RubyConf 2019 CFP

Thank you for your interest in speaking at RubyConf 2019! The conference is November 18-20, 2019 in Nashville, TN, USA.

Please read through and follow ALL guidelines below to boost your proposal’s chances of being accepted! If you have questions about any of these guidelines, you can reach us at rubyconf@rubycentral.org.

Topics

We'd love for you to come share your knowledge with ~800 of your closest colleagues & friends. We welcome all talks related to the Ruby programming language, from the mainstream and basic to the niche and obscure.

The only exception: if your talk is primarily about Ruby on Rails, then please don't submit it to RubyConf. Hold off and submit it to RailsConf in Spring 2020 instead. Thanks!

We require all selected talks to comply wholly with our Anti-Harassment Policy. If you have any questions about the suitability of your talk, or anything else in this CFP, email us at rubyconf@rubycentral.org.

Proposing a Talk

Talks should be 40 minutes long, which can include time for questions. If you want to take questions, we'd encourage you to plan for 30-35 minutes of presentation and to leave the rest of the time for questions. All talks should be lecture-style presentations.

Proposals can be submitted through August 7, 2019. We will be accepting talks on a rolling basis: the earlier you submit, the more likely you are to receive feedback on how to amend your proposal, which betters your ultimate odds of acceptance. Ultimately, our aim is to have every proposal responded to with an acceptance, waitlist, or decline by September 4, 2019.

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. Also, see the note about Speaker Mentors under "Speaker Benefits" below.

For more information on how RubyConf proposals are selected, read the "About 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!

Tracks

In addition to the general program, we also have a few themed tracks at RubyConf. These tracks have specific guidelines to describe the talks within them. Not every talk belongs in a track. If your proposal doesn't fit neatly in one of the below tracks, either tag it as General or don't tag it at all. However, if you do feel that your proposal might fit nicely within one of the below tracks, tag it with that track name.

Track Guidelines

Code Quality

How do we define and measure whether our code is good? This is the track for talks about the methodologies and/or tooling we use to measure code quality. Talks in this track could be about a specific tool or could take a higher-level perspective to look at processes and tooling at a team level. Please do not submit proposals that simply pitch specific services. Talks can certainly discuss services that have been valuable to your processes, but ensure that your story also has a bigger picture.

Core + STDLIB

Ruby may come with batteries included, but not everyone realizes all the wonderful things that come with it out of the box. Talks in this track should focus on what you can do with Ruby and its standard library -- meaning without any gems. Talks can dive into the new additions to the standard library, reveal oft-overlooked features, or get deep into the inner workings of this language that we love.

Hindsight

We all have stories about the biggest mistakes/challenges we have faced in our careers -- let’s learn from them!

Talks in the track should do deep dives on an interesting, relevant challenge you've faced. Details can include: what went wrong; why it happened; how you fixed it; what you learned; and most importantly, specific and practical examples to help prevent others from experiencing the same pain you did.

Learning Ruby

There is a lot of material out there for getting involved with the Ruby community: books, online tutorials, projects, and more. Talks in this track should explore how you did it!

Details may include: the current resources that were especially helpful, the specific things that were particularly confusing during the learning process, and (going back to Ruby's origins as a language) what could be improved to make new learners happier.

Metaprogramming for Good

For many Rubyists, the journey of learning about metaprogramming goes something like this:

1) How cool! Let’s use metaprogramming everywhere!
2) Oh no, that was a terrible idea, this code is so hard to understand.
3) Well, okay, in certain circumstances, metaprogramming actually is the right technique to use.

Talks in this track should explore the situations in step 3: times when it was, in fact, appropriate to use metaprogramming. Talks may also address what other solutions were considered and what the experience of living with (and using) the metaprogramming code been like.

Weird and Wonderful

Let's take a journey outside of DevOps and web apps. There is a weird and wonderful world out there!

Ruby can be used for all sorts of things: from IoT to games to robots. Talks in this track should explore the wide variety of weird and wonderful things that Ruby can do, be it an amazing but atypical application or a particularly unique use case. Example topics include sharing the joy of _why Day or the wonder of building stuff with kids.

About the Review Process

Proposals will go through two rounds of evaluation. The first-round review will be blind — reviewers do not have access to your information, only what is in your proposal, to keep basic biases out of our calculations. Please respect this process by keeping your biographical information out of the proposal itself.

In the second round, proposals that have cleared the first round will be reviewed along with your information. The purpose of this round is to evaluate proposals alongside your past speaking experience, relevant credentials, and anything else that you provide that would help our committee see what a great job you'll do. The program committee is heavily committed to selecting a diverse and well-qualified group of speakers.

During the first round, program committee members may have questions and feedback for you about your proposal. The CFP application allows for two-way correspondence without revealing speaker identities. You'll receive an email notification when a reviewer leaves feedback for you. Please reply promptly and consider adjustments when requested. Our committee will have hundreds of proposals to look over, so you'll want to be sure that you're not a process blocker.

Every proposal submission will be responded to, whether or not the talk is accepted. Please only contact us with questions on this if you have not heard back by September 4.

Speaker Benefits

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

1. Free admission to the conference (for up to two Speakers).
2. A $500 USD travel reimbursement honorarium, sent to you post-RubyConf. Notes: for sessions with more than one speaker, this honorarium is to be split among all participants, at the speakers’ discretion. For non-U.S. speakers, please email us regarding travel reimbursements.
3. Invitation to our RubyConf 2019 Speaker Slack community, which can be a great resource as you're developing your talk.
4. Invitation to a Speaker Dinner on the evening before the conference, where you can meet the other Speakers and staff before everything kicks off.
5. 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.

Whether or not your talk is accepted, if you submit a proposal, we'll reserve a ticket space for you. So even if the conference sells out and your proposal isn't accepted, you'll still have the chance to buy a RubyConf ticket. Instructions on how to do so will be in the email that we send to you.