Call for Speakers: London Clojurian Conference 2016

December 2016 we celebrate the sixth birthday of ClojureX, a two-day conference organised by the London Clojurians and SkillsMatter. Submit your talk ideas by 30th August to take part in the fun.

Previous conferences have included a diverse range of topics and speakers in the areas of Clojure, Clojurescript and Functional Programming. At last years conference we were quite surprised how many people are already using Clojure at work. In 2014 we ran a poll of our audience and 18% were using Clojure on a daily basis. For the same poll in 2015, 78% were using Clojure for their daily work. What will the 2016 poll reveal?

The London Clojure community continues to grow and we want to hear all your stories and learn from your experiences, no matter how long you have been working with Clojure. So please consider submitting a talk (or several talks) to the ClojureX conference in London on the 1st & 2nd December.

If you have never spoken before or want some handy hints on presenting and getting your talk accepted for Clojure eXchange, then join our workshop on Giving your first Meetup or Clojure eXchange talk on 2nd August, 2016 (video coming soon).

Anyone accepted to speak at the Clojure eXchange conference gets a free ticket, or re-imbursed if you have already purchased a ticket. You also get a free ticket for a friend. A 25% discount on ticket purchase for anyone who submits to the CFP but does not get accepted.

Conference day(s)

The conference is a single track over two days. Each day starts with a 45 minute keynote and then 30 minute talks for the rest of the day, with 10 minute lightning talks after lunch. There is also the option of having a discussion panel at the end of each day.

Why attend

Of course we try and get a wide range of excellent talks for you to absorb during the two days. As well as new speakers, we also get many well known speakers and developers from the community and its a chance to ask them all your burning questions in person.

There is a chance to hack along with other developers and plenty of space at the venue to create your own adhoc hacking area. Last year we also had an improptu lunchtime hack session where a challenge was set and we paired and grouped up to see how far we could get solving that challenge.

Actually being at the event also allows you to talk with other developers about their experiences with Clojure, swapping tips and tricks, discussing libraries and whether your web frameworks should implement the whole of the HTTP specification.

Many of the conference sponsors are hiring as are many of the developers attending, so its also a chance to look for new opportunities with companies and development teams using Clojure and functional programming

As organisers we alway look to make it as easy as possible to make new friends and meet others from the London Clojurian community. We are a friendly group and welcome anyone at any level (if you have had experences otherwise, please let me know and we will fix it).

Why submit a talk

Apart from getting a free ticket if you get accepted, its a great opportunity to discover what ideas and topics interest you the most. What do you care about? What challenges do you have at work? What iches do you want to (programmatically) scratch? These questions are ways to focus on things you would like to talk about.

If you want more talk ideas, then take a look at our past conferences to see the kinds of talks we have had before. You may find something interesting to trigger your own ideas or find something that we havent talked about enough.

Public speaking is a great way to ground your understanding of a topic and give you more confidence. Its also great for your career and getting you noticed with prospective employers.

If you want to do a talk but need some help or a confidence boost (its scary for everyone at first) then come along to the London Clojurian meetup on 2nd August where we are running a workshop on speaking at meetups and conferences.

Experience reports wanted

Anyone can give an interesting talk and some of the most valuable are based on your own experiences and that of your team.

Last year we had a great talk by William Hamilton, a lead developer at Funding Circle who took the decision to re-architect all their software using Clojure and Clojurescript, coming from mainly a Ruby background. William talked about why such a change was valuable to the company, what the challenges were, how they trained people and helped them make the switch. William also discussed the new Clojure & Kafka based architect for their back-end services. It was a facinating way to round of the conference.

Previous conferences

All the content from our previous conferences are available via the ClojureX Conference page on the SkillsMatter website. This includes videos of the sessions and pictures from the event to help you get a sense of what it will be like.

Summary

Help make ClojureX 2016 our best conference so far by submitting a talk (or as many talks as you want).

If you have never spoken before or want some handy hints on presenting and getting your talk accepted for Clojure eXchange, then join our workshop on Giving your first Meetup or Clojure eXchange talk on 2nd August, 2016.

Anyone accepted to speak at the Clojure eXchange conference gets a free ticket, or re-imbursed if you have already purchased a ticket. If accepted you also get a free ticket for someone else.

There is a 25% discount on tickets for anyone who submits a session but does not get accepted.

Thank you.
@jr0cket

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