In Their Words, Part Two
DDD Perth is proud to put our speaker community front and centre. We are very proud of their achievements, from seasoned speakers right through to our first-time speakers in their first year out of university.
Last year, we asked a bunch of speakers from the 2017 and 2018 conferences what they liked about DDD Perth. Here’s what they said. We blushed.
In fact, we blushed so much, we had to split the post in two. There was too much love for one single post.
Donna was always going to be an international speaker, we just need to say this upfront. Because hey, we’ll take the praise as our own, but honestly, it’s all Donna.
DDD Perth was a safe and welcoming community to do my first ever conference presentation. They provided abstract writing assistance and presentation tips! DDD launched my international speaking journey so I definitely recommend giving it a go and asking for help if it’s your first time! There’s so many awesome people who would be happy to mentor and assist you! 😍
We try hard to make the conference a welcoming place for everyone, including first-time speakers and others without much experience. We have a speaker mentoring course for successful speakers, so by the time you get on stage at the conference, you’ve already met your peers and gotten an opportunity to get your presentation reviewed and refined. The recordings we make on the day (you can see Donna’s here and here…and here) are extremely valuable as a live portfolio. Other conferences can see what they’re getting which means you’re more likely to be accepted.
Hadi Eskandari
Last year, I decided to fly to Perth to do a presentation at DDD Perth as a part of my DDD conference grand tour. I was blissfully welcomed by a warm and supportive community that I have not seen the like of. The conference was top notch, the venue was exceptional and the feedback I received was well worth the invested effort.
That community Hadi is talking about? It’s Perth.
I’m actually not going to add anything else. Watch Hadi’s presentation here.
Eumir Gaspar
The speaker workshops were a great help for first timers like me! I also had the chance to meet some of my fellow speakers and witnessed how we all evolved and improved our talks. If you have something to share, this would be a great starting point.
DDD Perth tries to appeal to the whole software community, especially people that don’t normally get to attend or speak at conferences. We’re thankful for people like Eumir who put their hand up to try something new. I’m glad you had a great experience!
If you’re still on the fence about submitting to DDD Perth, I hope these friendly faces have gone some way to convincing you that’s it’s worth it!
There are many more people who have spoken at DDD conferences; you can find a lot of the speakers’ Twitter handles on our previous agenda pages. The previous abstracts are all shown and can give you an idea of the types of topics that have been presented before.
We want to encourage people that wouldn’t normally speak at conferences to give it a go! We have a few initiatives to help with that:
- We have an enforced code of conduct to create a friendly, welcoming atmosphere.
- We do anonymous session voting; we will only show the title, abstract and tags of a talk to voters to remove unconscious bias.
- We accept long (45 mins) and short (20 mins) talk options.
- We accept a broad range of technical and non-technical topics related to the software industry; if voters think your talk is interesting, it’s in! You don’t have to be a developer to submit a talk (or attend); we welcome everyone in the software industry.
- We encourage submissions from multiple presenters as well as solo presenters.
- We have a free mentoring service; we have a bunch of experienced speakers who are happy to have a confidential chat with you to run through any ideas you have or give safe and constructive feedback.
- There will also be free speaker training and support for all speakers, so first-timers, juniors, and everyone else is encouraged to submit and will have support!
- Speakers can opt-out of question & answer time at the end of their presentation if they don’t feel comfortable doing it.
Still not sure? That’s okay! There’s always next year.
Convinced? Fantastic! We’ll publish our CFP through our mailing list and on social media when it’s time. If you want to start early, we’ll be using Sessionize again, so set up your account and get writing…
Finally, if you need a few extra pointers, Amy Kapernick wrote a summary piece on submitting to conferences, after our Global Diversity CFP Day workshop from mid-January. I hope it inspires you to submit to DDD Perth in 2020!
