Call For Papers

php|tek is, first and foremost, a conference built by developers for developers. Many of our speakers are, indeed, expert developers who have deep knowledge of a specific topic, or a cool project to show the rest of the community.

Topics We're Interested In

Our conferences are not divided along pre-defined “tracks.” Instead, we prefer to “tag” each of our talks with two attributes: knowledge level and topic. Thus, rather than forcing a rigid structure on our schedule, we allow each speaker to submit talks on topics that are important to them, and each attendee to participate in the talks that are relevant to their interests and appropriate to their level of expertise.

We are primarily interested in very pragmatic talks that can offer the attendees information and knowledge that is likely to directly impact their day-to-day programming work. Naturally, this doesn't mean that your talks should be devoid of theoretical information—but, rather, that it should introduce the theory starting from a practical topic.

Talk Make-up

All “regular” talk sessions are one hour long. You can request that your audience have access to a laptop to fully enjoy your presentation (most attendees bring a laptop anyway); the conference organizers will provide each attendee with his or her personal “web space” with support for PHP 5 and MySQL, DB/2 and Oracle Express. If you need any additional tools for your talk, you should specify so in your proposal (that way, our tech team can coordinate any installation requirements with you in time for the conference).

Incidentally, our conferences have featured this type of presentation for a few years now; we call them Bring Your Own Laptop (or BYOL for short) sessions, and have discovered a few tricks to making them successful:

• First of all, BYOL only works with tutorials. Because of the open nature of this kind of talk, you have to be very familiar with the topic and be able to diverge from your study plan in response to questions from the audience.
• BYOL works very well if you set up your talk as a series of short lectures followed by an exercise. Plan to make the solution to each exercise available—that way, those attendees who don't want to write code can still look at how an idea can applied in practice.
• Because your audience will enter the conference room expecting interaction, you must be prepared to be flexible with your slides so as not to fall too much behind schedule.

In-Depth Tutorials

php|tek features an extra day (May 15th) dedicated to “in-depth tutorials” that provide much more in-depth coverage of a specific topic than regular talks.

Tutorials are either three (half-day) or six (full-day) hours long, and happen in a more intimate setting than regular sessions; if you plan on submitting a proposal for these slots, please make sure to show that there are sufficient materials to cover the time allowed, and that you are comfortable enough with the topic to answer an increased number of questions (which is a likely occurrence during tutorials).

Speaker Package

Our speaker package includes:

• Complimentary access to the conference
• A travel allowance, based on where you're coming from and the number of talks you're giving
• A stipend for each talk

Submitting a Talk

You can submit a talk by sending an e-mail to the conference organizers. Please note that there is no limit to the number of proposals you can send.

When submitting one or more proposals, be sure to include the following in your e-mail:

Required Information

• A title for your talk
• A brief synopsis (less than 100 words)
• The type of talk (i.e.: regular session, BYOL session, half-day tutorial, full-day tutorial)
• A recent bio
• The location you will be coming from
• Your complete contact information (including phone number)
• If available, a recent picture of yourself (highest resolution possible, please).