Extended Call for Speakers and online-only option

The Call for Speakers opened early in January and was due to close on 6th February.

In the meantime we've been working to establish some of the details of how we can run the event, and one of those details may be important to some prospective speakers.

in particularly we are now confident that we can offer a number of remote speaker slots (i.e. the speaker delivers their material remotely, and this is streamed into the physical venue, as well as being available to online attendees). Our plan is, now, to offer this for one of the tracks - either for the full three days, or just for one or two days, depending on submissions.

Previously, the Submissions form had a field to indicate if you would be prepared to speak online in the case that we had to move the whole event online - with an extra option for "online-only", which we said may be available in a small number of cases.

So we have now changed that to give greater emphasis to the online-only option as a fully-fledged choice - as well as the choice of "online preferred".

Speakers with existing proposals should feel free to go back in and update their preference if they choose. For speakers who have held back on the basis that they are not ready to commit to an in-person event, yet, we hope this will be valuable to you.

As a result of this change, we're also going to extend the Call for Speakers for an extra week! The new closing date will be the 13th February. For those who were planning to submit their proposal late on the 6th February (you know who you are) please stick to that plan! 😉

As a reminder, the call for speakers page is here.

We're still working to establish exactly what we can offer to remote attendees, but it is looking hopeful that we can offer some, if not all, tracks on a live stream. We'll update with more details as soon as we can.