Call for Presentations

Dates

  • Call opens: April 26th, 2010
  • Call ends: July 9th, 2010
  • Speakers notified: July 23rd, 2010
  • Conference date: October 14-15th, 2010

 

Technical Tracks

 

Strange Loop focuses on the following technical areas (some examples shown):

  1. Alternative languages - Groovy, Ruby, Python, Clojure, Scala, F#, Erlang
  2. Big data / NoSQL - Cassandra, Hadoop, HBase, CouchDB, MongoDB, Riak, Redis, Neo4J
  3. Concurrency and distributed systems - actors, STM, fork/join, eventual consistency, caching, ZooKeeper, Chef, Puppet
  4. Web - Javascript, jQuery, HTML 5, security, semantic web, RDFa
  5. Mobile - iPhone, Android
  6. Open source - popular or interesting open source libraries

 

If you have an awesome talk that falls outside these areas but fits the idea of the conference, it's ok to submit that too. The audience consists of software developers and in general talks should be technical enough that they include code (although that is not a requirement). Talks related to practices (agile, etc) are less likely to be accepted.

Session Forms

Sessions must be one of the following forms:

  • 50 minute regular session - 50-300 people
  • 20 minute short session - 50-300 people
  • 80 minute workshop - max 40 people, attendees bring laptops for hands-on involvement

 

It is expected that the sessions will be approximately split equally between short and long sessions with only a small number of workshops. The final distribution will depend on the submitted talks. Priority for long sessions will be given to invited speakers.

Admission and travel

All Strange Loop speakers receive free admission to the conference. If speakers have already registered, then their money will be refunded.

Strange Loop will provide up to three nights of hotel (Oct 13th, 14th, 15th) at the Moonrise Hotel and cover domestic air travel (or equivalent) to the conference for out of town speakers. Travel expenses may not be covered for speakers without an established speaking record or if the speaker is only presenting a short talk. Due to the high cost of international travel, international air travel cannot be covered, however there may be the possibility of a partial payment.

If your company will pay the expenses for your trip, they will be made into Speaker Sponsors of the conference and listed on the Sponsors page accordingly.

For legal reasons, letters of introduction and visa support will not be provided for international speakers.

Submissions

Submissions should be emailed to Alex Miller at with the following information:

  • Title - make it catchy, but give the audience some idea what your talk is about
  • Session form - indicate the session form for your talk. It is ok to indicate your talk can be given as either a short or regular talk as desired.
  • Track(s) - indicate the applicable tracks for your talk
  • Tag(s) - what tags would you apply to this talk?
  • Speaker - please include the speaker’s name, email address, phone number, and a short bio (less than 100 words). The bio will be put on the web site and in any printed schedule and is usually written in the 3rd person.
  • Abstract - the abstract should describe the talk, both what it will contain and why you should attend. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words. Talks should focus on technical problems and technical solutions, not marketing.
  • A/V requirements - standard equipment will include a VGA video connection for a laptop, power supply, and a wireless microphone. Please note any extra requirements (such as computer audio, drum kit, rubber chicken, etc).
  • Comments - if you have any extra comments about your talk, your qualifications, or why you would like to speak, add them here. These comments will remain private to the review committee.
  • Video - some talks will be recorded. Please indicate whether it is ok to record and release video of your talk.

 

Please submit no more than 2 talks per person. The number of speaking slots is limited and it is unlikely that more than one talk will be accepted. If you want feedback on selecting which of several talks to submit, contact Alex Miller at .

Presentation Information

  • Templates are wrong and evil! Thou shalt not follow a presentation template.
  • Presentations do not need to be provided or approved prior to speaking.
  • It is preferable (but not required) that you provide the presentation materials after your talk for posting on the web.
  • If your talk is accepted, travel arrangements will be made after acceptance.