SIGNAL features breakout sessions that truly show the power of communications and leading technologies implemented into everyday human interactions. We are looking for talks that are technical, educate, share business transformation journeys, deliver excellent use case examples, and could be applicable to developers, product managers, line of business leaders, founders, technologies, humanitarians, and general builders looking to learn how to move their skill set, business, charity, and/or community to the next level using communications.

We will accept: 1. Technical Stories 2. Business and Use-Case Talks 3. Inspiring uses of technology 4. Customer Examples/Case Studies

Topics

Twilio is a cloud-communications company, so some of the topics we’ll cover at SIGNAL include:

• SMS, SIP, Voice, and Video
• Messaging
• Bots and Machine Learning
• Internet of Things
• APIs and Composability
• Stackless infrastructure
• Mobile development
• Twilio HOWTOs

But please don’t let that list constrain you. Ultimately, we want SIGNAL to be a showcase for the industry’s best technical stories, and some of the best talks at previous SIGNALs had nothing to do with Twilio or communications. If you’ve got a story that can inspire and equip a room full of developers, we want to hear about it. Though please, no vendor pitches (i.e., “How to Use Product X”).

Technical Stories

We’re looking for speakers who can inspire and equip developers by telling stories with code.

We say “stories” because the human brain thinks in and remembers stories. Stories have a beginning, middle, and end. They have emotion and humor, conflict and resolution. And the stories that resonate most with developers are stories told with code. Code on slides is fine. Demos and live coding are much, much better.

There are, of course, some great technical talks that don’t show code. For instance, last year Ayuna Vogel spoke on Technical Blogging to Build your Online Presence and her talk was incredibly well received. But the majority of technical talks that we accept will be code-forward.

Skill Level

The developers who attend SIGNAL run the gamut from recent boot-camp graduates to hardened industry veterans. When writing your proposal, you should tailor it to a specific audience:

• Beginners - The folks in this audience are competent developers, but they’ve never used this technology before. You’ll want to introduce key concepts, help them get started, and show them how to continue their learning journey.

• Intermediate - These developers have already built and shipped an MVP that uses this technology. They’re ready to learn about the edge cases and the gotchas that happen at scale.

• Advanced - These developers have built and maintain an app at scale that uses this technology. They spend most of their week thinking about this stuff, and yet, you’re going to teach them something new.

Business and Use-Case Stories

Though SIGNAL is first and foremost a developer conference, many of our attendees don’t write code on a daily basis part of their job. These are CEOs, founders, product managers, solution architects, and folks working at not-for-profits. They’re coming to SIGNAL to hear your stories about how software-based communications can have a transformative impact on their organization.

Some of the highest rated business and use-case talks from SIGNAL 2016 include:

• Mobile Phone Technology for Health in Africa, by Precious Lunga
• Gender Masking Interviews, by Aline Lerner

Finer Details

Sessions Format

Sessions will be limited to 30 min - 1 hour depending on format. Twilio will have sessions that expand that timeframe for deeper dive into product tracks.

Perks of Speaking

All speakers get a full-access ticket to SIGNAL, along with an additional complimentary ticket for your guest.

If your employer is unable to pay for your travel, we’ll put you in touch with a travel agent to arrange your flight to San Francisco and three nights in a hotel. We’d like to reserve our travel budget for folks who wouldn’t otherwise have an opportunity to speak, so we ask that speakers who accept this offer refrain from promoting their employer during their talk.

The Selection Process

The CFP closes on June 25th, 2018 PST. You can submit as many proposals as you’d like. You can even revise them right up until the deadline. That said, we’ll accept talks on a rolling basis, so you may not want to wait until the last minute.

The first round of the selection process will be a blind review by a panel of Twilio employees from a range of departments and backgrounds. We’ll respond to everyone who submits a proposal, regardless of if your talk is accepted, by June 30th, 2018.

Speaker Release Form

If your proposal is accepted, you’ll need to sign a standard speaker release to give Twilio permission to record your talk and to use your name and likeness for SIGNAL promotion.

We’re here to help

Some of the highest rated talks at SIGNAL were given by folks who had never spoken at a conference before. If there’s a topic that you’re passionate about, we would love to hear about. We’re happy to help you refine your proposal and, if your talk is accepted, write and rehearse your presentation.

Drop us a line at cfp@twilio.com if you’d like to chat.