Call for Proposals

We are inviting the Julia community to submit talks and workshop proposals for the upcoming JuliaCon (August 7th-11th 2018, London, UK). JuliaCon 2018 is the fifth annual Julia community meeting. We encourage everyone who is interested to consider submitting a proposal, regardless of your level of experience with Julia or as a speaker. JuliaCon thrives on having talks ranging from introductory to advanced. If you are reading this and work with Julia in any form, we want you to consider submitting a proposal!

Topics

Over the years, JuliaCon presentations have ranged from introductory to advanced and have been from industry and academia. To get a feel for previous years’ presentations, take a look at our past programmes and recordings: (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017). We are interested in all topics that have to do with Julia, including the following incomplete list:

Industrial applications

Finance and economics

Statistics, machine learning, and AI

Numerical and mathematical optimization

Scientific computing

Biology, bioinformatics, health, medicine, and health disparities

Data analytics and visualization

General computing

Julia’s compiler, tooling, and ecosystem

Software engineering best practices

Notes

Proposal Types

The most important consideration is whetherthink it would be interesting.

Talks are 30 minutes long, including 5 minutes allocated for questions from the audience.

Lightning talks are 10 minutes long, including 2 minutes allocated for audience questions.

Workshops are two to three hours long and are either in-depth tutorials or interactive hands-on sessions.

Posters are presented during a well attended evening session inspiring discussion and collaboration with the Julia community.

Package collaboration time is a break out session for package maintainers to recruit contributors and evangelize their software or work together with existing contributors. You are encouraged to ask for time for a package or set of packages that have overlapping communities. These sessions will be advertised on the schedule and meet in the break out room. To set one of these up please contact the committee.

When submitting your proposal (abstract), you may select multiple categories for consideration. Proposals are assigned to presentation types based on amount of high quality material and schedule availability. If you have other ideas or suggestions, like a topic or focus of a hackathon, please let us know and we will see what we can do.

Mentoring for first time speakers:

First time speakers are welcomed and encouraged. In order to support speakers, we are going to be trialing a process this year for obtaining mentorship and feedback from experienced speakers. These mentoring sessions can cover any of the following:

Exploring and brainstorming your interest to help you identify hidden things that can lead to great talks.

Connecting you with experienced speakers to help you develop your proposal and talk

Reviewing your slide decks or notes

Advice on how to deliver an engaging talk

Are you interested in applying for mentoring? Willing to mentor first time speakers?

Mentors/mentees applications close on: March 18, 2018 11:59pm (AOE) Apply here!

Proposal Advice

Submit proposals early, as it allows us to contact you and give feedback if necessary.

When thinking about what makes a good topic, ask yourself what kind of presentation would make you or your friends excited.

Talk about your own experiences. You could tell us how you use Julia in your work or for a project.

We are interested in both innovations you developed and restrictions you encountered in Julia.

It may be a good idea to review previous presentations for inspiration and ideas.

If you are presenting about a certain project, package, or company, include links to guide the reader to more information.

Try not to assume familiarity with your subject when writing the abstract; the average reader is most likely not an expert in your area of expertise.

Avoid opaque titles; while witty titles are good, an informative title is essential.

Avoid infomercials; while we love to hear how you use Julia in your company, JuliaCon is not the place to sell your product.

If you want feedback before submitting a proposal or if you are interested in the mentorship program, contact us at juliacon@julialang.org well ahead of the deadline.

If you have doubts about becoming a speaker, check out the website We are all awesome.

We look forward to your proposals and to seeing you at JuliaCon 2018.

The fine print

Submission process

We are using an anonymized submissions process, to avoid selection bias related to the speaker.

Travel assistance

Travel assistance (in form of reimbursement of costs for flight and housing) and/or a reduced conference ticket is available for a limited number of speakers, particularly those who bring new perspectives and diverse backgrounds to JuliaCon. Apply here!

Recordings and materials

We plan to video record all talks and will make them available after the conference. We do this for those who cannot attend. If you are uncomfortable with having your talk recorded, however, please let any member of the committee know; being recorded is not a requirement to attend JuliaCon or to give a presentation. Finally, we also ask you to make your materials and recording available under a Creative Commons (default: no commercial reuse) or other open source license.

How to contact us

You can reach us with questions and concerns at juliacon@julialang.org or on Twitter as @JuliaCon2018