If you take a look at our timeline you will see that we actually do two rounds of talk selection. The first round ends with last seconds of May and from those submissions we pick to fill around 25% of total slots. Exact number of total slots is not defined at the moment, but it should be very close to last year’s number of 30.

Chosen speakers and topics are a sort of sneak peak into the look and feel of what a complete schedule will look like. It also gives future attendees a narrow window to see some names while tickets are sold on early bird prices.

If we don’t pick you at this moment, do not worry - we are going to include your proposal in Round 2 as well. If you did not submit, again, do not worry - we are keeping CFP open until end of August.

September is the time when it gets really interesting as we fill up to 90% of the slots. The remaining slots are then filled by community vote. Ticketholders are given a link and they can pick who they want to listen.

How do we actually pick you?

Representatives or leaders of each user group that is involved in organization of WebCamp Zagreb conference sit down and evaluate each talk, giving it grades between one and five. One, meaning “we think that this talk should not appear” and five, meaning “we think that this talk is a must have”.

All user groups’ votes are then averaged for each talk and that is a basis for talks committee to begin creating the schedule. At this point it is all about you against other speakers and other topics.

If there are multiple proposals around same topic, most likely the “better speaker” will win. “Better speaker” in this case is a person that committee feels will deliver this talk perfectly and person that has production experience with that technology. This has little to do with being famous or smart. Also, if we have to cover travel costs, you have to convince us even more.

25 minutes slots are better than 45 minutes?

As most things in life, it is a numbers game. There are more 25 minutes slots than 45 minute ones, so, purely mathematically, you have a better chance to get picked for a shorter talk. Additionally, we tend to award the 45 minute slots to people with some speaking experience. If you are a first time speaker with an interesting topic, you are more likely to get picked if you have a 25 minute talk. No one wants to risk it and allow prolonged agony to 400 people in the audience.

Hope this lifted some fog of war from our selection process and that there are no more excuses stopping you to submit to WebCampZg 2016 conference CFP.