Call for Papers: Trajectory 2021 featured image

It’s hard to believe we are getting ready to host our third-annual installment of the Trajectory conference. As we’ve grown, some things have changed and some have stayed the same. 

The first year was in-person, year two shifted to fully virtual. This year, fingers crossed, we will be hosting a hybrid event November 9-10. We will have virtual streamed sessions, along with in-person options in Oakland, CA, and New York, NY. Stay tuned for more information, but in the meantime, we’d love to get you involved.

The themes for our conference this year reflects some of the changes we’re seeing in the technical community. We are building on the concepts we’ve talked about in previous years and adding some new ones, and this is where you come in.

Our Call for Papers is currently open and we’re looking for talks and workshops related to the following five themes: 

Developer productivity 

The past 15 months have put productivity to the test, as development teams had to rapidly shift to remote work. Oftentimes, this work was being done in less than ideal environments with roommates, kids, partners, and parents disrupting the flow of our productivity. We want to know: 

  • What tools, tricks or hacks did you implement to maintain productivity, or did you make concessions for a dip in productivity? 
  • In a world of constant distractions how do you stay focused?

Experimentation 

We may think we know the best way of approaching a problem, but there are often missteps and modifications along the way. We learn from our mistakes and past experiences.

Experimentation should be a central part of the software delivery process to adjust and make changes based on feedback from customers and systems. What can you share about: 

  • How do you test in production? 
  • Experiments that didn’t turn out the way you expected.

Value Stream Mapping 

The need to improve collaboration between business and IT teams seems like a regular talking point within organizations these days.

Value stream mapping is a way to diagram and document each and every step in a process. This documentation helps you visualize ways to identify waste, eliminate steps, and improve processes.

If you’re just getting started or have been using value stream mapping for some time share with our audience: 

  • The benefits and theory behind value stream mapping. 
  • What the process looked like and what results you were able to achieve?

Platform engineering 

We’ve seen a new trend recently in the emergence of platform engineering organizations to help with the challenges around cloud migration, microservices, and container orchestration.

If you have legacy infrastructure we want to know: 

  • What was your journey to creating a platform engineering team?
  • How is platform engineering the same, or different from site reliability engineering (SRE).

Reliability & Resilience 

It’s not enough to build cool apps and features, you also need to create reliable and resilient applications. This can be easier said than done in a world of distributed systems, low-code/no-code, and third-party components. 

What stories do you have on: 

  • The challenges facing SREs and DevOps teams
  • The impact failures have on the socio-technical systems we build and support. 

If you have a talk idea that fits into one of these themes, our CFP is open until August 9. To learn more and share your ideas with us, visit our Trajectory CFP site. Good luck to all applicants and we'll see you at the show!

Related Content

More about Trajectory

July 15, 2021