OSCON Data 2011 Call for Participation

Call closed 11:59pm 03/28/2011 PDT.

The O’Reilly OSCON Data conference is the first of its kind: bringing together open source culture and data hackers to cover data management at a very practical level. From disks and databases through to big data and analytics, OSCON Data will have instruction and inspiration from the people who actually do the work.

OSCON Data will take place July 25-27, 2011, in Portland, Oregon. We’ll be co-located with OSCON itself.

Proposals should include as much detail about the topic and format for the presentation as possible. Vague and overly broad proposals don’t showcase your skills and knowledge, and our volunteer reviewers aren’t mind readers. The more you can tell us, the more likely the proposal will be selected.

Proposals that seem like a “vendor pitch” will not be considered. The purpose of OSCON Data is to enlighten, not to sell.

If you are one or more of the following:

• Developer or software architect
• Data analyst
• Sysadmin
• DBA
• Evil genius

We invite you to submit a proposal to lead conference sessions or workshops at OSCON Data 2011.

Some of the topics we’re on the lookout for the 2011 conference program are:

• Data storage, management, and design
• Big data and analytics
• Distributed data
• Hadoop ecosystem
• Relational databases & ecosystems (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Drizzle)
• NoSQL databases (column stores, documents stores, graph DBs, etc.)
• Real-time (streaming data, sensor networks, robotics, AI)
• Data as a platform
• Visualization tools

Proposals will be considered for the following types of presentations:

• 40 minute presentations
• 90 minute workshops (should be of immediate practical application)

Limited speaking opportunities are also available through conference sponsorship. Contact Sharon Cordesse at (707) 827-7065 or scordesse@oreilly.com for more information.

What if I submitted a data proposal for OSCON already?

We’ll be using the data-related proposals we received for OSCON as we consider the sessions to include in OSCON Data. If you have any questions, please contact our speaker manager Shirley Bailes.

How does OSCON Data relate to the O’Reilly Strata conference?

OSCON Data and Strata complement each other: where OSCON Data is intensely practical and focused on systems architecture, software and hardware, Strata takes a broader application and business-centric view of making data work.

Some tips for writing a good proposal for a good talk:

• Help us understand why your presentation is the right one for OSCON Data.
• Keep the audience in mind: they’re technical, professional, and already pretty smart. They also will smell a marketing pitch.
• Clearly identify the level of the talk and why people will want to attend: is it for beginners to the topic, or for gurus? Is this a trending topic, or an installation tutorial?
• Give it a simple and straightforward title or name: fancy and clever titles or descriptions make it harder for people (committee and attendees) to figure out what you’re really talking about
• Limit the scope of the talk: in 40 minutes, expect to pick a useful aspect of a topic; a particular technique; or walk through a simple program
• Pages of code are unreadable: mere mortals can deal with code a line at a time.
• Be authentic! Your peers need original presentation ideas that focus real-world scenarios, relevant examples, and knowledge transfer
• If you are proposing a panel, tell us who else would be on it
• Does your presentation have the participation of a woman, person of color, or member of another group often underrepresented at tech conferences? Diversity is one of the factors we seriously consider when reviewing proposals as we seek to broaden our speaker roster

Above all else

Present something relevant. One of your challenges as a proposer is to demonstrate that you understand that attendees might need an extra reason to pay attention to something that they might otherwise think of as "settled"

Other resources to help write your proposals:

• See the list of sessions chosen for the OSCON 2010 program and read their descriptions
• Watch video from previous OSCONs
• See speaker presentation files from 2010

Important Dates

Call for Participation Closes – March 28, 2011
Program Announced and Registration Opens – April 2011
All proposers notified – Early April 2011

Submit your proposal