The Call For Speakers opens on April 18, 2024 and will close on April 30, 2024.

We will contact you via email latest by May 9, 2024, if your submission has been accepted.

• You will receive a confirmation email that your proposal has been submitted.
• You will be able to update your submission up until the CFS deadline of April 30, 2024
• Once the CFS closes, you will no longer be able to make edits to your submission.
• A committee will conduct a comprehensive review process of all submissions.
• If your submission has been accepted, you will receive an email latest by May 9, 2024.

We’d be happy to look into that for you! Please contact us at constellation@github.com.

Anyone who submitted a proposal or is listed as a potential presenter will receive an email letting them know if their session has been accepted. You will receive instructions for next steps at that time.

Speakers at Constellation are part of a collaborative and passionate community who gain career-enhancing connections with attendees and speakers alike. Here’s what you can expect:

• Share your thought leadership with GitHub’s community of millions of developers
• Keep a record of your session to share once it’s live on Youtube

• Think about your session title as the subject line of an email - keep it short and persuasive. What would get an attendee to add it to their schedule?

• Be specific with your key takeaways. What exactly will someone leave your session knowing that they didn’t know before?

• Have a friend outside of your industry review your content before you submit. They might not understand the technical language but a fresh perspective is always helpful.

• Sessions are intended to be educational, not a sales pitch. Keep that in mind when writing your description.

• When using an acronym, spell out the full word and then include the acronym after in parentheses. Ex: software development lifecycle (SDLC). After the initial mention, you can move forward using just the acronym in your submission. Please do this for any new acronym introduced in your submission.

• Use this document to work on your session prior to submission. You must enter your session information via the online submission form to formally apply to speak at Universe, we will not accept this document as a session submission.

• Reference these examples of session titles & abstracts that performed well at last year’s GitHub Universe for inspiration

Yes! You can submit up to 3 sessions until the deadline of April 30, 2024.

You will have the ability to change, edit, or withdraw your submission until the April 30 deadline. If you are missing a piece of information, your submission will be saved, and you can log back in at a later time to enter the information prior to April 30. All proposals must be complete to be considered. Any proposals left with a status of “Incomplete” will not be considered for GitHub Constellation. Each submission you complete will receive a confirmation email, so if you do not receive one you will know your session is incomplete. The Call for Sessions dashboard will also provide you with a list of submissions tied to your account along with their completion status.

• Content is sales-focused. The content committee is very good at spotting when a submission is overtly trying to sell a product or service. Our attendees are not looking to be pitched a product and we will immediately remove those submissions from the review process.

• Too many submissions on a similar topic. We receive many submissions, and with a limited number of slots, the content committee must pick the sessions and the presenters they think cover the topic in the most thoughtful way. The content committee seeks diverse thought leaders who provide specific details and examples that differentiate them from other submissions.

• Incomplete submission. If your submission is not complete or is lacking in detail, it will not be considered. The session title, abstract, and key takeaways portion should be complete and thoughtfully written. If your submission is missing presenters, it will not be approved.

• Quality & Quantity. We receives hundreds of proposals and the selection process is competitive! Content is selected based on the quality of the proposal as well as diversity in content. Submit a thorough, interesting, and unique presentation that will provide relevant and thought-provoking information to attendees and that will catch the review committees’ eye!

No. Keynote sessions are curated separately and are not a part of our Call for Sessions process. The proposal you submit will only be considered for a breakout session.

• General Session (25 minutes): These sessions feature presentations and live demos, as well as audience engagement through questions, group discussions, polls, and games.

• Lightning Talk (10 minutes): A brief presentation or a live demo to convey a specific idea or a solution. There won’t be any audience engagement.

General sessions will be 25 minutes. We recommend 20 minutes of content and 5 minutes of Q&A (or incorporating audience participation throughout the session). Lightning talks will be for 10 minutes, and we recommend to keep it short and concise, focussing on a single idea or solution.

GitHub Constellation India 2024 is a single track event, with multiple content themes. The content themes are:

AI

From chatbots to coding assistants and so much more, AI has transformed how we work. It frees us from the toil of boilerplate and allows us to be our most productive, creative, and happy selves. Developers are coding faster than ever before, closing skill gaps more efficiently, and finding their work more satisfying. The next frontier in the development of AI is happening now and we want to hear from experts and practical leaders on the impacts of AI on developers and organizations, issues of trust, and where they see AI headed next.

Security

Security is integral to every stage of the software development cycle. This means protecting your software supply chain from dependency-based vulnerabilities, using AI-powered and proactive security features to prevent and fix vulnerabilities in your own code, and understanding the latest compliance standards, threats, and research. If this is your area of expertise, we invite you to share your knowledge with our attendees.

Developer Experience

What does developer experience mean to you? Less friction, more productivity? Finding more time for creativity, collaboration, and innovation? How do you stay in the flow? How do you leverage GitHub’s platform and features? We are looking for industry experts and impactful practitioners who are driving collaboration, simplifying tech stacks, reducing onboarding times, and prioritizing developer-first security for the betterment of their teams, their customers, their careers, and their communities.

Community

The open source community powers the future of software development. We’re looking for all types of stories from sustainable open source consumption and contribution best practices, to education and social impact.

Yes, however, that person must be aware of and approve your submission. If your session is accepted and it is discovered the presenter was not aware, the session will be canceled, and you will not have the opportunity to submit another session in its place.

Yes. For general breakout sessions, you can have up to two presenters. For a Lightning talk, you can have only one presenter.

Yes. All accepted presenters are required to review and agree to the speaker release form.

The majority of session content will be delivered at the in-person event. If there are any ancillary materials (demos, etc.) that need to be pre-recorded, we will work with you to produce that content.

We will be notifying speakers of their session schedule latest by May 13, 2024. We ask that if your session is accepted, you plan to attend Constellation for the entirety of the event.

Yes. We do everything possible to ensure that we are:

• Looking for opportunities to elevate voices and perspectives from a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and regions with our speaker outreach and selection.

• Approaching and encouraging participation from speakers identifying as members of underrepresented or historically excluded communities in technology.

• Approaching professionals and members of our community who conduct themselves in accordance with GitHub’s event and community code of conduct.

Happy to help! Please contact us at constellation@github.com.