Call for Speakers

Topics

To get your ideas flowing, here are some areas we’re particularly interested in:

Cutting-edge technological advances in the world of CSS
Incredible ideas & mind-blowing experiments
Scale & Performance
Architecture & Maintainability
CSS Layout, Grid, Flexbox…
Container / Element Queries
Accessibility
CSS in Design Systems
Drawing and Animating with CSS
The Future of CSS
Collaboration between Product, Design and Implementation
CSS Testing
Variables aka Custom Properties
Houdini
Naming Conventions
SVG
CSS for Games
… so much more!

For further inspiration, check out the video recordings of CSSconf EU 2018’s talks on Youtube.

And remember: pick whatever you feel passionate about. This is your conference!

PS: If you can’t find a suitable topic for CSSconf EU, or you want to try your luck at more than one event, then consider submitting a talk to our partner conference JSConf EU – it’s happening in the same venue on the same weekend, and you’re welcome to submit multiple proposals.

We can help

We understand that not everyone is a natural-born talent on stage, can produce gripping slide decks, or is a live-demo master. Also, we know many don’t realize they have something great to talk about.

There are about a million reasons why you may not consider yourself a speaker. We are here to prove you wrong. If all you have is a gut feeling that you should be on stage, we are here to help you develop or hone the skills you think you lack to deliver a great presentation.

We’d be happy to brainstorm your interests and seek great hidden ideas.
We’d be happy to connect you with experienced speakers to help you prepare your submission.
We’d be happy to review and advise on how to produce a slide deck.
We’d be happy to rehearse via video chat with you.
We can hook you up with local groups so you can practice in front of a friendly crowd.

Again, whatever else you might need, we’re here to help. Get in touch: contact@cssconf.eu (please do not use this email to submit a proposal).

If you need more encouragement, see our blog post on How to write a great talk proposal for a tech conference.

Perks

If your proposal is selected, we will provide:

Travel to Berlin - this usually means that we’ll pay for your plane or train ticket, and also cover all transport costs within the city.

Entry to the conference - please note that we may not be done with the speaker selections by the time tickets go on sale, so if you want to secure your attendance, let us know in the submissions form and we’ll hold a ticket for you in case your talk is not selected.

Accommodation in a hotel - in close proximity to the venue and/or with a shuttle transfer arranged, for a day before and two days after the conference. If you’d like to stay longer, we can help you with the arrangements, just let us know. You will be required to cover any extra nights.

If your employer can cover your travel and hotel, we’ll be happy to list them as a company sponsor. The money we save will be invested into the general running of the conference and scholarships for attendees from underrepresented groups.

Childcare - if you need childcare, please get in touch. We want to make sure your stay is as enjoyable as possible.

The venue and the hotel will be accessible for wheelchair users and people with reduced mobility. If you have any concerns or questions about whether all your needs can be met, please contact us.

Selection Process

All submissions are anonymized to ensure there is no bias towards the submitter.
All submissions are reviewed and voted for by the conference organizers and additional invited CSS experts and community members. Each talk is rated on a scale from 1 to 5, taking into account the following criteria:
- relevance of the topic to the CSS community
- coherence and clarity of the proposal
- novelty/originality of the topic
- brevity: the topic can be reasonably covered in the allocated time
The top submissions are then de-anonymized so that we can take speaker details into consideration. We wrote about this and further considerations that go into our curation and selection process here.

We receive a lot more excellent submissions than we have speaking slots. This process has been refined over the years, and has helped us successfully select the best proposals, while hacking our own unavoidable biases.

The deadline for submitting proposals has passed. Thanks for submitting over 200 fantastic talk ideas! Our talk selection committee is busy reviewing. We plan to announce the final talk selection in early spring 2019.

Guidelines

Language: all talks are in English.
Talk Duration: talks should be 30 minutes long (for longer talks we’ll get in touch with you directly). We will be on a tight schedule and will enforce time limits rigorously. We ask that you time your presentation accordingly in advance.
Formatting: make sure that you care, and make sure we see that it is evident. Typos, sloppy formatting and all-lowercase submissions make our reading of your proposal tedious and will reflect negatively on the outcome of your submission.
Brevity: don’t get too wordy. If you need more than two paragraphs to get to the point of your proposal, we ask you to slim it down. With the amount of submissions we get, the quicker you can make a good first impression, the better.
Originality: our aim is to push the community forward and we favor original content. If you want to present a topic that you have talked about elsewhere, try to add a twist or new research / development to it — something that makes it unique.

Video Recordings

We plan to record and publish all talks online for free, along with a recording of the slide deck, live demo, and any on-presenter-screen activity. We do this for the benefit of the larger CSS community and those who couldn’t make it to the conference. We hope you agree with us, but if you are uncomfortable with this in any way, let us know and we will work to find a solution. Note that we disable comments on our published videos by default.

Finally, since you retain full ownership of your slides and recording, we’d like to ask you to make your materials and recording available under a Creative Commons (we default to non-commercial reuse) or other open source license.