RailsConf 2022 CFP

Thank you for your interest in submitting a proposal to RailsConf 2022! This year’s conference will feature an in-person three-day conference from May 17-19 and a new virtual event on June 15-16.

We invite you to submit a proposal for the in-person RailsConf only, we are not accepting proposals for the virtual component.

Important Dates & Details

• This call for proposals (CFP) closes on February 28, 2022, at 11:59pm PST.

• Proposals will be accepted or rejected by March 25, 2022, at 11:59pm PST.

All talks and speakers must comply with our Anti-Harassment Policy, which applies in all RailsConf-related communications and at the conference itself. In addition, all conference speakers are required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and to adhere to our indoor mask policy.

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. We're looking forward to seeing all of your proposals!

Session Formats

We offer two session formats to choose from, talks and workshops. All session formats will be given live at RailsConf 2022.

• Talks are 30 minutes, lecture-style discussions with an optional Q&A session during the virtual event. For a look at previously accepted talks, you can check out the 2021 RailsConf program.

• Workshops are interactive sessions where the participants learn practice skills through a mix of presentation materials and hands-on exercises. Workshops range from 90 minutes to 2.5 hours, depending on when scheduled, and are highly sought after by attendees. Suggested topics include testing, refactoring, security, API design to React and Rails, GraphQL in Rails, intermediate Active Record, or containers for Rails apps. We've also had workshops covering non-technical topics such as interviewing, communication, and contributing to open source. Workshops can also be included as part of our tracks that are listed below.

What We're Looking For

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.

We’re looking for technical and non-technical talks covering a broad range of topics in the Rails ecosystem. 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 those of you new to speaking (but passionate and knowledgeable!), worry not: we love first-time speakers and are happy to help you out! If you want to learn more about how to improve your talk submission, this post and this one are good places to get started. For more information on how RailsConf proposals are selected, read the "Inside the Review Process" below. If you have questions after that, we're happy to answer them or aid in other ways -- just let us know!

Session Tracks

In addition to the general program, we offer themed tracks with specific guidelines. Please note that not every talk belongs on a track. If your proposal doesn't fit in one of the tracks below, tag it as "General."

This year’s prospective tracks include:

Rails and Business Logic
It isn't always obvious how to organize the business logic in your Rails app: are you making your controllers too "fat" or too "thin"? Should you use the service object pattern or not? How can functional programming play a role? This track will be all about business logic. Talks can discuss patterns and anti-patterns, novel approaches, or retrospectives on the mistakes you made along the way.

Finding Happiness in Tech
As the saying goes, "do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life," but nobody ever tells you how to get there. Talks in this track will focus on being happy at work, whether that's finding the right job for you, establishing work-life balance, or handling difficult situations that are making you unhappy. Talks can also challenge the premise of this track: is it really necessary to be happy at work? Why or why not?

Inclusivity on Rails
The Ruby community is often credited with being one of the more welcoming communities in tech, but we can and must do better when it comes to diversity and inclusivity. Talks in this track should highlight efforts to make the Ruby and Rails communities safer and more inclusive to all.

Explain It Like I’m Five
Einstein is often credited with the quote, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." He didn't actually say this, but the sentiment rings true: the best way to demonstrate understanding of a hard topic is to explain it in the simplest way.

Talks in this track should break down technical concepts into their basic principles. Whether you're talking about the inner workings of your favorite Rails component, the architecture of a popular gem, or something else entirely, be prepared to build your audience's understanding from the ground up!

Mastering Mid-Level
Knowing whether you are a mid-level Rails developer is a nebulous concept that our community has a hard time with. This track empowers mid-level developers with education on the skills they should have, steps to make it to senior and provides hiring managers tips on hiring and inspiring mid-level developers.

Community Content
On the heels of "Ruby is still a diamond", Boring Rails, Super Bombinhas and Women on Rails, the content in the community is getting more creative and more varied. Learn from the content creators themselves on how to produce content: blogs, podcasts, tutorials, meetups, books, games and more.

Make a Switch
This is the track for the ambitious speakers who made a switch and the lessons they learned along the way. Left React for Hotwire? Refocused from logging to telemetry? In-sourced what you out-sourced? Bring your radical tooling, workflow and approaches changes to this track.

Open Source Maintenance
Writing code for a well-patronized open source project is the gold standard of software maintenance. The team has to communicate upcoming changes to their audience, make changes in backward-compatible ways, maintain a rigorous versioning protocol, and test and document new additions. Moreover, open source teams are often distributed, and sometimes globally distributed.

This track will focus on how to maintain open source software and what maintenance lessons any software team might learn from open source. If you'd like to talk about how to deprecate a feature, design a discoverable API, or secure a public code base, this track is for you!

Inside the Review Process

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

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.

Proposals with at least four ratings will move into the second round. To develop a balanced program, they are evaluated alongside biographical information (speaking experience, relevant credentials, etc.). The Program Committee is heavily committed to selecting a diverse and well-qualified group of speakers.

Speaker Benefits

If your proposal is selected, you receive:

• Free admission to RailsConf 2022 and the virtual event (for up to two speakers)

• The opportunity to be paired with a speaker mentor to help you with talk prep. Mentors are granted upon request, but highly recommended, especially for new speakers.

• For a talk (Honorarium): A $500 USD travel reimbursement honorarium, sent to you post-RailsConf

• For a workshops (Honorarium): A $1,000 USD travel reimbursement honorarium, sent to you post-RailsConf

Note: for sessions with more than one speaker, the honorarium is to be split among all participants, at the panel moderator or speakers' discretion.

Thanks for submitting a proposal, and good luck!