CFP & Selection Process - React Brussels Conf 2023
BeJS : Belgian JavaScript Community
A space to share knowledge around latest JS news and hot subjects, but also job offers and business opportunities
It's 2023, 10 years after ReactJS came to life, and we are so delighted to be able to celebrate our beloved library during our upcoming?REACT BRUSSELS , to happen next?October 13th, in Brussels & Online!
Last July 14th, we had our?Call For Papers?closed and we right after started the whole CFP selection process until we announced this year's full speaker line-up on July 20th.
In this short article, we would like to share with you how this process happens and how we manage to build our single-track programme...
?????? FIRST SPEAKER LINE-UP :
Before launching the CFP, we usually contact and confirm some speakers to join the first speaker line-up. Those are mainly contacted based on our community requests - as we always receive requests from our community members to invite some globally known speakers, and the only way to be sure to have them with us is to invite them directly. So we tend to invite 3, to 4 requested speakers to be announced on the first wave.
?????? CALL FOR PAPERS LAUNCH :
Once our 1st speaker wave is announced, we open the CALL FOR PAPERS for a limited time period (mainly 6 to 8 weeks) waiting for experts to submit their talks and proposals.
In the CFP form , we ask the applicant to fill in some basic information such as :?Name, Jobtitle, Talk Title & Description, Email, Social Media Links, Photo, Hobby?... but also ask them if they can transform their talk to a?lightning talk (10min)?and if their companies can be interested in?sponsoring the conference...
??????REACT BRUSSELS 2023 CFP FIGURES :
We received?125?talks, from?98?speakers (multiple applications are allowed).
??????CALL FOR PAPERS CLOSURE & SELECTION:
Once the deadline is reached, CFP is closed and the real work starts...!!!
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WHAT REAL WORK ??...!
Our first selection step is to create an anonymous list containing only TALK TITLES + TALK DESCRIPTIONS and share it with some of our community partners and community members who manage to help us select "technically" the best proposals. By "the best" we mean the ones that respond better to the local market needs and levels (Belgium).
After we receive the votes, we classify all talks by category (Performance, Security, Architecture, New Farmeworks, Non-tech talks, ...etc) and put them in order of interest. (In case any of the selected speakers is not available anymore or cancels their participation, we then reach out to the appilcant of the next talk in the waiting list)
Once this step is achieved, we move on to linking the selected top +/-20 talks to their owners (applicants)... and here a second step usually is to be engaged !
Knowing that we are a community that focuses essentially on the diversity and inclusion aspect of any given conference, we are obliged to go through another selection to give everyone their chances. For this, we must make sure that our gender balance is somehow 50:50 :?(By experience : More women on stage = more women in audience). We also consider the background of speakers, and their locations (Though we love to invite many experts from USA, INDIA, CANADA, or even further places, but we also need to be represented by European speakers, and those even closer to us : Belgian speakers?(don't forget that this is a conference in Brussels, the heart of Europe??) ... that is to say, " we have successfully managed to create conferences where the line-ups were so diverse and multi-cultural, ... and that's how our audience has been growing to be ..."
The other main criterion we stick to, is the possibility of including?LITHNING TALKS?in the programme. Knowing that the conference is single-tracked, happening on a single day, we cannot deny the importance of having 10min talks as part of the programme. That being said, we strongly consider talks that can be converted to short ones (10min). Besides, these have proven to be very attractive sessions, less time-demanding, and allow us to include more talks , hence accept more speakers.
Another important factor we also think our conferences exist for, is offering a stage to young speakers and first-time BeJS speakers, how is that!?
We actually have been so lucky to keep receiving CFP applications from previous?BeJSconf?or?React Brussels?speakers, which is very delighful, as it denotes clearly that they loved the experience and would love to come back again. But even with all the will we might have to welcome them again, and with all the qaulity talks they propose, we assess it necesary to give the opportunity to other speakers to be part of our modest conference experience, to meet the whole BeJS family and to relish some of our local beer and tasty chocolate ??;
STAY TUNED FOR THE FULL DAY SCHEDULE, ON JULY 27TH, 2023
????THANKS:
To wrap it up, and on behalf of BeJS community, we would love to thank everyone who has considered our conference to deliver a talk, we are a growing community in Belgium that is always looking forward to delivering the best JS related activities, meetups or conferences by connecting our local members to the global communities. We also invite non-selected speakers to keep applying to speak at our conferences????, we are sure the collaboration will end up happening one day.
See you all at?REACT BRUSSELS
JS Regards,