The conference will be held at 43 Hawes Street, Brookline, MA 02446. Please follow the link to the location for more information on how to get there.

Yes, we can provide a visa invitation letter to accepted speakers and registered attendees. Please fill out the form to request a visa invitation letter. If you need the visa invitation letter before our acceptance letters are sent out or before registration opens, specify the reason in the 'Additional Information' section of the form.

We are moving our official chat communication over to Matrix. Matrix offers a more open, federated, and extensible communication ecosystem that aligns better with our goals of fostering collaboration and adhering to open-source principles. We believe this shift will enhance the overall experience and accessibility for our local and remote attendees. We encourage you to join us on Matrix for all chat-related discussions during the event. Telegram and Discord channels will be deprecated.

You should be prepared to meet all appropriate government regulations for the duration of your visit to Boston, MA.

No. You should be prepared to meet all appropriate government regulations for the duration of your visit to Boston, MA.

You can find the latest Covid regulations here: https://www.mass.gov/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19.

A talk is where you present, usually with slides and demos, to an audience. The default time slot for each talk and Q&A is 35 minutes (we recommend 25-minute talk and 10-minute Q&A). A talk has one primary speaker and, optionally, a secondary speaker. Consider recruiting your colleagues to interact with people online while you are talking live at the conference.

A talk should be bite-sized and focused on a certain topic. This means that you should not expect to be able to cover multiple broad areas in one talk. You can submit more than one proposal, to cover a set of topics, but we cannot guarantee their final scheduled order. Therefore, we recommend topics be independent so that they do not need to be presented in a specific order.

Please note that this year all presentations will be delivered in person.

A discussion is a bit where you lead/moderate a discussion with a group of knowledgeable panelists where they answer prepared questions or questions from the audience as selected by you for appropriateness to your topic and session’s goal. It is more interactive than a talk because you could engage with the audience during the session. If you are willing to open the discussion to attendees, consider holding a fishbowl discussion where you start with a group of speakers and an empty “seat” which could be filled by active audience members in the course of a discussion.

A discussion is 35 minutes long. If speakers wish to continue after the 35-minute slot, there will be a dedicated place for it. A discussion has a dedicated moderator and up to 5 active speakers

Please note that this year all presentations will be delivered in person.

A lightning talk is a short presentation focused on getting people interested in something new. The goal of the lightning talk is to convey key information in a clear and concise manner. Smaller technical topics, project introductions, and research/thesis topic introductions are great topics for lightning talks.

A lightning talk is 10 minutes long. A lightning talk has one primary speaker.

All lightning talks are delivered in person. We plan to stream content online and make sure in-person as well as online audiences can participate in chat.

A workshop is a hands-on demo where you and other workshop leads interact with the audience with the goal to share your knowledge and experience on a particular bite-sized topic. The goal of a workshop is to teach or practice a skill. As a result, workshops should be actionable and goal-oriented.

A workshop is 80 minutes long. We allow up to 3 active presenters in a workshop. You must designate one of them to be the primary session leader.

All workshops are conducted live and are not recorded by default.

Meetups are organized as in-person meetings. They are open to all participants, and they serve as a place for open discussions during the dedicated time, sharing the latest project developments and interaction with contributors and attendees.

A meetup is 80 minutes long. We allow up to 3 active presenters in a meetup. You must designate one of them to be the primary session leader.

All meetups are conducted live and are not recorded..

A booth is a staffed table at the event. Booths are open to all participants at all times, and they serve as a place for conversations about the project and interaction with contributors, users, and attendees.

There must be at least one person at the booth at all times and there must be at least two staff members registered. Preference is given to booths that will run all three days.

We will release the schedule in July 2025.

We receive a large number of high quality submissions. We plan to send out acceptances by June 2025.

We have put together a document with guidelines on how to write a good proposal.

Admission to DevConf.US is free and only requires that you register. Registration details will be available by July 2025.

We use registration to manage several logistics issues around DevConf.US.

Starting in 2025, we are using a self-hosted instance of Pretalx. In 2024, we tested the platform using a paid version, but we have since switched to self-hosting. If you're a returning speaker, you'll need to create a new account. You can access all DevConf CfPs at pretalx.devconf.info.

All speakers are required to give their presentation in-person in Boston.

Yes, please indicate on the CfP submission if you'll be co-presenting. If you'd like to add a co-speaker to a submission or an accepted session, no worries! Please email us at info@devconf.us with your update.

You can use any presentation slide deck you wish. We also put together a DevConf.US slide deck template in 16:9 and 4:3 format for your convenience.

To assist you with producing your talk, we are collecting a list of suggestions for both virtual and in-person speakers in the speaker guide.

Yes! When you confirm your session acceptance, you will be asked whether you would like to have a speaker coach and will be matched with one.

The speaker confirmation form invites new speakers to sign up for practicing their talks via a video conference ahead of DevConf.US and invites experienced speakers to coach new speakers through such practice. We hope that participating in this program will improve the experience of new speakers and improve the quality of talks at DevConf.US, and highly encourage experienced speakers to sign up as coaches. We have a speaker guide and a speaker coaching guide available to support speakers and coaches. People who sign up, will receive their coaching matches by mid June 2025, with the expectation that they will schedule practice sessions between mid July 2025 and early September 2025.

We ask the coaches to take the lead on scheduling the practice session via a video conference (BlueJeans, Talky.io, Jitsi Meet, Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, etc). The speaker can choose to invite other audience members to the practice. In the practice session, the speaker delivers their practice talk, and the coach and other audience members provide feedback on the talk and slide deck.

Speakers and coaches agree to abide by the DevConf Code of Conduct both during the conference and in any pre-conference coaching, practice, or other program related activities.

Yes. Our intention is to record every talk and make it available on our YouTube channel after the conference. If this is a problem, please contact us at info@devconf.us as soon as possible so we can determine if we can accommodate your request.

A Matrix server is a communication platform. It supports many methods of communication, including text, voice, and video streaming. Matrix is an open standard for interoperable, decentralized, real-time communication over IP. Learn more at https://matrix.org/docs/chat_basics/matrix-for-im/

Open https://matrix.to/#/#main.us:devconf.cz to get started.

Matrix servers are all federated. This means you can use another Matrix server account on the DevConf.CZ server. For this reason, we don’t offer direct user registration.

Many online and open-source communities host Matrix servers and offer accounts. You can also self-host. Here are some places to get an account:

• matrix.org - A server provided by the Matrix Foundation
• Your community's server if you plan to use the account as a contributor, not just during DevConf.cz (e.g. Fedora, Mozilla etc.)
• You can also find a potentially helpful list of public servers at https://joinmatrix.org/servers/
• Another option is to host or self-host your own server. For more information, visit https://matrix.org/hosting/ or https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

While creating an account, you will be asked to choose a client, and you can choose the client based on your preferences. We recommend using Element because it supports all features we use at DevConf.US.

Absolutely! #2025.us:devconf.cz rooms are public and federated, which means you can use your existing account to join. Open https://matrix.to/#/#main.us:devconf.cz to get started.

In theory, any client should allow you to join the rooms. However, not all clients support all features. DevConf.US, for example, takes advantage of “spaces”. If your client does not support this feature, you may not have the optimal experience. We recommend using Element.

DevConf.CZ already tested and used Matrix as its primary communication platform for two years. Since DevConf.US is testing Matrix for the first time, the infrastructure and domains will remain unchanged for stability.

When using the Element client to access #2024.us:devconf.cz, you should see two rooms and one space: DevConf.US Volunteers, Day 0 - AI Think Tank and the General space with a sub-room Main Chat US. If you can’t find any DevConf rooms, make sure you’re searching within the devconf.cz server (not matrix.org or other domains).