Speaker Submissions

Do you have a presentation idea or topic that you want to share with the attendees of WordCamp Orlando 2013? If so please complete the form below, and a member of our team will contact all of our speakers within a few days of the selection deadline (September 25th, 2013 11:59 PM ET) and notify you if you have been selected as a speaker.

A few things to keep in mind about presenting at WordCamp Orlando:

  • Being a professional speaker is NOT required HOWEVER you must know what you are talking about, and the subject must be related to WordPress in some way (subjects like front-end development, how to manage freelancing, social media etc., will be accepted as long as you can talks in light of how they relate to WordPress – make sure you note this in your speaker submissions).
  • Your session is not primarily to promote your own theme, plugin or business. If your session is to detail how you used WordPress code to build some really great aspect of your theme, plugin or business, and you’d like to present that as a sort of case study, go ahead and submit your session, but know that we’re not going to allow for a sales pitch at any point.
  • You have to know how to spell WordPress. And respect the WordPress logo/trademarks.
    You can submit multiple speaker submissions for different talks. However speakers will only be allowed one talk per entire event, so submit your best submissions only.
  • Be prepared to submit speaker slides PRIOR to the event. No last minute talk preparations (unless of course you were notified last minute or some other sort of emergency). First time speakers might need to submit slides for a general review.

About our presentations:

We will have two full days of presentations. We will have one main day (Saturday) with multiple tracks with another day (Sunday) being devoted to specialized workshops and sessions. This year we are mixing things up and considering having several formats of talks:

  • “Standard” Sessions – Approx. 30 minutes with some time for questions.
  • Orlando Lightning – You get 5 minutes and a handfull of slides to talk in between other sessions. Unconference style and great for short and right-to-the-point topics.
  • Workshops – Several speakers give detailed and coordinated talks about a subject in a single block of time WordCamp Orlando might suggest to you a format if there is interest in your submission. The safest bet is to plan on the standard session.
  • Selection Process:

    All selections and submissions are reviewed by our committee. We cannot accept all submissions, and in fact the majority are NOT selected. Factors we look for in presentations are the degree of uniqueness and popularity of the topic, the speaker qualifications and experience (past speaking experience is NOT required though, since we do have first-time speakers at WordCamp Orlando), hometown of speaker (we try to keep a certain percentage of speakers local), and other factors. If your submission is not accepted, we might not be able to personally respond to each submission with a detailed response.

    Finally, there’s been a lot of talk about variety of speakers at technology conferences. Our general policy is that we don’t consider the race, sex, religion, or any other factor of the speaker to play a part in our selection process. We do try to have a variety of speakers of different backgrounds at our events but this has less to do with how speakers are selected and more to do with the fact that in Central Florida we already have a wide variety of people in our population.

    Click here to submit your speaker application.

    Update: We have closed comments here because we want people submitting proposals via our official form rather than anything official in the comments section. Thanks!

6 thoughts on “Speaker Submissions

    1. David Laietta

      You’re way too fast man!

      The site is still in progress, but rest assured, I’ll let you know when it is set up. Expect it within the next week. We’re heading to WordCamp San Francisco, so we won’t be able to get much done on this until then.

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