What's the agenda? It's up to you!
At DDD East Midlands Conference, talks are selected by attendees. Anyone who has gained a ticket to the event using Eventbrite will be given a link to a website where they can vote for the talks they would like to see. They are shown talk titles and descriptions which have been stripped of any information that gives information about the presenter. Each person can select up to 10 talks.
A Brand New Experience
This year the process has a brand new look and feel. This is thanks to the efforts of San Digital.
The last couple of events we really wanted a process where voters could create a clean shortlist. As much as the ol’ long Google form worked alongside a page listing talks, it wasn’t the smoothest experience.
San Digital were fantastic to engage and work with, and you can read more about the work in this blog post
Voting
How to vote
- Register for a ticket to the event.
- You will receive an email with a link to the voting page.
- You will be asked to set up a login with AuthO. Please use the same email as you used for your Eventbrite ticket. We will do checks to ensure only attendees votes are considered in the selection process.
- Scroll and read through the many fantastic talk submissions. To read the full descriptions, use the details button to open a model.
- If you like the look of a talk, add it to your shortlist.
- Once you’ve shortlisted all the talks you want to see (and there will be a lot) click the yellow shortlist button.
- On the shortlist page you can select ticks for your final selection, and crosses for the talks that don’t make your final 10.
- Once you’ve picked your final 10, press the submit button at the bottom of the page and you will be done!
Talk selection
In order to make the process of talk selection unbiased, only the talk titles and talk descriptions are shown. No details about the speaker or where they work are revealed. There are many reasons why we have chosen to display talks in this way, including giving everyone a fair chance of being selected. The talks are then selected based on popularity vote. The talks with the most votes are selected, with a 20% discretion by organisers for helping with diversity. Last year we didn’t need to use this discretionary percentage. Each speaker only gets one talk selected.
The process for talk selection is pretty much the same as the previous events.
- The top voted talks will be selected.
- Speakers can only be selected for one talk. The talks that they submitted with the most votes will be the one that they will be asked to present at the conference.
- The above points apply for talk lengths as well. We will order based on the longest length to shortest length of talk.
- The organisers are allowed to use their discretion for 20% of talks for diversity purposes.
Reminders
A promise from us: we are only going to send limited reminders to vote. A maximum of 4.
Please don’t mute our email or put us in your junk mail - we may send important information later on.
What can selected speakers look forward to?
As with previous events we will offer support, including in the form of an invite to a days speakers workshop lead by Dylan Beattie. The organisers are dedicated to making the conference the best experience possible for all speakers (and attendees), so if you are selected as a speaker and have ANY concerns, please reach out to the organisers and we will do what we can to help.
Have fun voting!
