Stir Trek 2026 will be held in person on May 1st, 2026, in Columbus, OH.

What types of topics should be submitted?

We welcome sessions relevant to members of our community. While software developers make up the majority of our attendees, our audience also includes professionals working in product management, quality assurance, data, UX, security, and other adjacent disciplines.

We do not organize the conference into fixed tracks, but for review purposes, submissions are categorized using the following topic areas:

Application Development

Languages, frameworks, libraries, tooling, and core development fundamentals across backend, frontend, mobile, desktop, and full-stack applications.

Architecture & Platform Engineering

System design, architectural patterns, distributed systems, cloud platforms, infrastructure, DevOps practices, reliability, scalability, performance, and operating software in production.

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

Practical application of AI and ML, including integration into real systems, prompt engineering, evaluation, and production considerations.

Data Engineering & Analytics

Data pipelines, databases, data modeling, analytics, reporting, observability, and making data reliable and useful for teams and organizations.

Product Design & User Experience

UX research, UI and interaction design, accessibility, usability testing, and collaboration between design, product, and engineering.

Professional Growth & Leadership

Communication, leadership, mentoring, career development, team dynamics, business considerations, and the human side of building effective teams.

Security & Privacy Engineering

Application and platform security, secure design, identity, threat modeling, privacy, compliance, and practical approaches to reducing risk.

Software Quality & Delivery

Testing strategies, quality practices, code reviews, CI/CD, release processes, technical debt, and improving delivery confidence and speed.

Other

Topics that do not clearly fit into the categories above but are still relevant to the broader developer and technology community. Submissions in this category should clearly explain their relevance and intended audience.

There’s no perfect way to categorize everything our community does. If your talk reasonably fits more than one category, choose the best match. We may reclassify submissions during review.

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Submission Guidelines (Read Carefully)

• All sessions are 45 minutes in length.
• There is no reliable Wi-Fi. This is a movie theater, not a conference hall. Cellular tethering is inconsistent. Do not submit talks that require live internet access.
• No co-speakers. All sessions must be delivered by a single presenter.
• Abstracts must be longer than one sentence and shorter than a novel. Submissions that fail this requirement will be automatically rejected.
• Your abstract must clearly answer the question: “What’s in it for the attendee?”

You may request travel and expense reimbursement, but it is not guaranteed. Requests will be evaluated case by case if your talk is selected.