Call for Proposals — apply to give a talk at RustFest Global 2020!
This document applies to RustFest Global 2020 CfP. The proposals will be reviewed by our CfP committee.
We are inviting the Rust community to submit talks for our conference! This Call for Proposals will close on Wednesday 30th of September at 23:59 UTC. When you’re ready to submit a proposal, visit our CfP submission app and login with your Twitter or GitHub credentials or create an account.
We want to encourage new speakers to get on the virtual stage or experienced speakers to try out something new. Never have given a talk at a conference or thinking about changing the main topic of your speaking efforts? We are your conference!
Topics for RustFest #
RustFest is a Rust event. We are looking for Rust topics or topics that would interest Rustaceans (people involved with Rust). The Rust community is a very curious one, so talks about interesting new developments in the world of programming are welcome. Topics covering the social aspects of programming are also met with big interest. Open slots and chances of acceptance
RustFest Global will be held in three blocks to cover the American, European/African and Asian/Australian timezones. RustFest will have 4 to 8 regular speaking slots per block, depending on the length of the individual talks. When submitting please state your availability for each of these timezones.
- Tokyo (UTC+9): 10:00 - 14:00 (01:00 - 05:00 UTC)
- Berlin (UTC+1): 10:00 - 14:00 (09:00 - 13:00 UTC)
- Mexico (UTC-6): 10:00 - 14:00 (16:00 - 20:00 UTC)
Hence the conference will start on Saturday the 7th of November 2020 at 01:00 UTC, and will end on 20:00 UTC (preliminary, exact times might vary).
Most slots are open and will be filled through the CFP. Only the keynote speakers are invited.
We Do Help #
There are about a million reasons why you don’t consider yourself a speaker. We are here to prove you wrong. We are your conference, regardless of whether this is your first time on stage or you are an experienced speaker. If you are unsure, feel free to contact us:
- We are happy to brainstorm your interests to see if a great topic is hiding.
- We are happy to connect you with mentors early on to help prepare your submission, or you can refer to the Example Submission section below for tips.
- We are happy to review and advise on how to produce a slide deck.
- If you need practice giving talks, get in touch, we can hook you up with local groups or set up a stage for you and a bunch of friends in advance, so you can practice in front of a friendly crowd.
- Again, whatever else you might need, we’re here to help. Get in touch: coaching@rustfest.eu (just do NOT use this to submit a proposal).
If you need more encouragement, check out the following site from Tiffany Conroy, We Are All Awesome that tries to convince you to speak. For guides on the practical parts, see Zach Holman's speaking.io.
Accessibility #
RustFests care about accessibility a lot. Also for a virtual conference, accessibility is key. We will support your talk by providing captioning. When creating slides, we will provide you with information on how you can make your material as accessible as possible. Please read our Accessibility Guidelines and Code of Conduct.
The Selection Process #
Here is how we select speakers:
- Anonymise submissions, so we don’t bias against anything related to the submitter.
- Three rounds of voting:
- The first round rates each talk on a scale from 1 to 5 by all members of the CfP committee.
- The talks are classified as beginner, intermediate and expert relative to the other talks. Our aim is to create a conference with a nice spread of accessibility and topics. For these three classificatons the top-N (~10) submissions are selected for the second round.
- The second round de-anonymises so we can (finally) bias against speaker details (e.g. to find a mix of seasoned and new speakers). We do want new speakers on the conference, so don't fear losing out to "the pros" in the last minute.
- The third round is where we discuss for the pre-selected talks whether they provide a variety of topics and speakers.
We expect more submissions than speaking slots. The process helps us to select the right ones.
Guidelines #
Submit your proposal by Wednesday 23rd of September at 23:59 UTC.
The deadline for proposals has been extended until Wednesday, 30th September, 23:59 UTC. No excuses. You will receive word of your reviewed proposal before Monday 12th of October.
For RustFest Global we accept talks in any language. All talks accepted in languages other than in English will include professional subtitles in English when they are aired. For this we will ask you to pre-record your talk at least a week in advance (in all these cases one of the organizers will be in touch with you and will be able to provide help with the recording).
Talks are 25 or 55 minutes long (for longer talks we’d get in touch with you directly). That includes 3-5 minutes of Q&A. We will be on a tight schedule and enforce the end of a talk rigorously. Please notify us in advance how long you want your slot to be. We suggest timing your presentation in advance.
Make sure you care and make sure we see you care. Typos, sloppy formatting and all-lowercase submissions make our reading of your proposal tedious. These things will definitely count against your proposal.
Do not overdo it either. If you need more than two paragraphs to get to the point of your topic, we need to ask you to slim things down. With the amount of submissions we get, the quicker you can make a good impression, the better.
“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time” — Blaise Pascal
Do not forget to mention:
- for which times you are available.
- if you would prefer to prerecord your talk.
Original Topics #
One of the things we want to do with RustFest is to push the community forward. We can’t do this if the same people keep talking about the same things all the time. Thus, we favour original content. If you want to discuss a topic that you have talked about elsewhere, try to add a twist, or new research, or development, something unique. Of course, if your talk is plain awesome as-is, go for that :)
Pre-recorded Talks #
If your talk is accepted and you would like to submit a pre-recorded talk we encourage you to do so. Even if you intend to present live, you might be unable to do so. Reasons for this include but are not limited to not having a stable internet connection, or presentation anxiety. We do however encourage you to answer questions after the talk. This can also be achieved by having you call in over a telephone line when the internet connection is not sufficient.
The Perks #
If you get selected as a speaker at RustFest, here’s what you get:
- Full access to the virtual conference. If you happen to already have purchased a ticket we can refund you.
- Gear required to make your talk a success. For example if you require a webcam or microphone, we can discuss how to get one to you. We provide an up to 200 EUR reimbursement budget for all speakers for hardware expenses (just keep your receipts and submit them after the conference). We can also purchase and send you hardware if you cannot afford the upfront costs, please let us know and we will take care of it.
- A 200 EUR stipend for your efforts. Speakers should be compensated for their efforts: preparing and presenting a talk takes time and effort and we want to offset some of this work by sharing the funds provided by our sponsors and attendees. We will require an invoice, and you will need to be able to take care of any taxation requirements of this income that might arise in your country. Alternatively, if you can't or don't want to accept these funds we can donate them to a non-profit organization of your choice (restrictions may apply).
- Extra perks like streaming micropayments from attendees who are watching your presentation. Expect more details on these experiments later!
Example Submission #
Here’s a proposal that we accepted at another conference:
How To Be Better #
A lot of the principles of clean code are forgotten when writing documentation.
Have a single source of truth and don't repeat yourself. Avoid writing brittle code. Use ubiquitous terminology and choose searchable names. Be consistent in your formatting. Test your code. Refactor and practice successive refinement. Don't write any more than you need to.
These principles of clean code can be applied with great effect to the production and maintenance of documentation, but there's more to it than that. Code needs to satisfy machines and coders. Documentation needs to satisfy people performing range of different tasks: from cursory inspection through to intensive development.
This talk will review relevant principles and examine real-world examples, leaving you with a practical mental checklist for writing documentation that will help your users and your software thrive.
Misc #
Besides being livestreamed, all talks will also be recorded, transcribed, and — with your permission and after your review — published on the Rust videos YouTube channel, along with a recording of the slide deck, live-demo or other on-presenter-screen activity. The Rust Videos YouTube channel is managed and moderated by the Rust Community team.
We do this for the benefit of the larger Rust community and those who can’t make it to the conference. We hope you want to help out, but if you are uncomfortable in any way, let us know and we will work things out.
Finally, since you retain full ownership of your slides and recording, we’d like to ask you to make your materials and recording available under a creative commons or other open source license.