What we’re looking for

We’re looking for a wide variety of talks, with a focus on Clojure or general functional programming. You can submit a talk regardless of your experience level with Clojure; all perspectives matter. Ideally, talks will center around real-world use cases. Have you built something you’re proud of, overcome hurdles at work, or learned something new that you want to share? Submit a talk!

However, don’t feel constrained by those themes if you have an interesting talk in mind, please feel free to submit a proposal! Need ideas? Check out some of last year’s talks on our YouTube Channel.

You may propose one or more of the following talk lengths:

• Talk (30 minutes)
• Lightning Talk (15 minutes)
• Keynote (60 minutes)

Please note that talk times include Q&A, at the speaker’s discretion.

Why speak at Clojure/north?

If you are a Clojurist then you already know there are not many of us Clojure developers, and we are in high demand. The Clojure community in Toronto has been growing over the years and we now have a number of local companies investing in the technology. Toronto is also one of the fastest-growing markets for tech talent in North America – just behind Silicon Valley and Seattle.

By sharing your ideas, experiences, and knowledge, you too can help foster the growing Clojure community in Toronto, and also add to the global body of Clojure know-how. It’s a great opportunity to meet other Clojurists from around the world, and to meet companies that are using Clojure. And, it helps attendees make a case for Clojure and ClojureScript adoption in their companies.

Selection criteria

• Presentation ability (are you a good speaker?)
• Novelty / uniqueness (are you presenting new information/ideas?)
• Utility for attendees (how useful is the information presented in your talk?)
• Original presentation / not presented elsewhere (is this your first time presenting this talk?)

Selection process

The smallness of the Clojure community makes it very likely that a subset of the organizing team and potential speakers are also professionally affiliated with some conference sponsors.This does not negatively influence talk selection. Rather, it makes us especially mindful of selection bias, and we keep each other in check. Sponsors do not get special preference, and friends do not get to cut in line. Everyone who wishes to submit a talk must go through the same CFP process.

Our selection committee consists of 4-5 reviewers with diverse backgrounds and experience levels. We will shortlist roughly double the amount of required talks then trim this shortlist to the required number of talks, with a buffer in case selected speakers withdraw. CFP closes on February 16th; our team will let you know by February 23rd if you have been selected, wait-listed or rejected.

If your talk is successful in being selected, our team will coordinate with you for travel and stay arrangements.

Note: Selected speakers will be notified via email.

Video Coverage

Clojure/north recordings will be available publicly after the event. If you have any concerns about being recorded or wish to opt-out please let us know ahead of time in the form.

Perks

We’re very grateful to everyone who takes the time out of their busy lives to speak at Clojure/north for the benefit of others. As such we can commit to the following perks for our speakers:

• Free ticket*
• Two-night stay at the venue hotel for speakers outside GTA (unless covered by your employer)
• Up to $400 travel stipend for speakers outside GTA (unless covered by your employer)
• Speaker dinner (evening of June 24th)
• Visa invitation letter if needed

If you require additional support to attend please don’t hesitate to mention that. We will make our best effort to make some sort of arrangement.

* if you have already purchased your ticket, please email us at hello@clojurenorth.com and we will refund you the cost.

Examples

Below is example of what was entered in the Elevator Pitch and Description fields for one of the Clojure/north 2019 talks.

Reitit, the Ancient Art of Routing (Tommi Reiman)

Reitit is a new and fast isomorphic data-driven routing & dispatching library for Clojure/Script. Its key features are first-class route data, extensibility, composability and kick-ass performance.

In this talk, I’ll walk through the design principles of reitit, it’s main features, different routing algorithms and compare it to other routing engines in both Clojure/Script and JavaScript. I’ll also share my lessons learned on writing performant code with Clojure and describe the emerged data-driven patterns like data expansion, partial validation and data compilation. This talk is for everyone interested in Clojure/Script, web development, routing, data-structures, performance and data-driven design in general.

Watch Tommi’s talk on Youtube