has a few fields; please fill them out as follows:
Title: The title of your talk, no more than 100 characters
Track: Select the talk track that best matches your proposal..
Session Type: Select Talk (30 minute standard talk, including time for Q&A), or Lightning Talk (10 minute talk, no Q&A). Note: "Lightning" talks are only for the Developer track.
Description: This is a short (no more than 500 characters) paragraph that briefly explains your talk’s purpose to a conference attendee. This is what will appear on the public schedule.
Proposal: this is a detailed description where you should provide a lot of detail. Who is the audience? What do you assume they know? What will they learn? A detailed outline of your talk would be amazing. This will not be published, it's for us to understand what you are proposing.
Notes: Any additional notes for the proposal reviewers. Tell us anything we might need to know about your presentation, proposal, or yourself.
Speaker tagline: affiliation, title, etc.
Email: this is for us to contact you. It will not be made public.
Speaker biography: a few sentences about who you are, limited to 500 characters.
Speaker photo: We will be using these photos in your profile in our online scheduling tool so that others may more easily find you. We may also use these photos in materials promoting your talk. If you're not comfortable with an image of your face, please choose an image that represents you.
Co-speaker: If you have a second presenter on your talk. We understand that many projects have a number of collaborators, however, we limit the number of speakers in a talk to 2.
We look forward to hearing from you! Emails about talk acceptance or rejection will start going out on April 1, 2026.
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