ETC 2017 Call for Collaboration

Other conferences call for papers or proposals. We call for collaboration.

TL;DR:  Propose a talk without necessarily finalizing the abstract. Defer event-specific work through collaboration (talk on Skype/Hangouts) to only happen when selected.
Event: ETC 2017 in Helsinki, Finland 9.-10-2-2017.
Compensation: Speaker travel expenses guaranteed by the conference.
Deadline:  Submit by August 21^st. 

Submit. 

Our conference

European Testing Conference 2017 takes place in Helsinki, Finland February 9-10^th 2017. Conference travels annually to different locations in Europe.

We are setting up the best practical testing conference that represents testing as different people know it: testers, developers, business analysts. We recognize that testing is continuous, and we want to learn to do it’s different flavors better through sharing ideas and experiences in spirit of dialog. We seek to understand.

Looking for sessions

To find the right people to share in this conference, we want to collaborate with the existing and emerging speaker communities. We find our professional home communities to be those of agile and context-driven testing, and software craftsmanship, but actively seek to break the walls we’ve built up between the communities.

We want a good balance of European and non-European speakers and a good balance of craftsmanship and (exploratory) testing backgrounds.

We ask you to collaborate on three types of sessions:

1. Talks of ideas with practical applicability (30 minutes)
2. Demos of ideas in use – show and tell (45 minutes)
3. Workshops of hands-on experiences for participants (90 minutes)

We ask you to collaborate, because we believe there are two types of sessions we could get.

“Best of”

The first category is solid sessions that awe people in other conferences already. Our audience has not seen them, and we might not be aware of them. Tell us!

“New Sessions”

The second category is sessions that could emerge when there is the right stage. Most proposals conference speakers work hard on will be in this category. We want you to share your topic and excitement, and collaborate before you invest heavily in making the session final as a proposal.

We acknowledge we can’t fit all the great sessions there are. So we want to make it mutually efficient, yet enabling great content we as organizers would be unaware of. We believe there’s more value out of the collaboration than just our conference talk selection through getting to know one another.

When you respond to the call and we’re considering you, we’ll have a 15-minute Skype/Hangouts session with you to talk about your idea. If you get cut from consideration just for not having space in talk budget for your type of idea, we’ll let you know by email. We expect the finalized abstract from those who we choose, not as criteria of entry. Timeframe for the discussions is August and September, and this call closes on August 21^st.

What we have to offer:

• entry to participate and present at a great conference in Helsinki, Finland 9.-10.2.2017
• travel expenses and hotel 3 nights reimbursed
• Profit sharing – we share ½ of the profits with the speakers. You get a share into honorarium pot (1 share for talks/demos, 2 shares for workshops) that translates to money based on the conference’s financial success

What we expect:

• Speakers who can stay and participate for the duration of the conference. This is very important to having a great learning environment.

Come. Learn. Do. Teach. Test.

Submit now. 

Calling for a Keynote!

Many (most) conference fill in the keynote slots with regular faces as keynote speakers. As an organizer, who is a speaker and a starting keynoter, Maaret Pyhäjärvi is driving a new style for one of the European Testing Conference 2017 keynotes.

We have invited three of our four keynotes, and the fourth one is now open for a call to keynote for  European Testing Conference 2017 in Helsinki, Finland on Feb 8.-10th 2017.

There are people out there who know they would do great on a keynote. They are strong presenters with experience, and a message that needs to get heard. As conference organizers, we can't know who they are, and without a public call, we will choose only amongst people we know of.

This is a conference on testing as developers and testers and business analysts know it. Your talk could be anything you think is appropriate for this mixed audience with interest in testing.

For selection, the final call is on the organizers. To work on our understanding, however, we team up with our advisors to ask for their perceptions.

In this call, we ask you to announce yourself and your topic(s), provide a video reference if you have one of you speaking. If your don't have one, you can either create one or do a sample piece with us over Skype.

You have until end of June to let us know of your existence, we select the keynoter in July.

If you feel like coaching would help you with final delivery, don't let that stop you. There's people we can direct you to for help.

What we offer:

• We pay travel + stay for all our speakers for three nights. Conference entry is free. And we have a speaker's dinner on Feb 8th 2017, just before the conference.
• Keynoters get 5 shares into our speaker profit sharing model. In 2016 it meant being paid 800 euros. 
• Keynoters get to amp up their income by delivering a one-day training where half of the profit is theirs (that is on Feb 8th)

What we require:

• You want to stay for the whole conference and not just show up to deliver a talk

We'd love to see a new keynoting voice emerge!

Call for Keynotes is here.

Added note: this is not a women-only call but a new keynoters building up their reputation call. Gender is not a selection criteria in any way here.