devopsdays Raleigh - Propose

Call for proposals opens Tuesday, Jan 1, 2019.
Call for proposals closes Friday, May 3, 2019.
Selected proposals will be announced on Wednesday, May 15, 2019.

Main theme for Raleigh 2019: Expanding DevOps: How DevOps Permeates Every Aspect of Your Organization.


There are three ways to propose a topic at devopsdays:

  1. A 25-minute talk presented during the conference, usually in the mornings.
  2. An Ignite talk presented during the Ignite sessions (scheduling varies). These are 5 minutes slots with slides changing every 15 seconds (20 slides total).
  3. Workshop 90 minutes in length with a 10-15 minute break, please include accessibility requirements for facility
  4. Open Space: If you'd like to lead a group discussion during the attendee-suggested Open Space breakout sessions, it is not necessary to propose it ahead of time. Those topics are suggested in person at the conference. If you'd like to demo your product or service, you should sponsor the event and demo it at your table.

Suggested Speaker Topics:

  • Real-world view of digital transformation and how it was (is being) done in your organization
  • Scaling DevOps
  • Driving the DevOps Journey - a view from the C-level
  • Game Devops and Backend: eg How does Fortnite scale ?
  • Self-Driving cars
  • Machine Learning, AI and how it affects DevOps
  • Building DevOps from the bottom up
  • Culture change/Transforming a monolithic company
  • Transforming any size company
  • Overview of the Triangle market - trends, shifts, the future
  • Bridging the executive knowledge gap of DevOps
  • How to get executives on board with developing code straight to production
  • SRE: What is it? Why do you need to know about it?
  • DevOps Security Testing/DevSecOps
  • How big data, data analytics and data monitoring affects/integrates with DevOps
  • Business management tools, version control, how
  • How things went wrong within a DevOps org and how we fixed it
  • Team collaboration and communication across the organization
  • Blockchain and how it relates to DevOps
  • Docker in AWS ECS - not just kubernetes
  • CI/CD with IOT or embedded systems
  • CI/CD in general and how to make it work in various sized organizations
  • BDD/ATDD/TDD
  • Performance testing
  • Personal path of how I became a DevOps Engineer
  • Demo and/or use case of using specific tools
  • Jenkins Pipeline
  • Technical deep dives in Jenkins, Microservices, Kubernetes, Docker, Istio, Openshift
  • Docker in AWS ECS and in production
  • Kubernetes in containers
  • Core OS/RHEL integration
  • Serverless DevOps
  • Essential tools for team growth
  • Decision engines
  • Networking DevOps
  • Orchestration
  • Automating customer deployments with distributed/hybrid architecture
  • How to best utilize Azure
  • Azure vs AWS - pros and cons

Choosing talks is part art, part science; here are some factors we consider when trying to assemble the best possible program for our local audience:

  • broad appeal: How will your talk play out in a room of people with a variety of backgrounds? Technical deep dives need more levels to provide value for the whole room, some of whom might not use your specific tool.
  • new local presenters: You are the only one who can tell your story. We are very interested in the challenges and successes being experienced in our local area. We are happy to provide guidance/coaching for new speakers upon request.
  • under-represented voices: We want to hear all voices, including those that may speak less frequently at similar events. Whether you’re in a field not typically thought of as a technology field, you’re in a large, traditional organization, or you’re the only person at your organization with your background, we are interested in your unique experience.
  • original content: We will consider talks that have already been presented elsewhere, but we prefer talks that the local area isn’t likely to have already seen.
  • no third-party submissions: This is a small community-driven event, and speakers need to be directly engaged with the organizers and attendees. If a PR firm or your marketing department is proposing the talk, you’ve already shown that as a speaker you’re distant from the process.
  • no vendor pitches: As much as we value vendors and sponsors, we are not going to accept a talk that appears to be a pitch for your product.

How to submit a proposal:

Please use the following Form to propose a talk: