Call for Participation
March 10-11, 2017, Seattle, WA

Proposal Submission Form

We invite you to present a talk or Training at the 2017 LOPSA Cascadia IT Conference in Seattle.

LOPSA Cascadia is a gathering of professionals from the diverse IT community in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. We gather to learn from each other, share ideas, and meet new friends. Whether you are paid to work with computers or just like to experiment with technology, your time is well spent at LOPSA Cascadia.

The conference includes presentations, invited speakers and keynote talks, as well as Trainings by top-notch experts. We expect attendance of 100-125 people from the IT community, businesses, and academic institutions in and around Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia.

Presentation Topics

Presentations must relate to using and managing computers, information infrastructure, and/or supporting people who use computer infrastructure. This can be anything from describing how to setup an enterprise quality web service infrastructure to how to manage your relationship with your Internet service provider.

You may submit as many proposals as you like. The conference committee will select proposals which are submitted with full information and those that we think will most benefit the IT community as a whole.

Examples Topics:

Description of a problem solved and how you worked through it.
Demonstration of a specific technology stack and how it works for your environment.
Show how non-technical skills were to solve technical problems.
How you developed your career and how others can benefit from your experience.
Expert tips on how to use an application or tool such as vim, tmux, or PowerShell.
Topics explicitly discouraged:

Sales Presentations
Vendor Product Demonstrations
Proposals or Vaporware (Although works in progress are appropriate for lightning talks)
Examples of good proposals and topics:

An author of an open-source package explains the project, the benefits and how it works.
A system administrator presents about a new technique, software system, or device he or she created.
Someone with recent experience in particular technology presents “10 things I wish I knew before I started with [name of product]”.
A Windows engineer describes how they manage their fleet of desktops/laptops.
“How we manage [Linux/Mac OS X/BeOS] in an Active Directory domain.”
“How to Make Wireless Work in a Conference Setting.”
“Incident Command for IT: What We Can Learn from the Fire Department.”
“Deploying your Application to Cloud: Lessons Learned from Five Different Applications.”
“What System Administrators Can Learn From [other industry].”
“A Few Thoughts on Uptime: Resisting Entropy.”
Presentation Format

We are actively seeking proposals for talks and Trainings at LOPSA Cascadia.

Talks: 50 minute presentation including Q&A.
Trainings: half-day, 4-hour sessions. (“Full day” Trainings may be submitted as two half-day Trainings without the assumption that they will both be accepted.)
Lightning Talk signups will be available during the conference.
Submit your Proposal

Everyone is welcome to present! Public speaking experience is not required.
Complete the Proposal form here:

Proposal Submission Form

Talk proposals:

Talks are a relatively short 45 minute presentations that are designed to inform participants about a specific topic or subject. Presenters will have access to an overhead projector and may not require participants to bring any materials.

Training proposals:

Trainings are half-day deep technical presentations that are designed to teach participants somthing. Presenters will have access to an overhead projector and may require participants to bring laptops, notepads, or other equipment.

Lightning Talks

Lightning talks are very short, 5 minute, presentations designed to spark interest or call to action. Lightning talks do not have access to overhead projectors or any other equipment.

Lightning talk registration will be available at the welcome desk during the reception.

Dates and Deadlines

1 January, 2017 – Proposals due
15 January, 2017 – Schedule Published
10-11 March, 2017 – Conference
Contact and Questions

Please visit https://www.casitconf.org/ for more information on LOPSA Cascadia and presenting at this great event.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email the organizers at: submissions@casitconf.org