RailsConf 2021 CFP

Thank you for your interest in speaking at RailsConf 2021! This year’s conference will be from April 13-15 on the Internet (ie virtual). We're looking forward to seeing all of your proposals!

Please read these guidelines all the way through for the best chances of having your proposal selected. If you have questions or concerns about anything you see here, please don’t hesitate to email us at railsconf@rubycentral.org.

Important Dates

1. This call for proposals (CFP) closes on February 15, 2021, 11:59pm PST. (Note: we always tack this deadline to the conference location’s timezone.) We will be doing "rolling acceptances," so submit early, and your talk may be accepted early!

2. You will hear from us on or before February 28, 2021, 11:59pm PST. If you have not heard about the status of your submission after that time, please contact us. Thanks!

Important Baseline

All talks and speakers must comply wholly with our Anti-Harassment Policy (policy states 2019, but applies also to RailsConf 2021), which applies in all RailsConf-related communications as well as at the conference itself. Please review it before submitting your proposal, and email us at railsconf@rubycentral.org with any questions.

What We're Looking For

RailsConf is a virtual three-day conference with up to 60 talks. The talks will be a mix of recorded and live presentations. We will probably end up accepting around 80 proposals. Given that, we’re looking for technical and non-technical talks covering a broad range of topics in the Rails ecosystem. Our audience members are Ruby on Rails developers, QA folks, designers, former-developers-turned-managers, and many more, with experience levels ranging from beginner to veteran.

We want a mix of beginner, intermediate and advanced-level material. Overall, we are looking for talks of interest to Rails developers, and we take a pretty broad view of what that means. If it’s interesting to you, chances are we’d love to see it. For a look at previous accepted talks, you can check out the 2019 RailsConf program.

RailsConf fully embraces both new and experienced speakers. We place a strong value on featuring a diverse, creative line-up of speakers: ones from different backgrounds with a wealth of different experiences to share with our attendees.

Topics

Because of the virtual nature of the conference, we're calling these topics rather than tracks this year. These are broader topics that we'd love to see talks on this year. We're not only looking for things along these topics, these are just here to get you going and give you some ideas.

• Progressive Web
• Mentoring Fellow Humans
• Asset Management
• Communicating Clear via Written Words
• Just enough Javascript
• Tips and Tricks: Code that Boost Productivity
• "Let Me Tell You About This Bug"
• Authentication and Authorization
• Not Big Data, Not Small Data: Medium Data
• Caching At All Layers
• Writing and Maintaining Open Source
• Actual Uses For AI/Machine Learning

Workshops

We also have a workshop format that is different from normal talks. It is an interactive format of at least 90 minutes in length. The focus of a workshop is on attendees learning practical skills through a mix of presentation material and hands-on exercises. As we have many attendees looking to sharpen their skills around basic Rails topics, workshops are very popular. Suggested topics could be core topics like testing, refactoring, security, and API design to very specific ones like React and Rails, GraphQL in Rails, intermediate Active Record, or containers for Rails apps. We've had very popular workshops that cover non-technical topics such as interviewing, communication, and contributing to open source.

Speaker Benefits

If your session is selected for inclusion in our program, you receive:

1. Free admission to the conference (for up to two speakers).
2. The respect and adulation of your peers!
3. The opportunity to be paired with a speaker mentor before the conference to help you with talk prep. Mentors are granted upon request, but highly recommended, especially for new speakers.

We reserve ticket space for folks whose talks are not accepted, so you can wait on buying a ticket until you hear about the status of your talk.

Inside the Review Process

We have a Program Committee made up of hardworking volunteers representing a variety of experience levels with Rails. Our first round of review is blind, meaning reviewers will not see your name or biographical information. They will see the title, description, pitch, and abstract. Please keep any potentially identifying information out of these fields.

During this first round, reviewers may have questions for you about your proposal. The CFP application allows two-way correspondence in comments without revealing your identity (though you'll know who's asking the question). You'll get an email and see a notification on the site if there are questions for you. Please reply promptly and consider adjustments, if requested.

Once every talk has at least four ratings, we move into the second round, where highly-rated talks are evaluated alongside their biographical information (speaking experience, relevant credentials, etc.) to come up with a balanced program. The Program Committee is heavily committed to selecting a diverse and well-qualified group of speakers.

Thanks for submitting a proposal and good luck!