Call For Papers

Hello!

Thanks for your interest in speaking at Chicago Roboto! We’re a humble community gathering (in an awesome city) committed to keeping developers up to date on the latest and greatest in Android.

To do that, we need your help, ideas, skills, and passion!

If you are working in Android and have a topic the community can benefit from — developing/designing apps, building our community, building Android hardware or working with embedded devices, or using Android in education and research  — we’d love for you to consider submitting a proposal to share and teach with the Android community.

The Basics

  • Conference dates: April, 2020. (Dates TBD)
  • Deadline for submissions is January 4, 2019 at 11:59 pm CST.
  • Session length: 20 or 45 minutes.
    • 20-minute sessions ARE NOT eligible for speaker travel compensation.

Possible Topics

Android is such a ubiquitous platform that almost any topic can make for a great talk! We’re hoping to have three types of talks to cover a wide range of topics and skill levels.

Type 1: For budding Android developers (45 minutes)

We’ll feature a special track for Android developers who are just starting out, and we are looking for speakers to teach sessions targeted at the core skills of Android development. Contrary to popular belief, you do not need to be an expert to teach —fundamental classes like these it is often best to hear from someone who has just learned it.

Some topics that might be great for these beginner sessions:

  • Intent Fundamentals
  • Fragments
  • Layouts
  • Supporting multiple devices
  • Internet and background threads
  • Persistent Storage
  • Build Tools: Android Studio, Gradle and more
  • Useful Libraries
  • Android Best Practices, a.k.a. “Things I wish I knew when I first started developing for Android”

Remember, these are just possible suggestions and not an all-encompassing list. If you’ve got an idea for a good beginner talk, please submit a proposal!

Type 2: For experienced Android developers & the broader community (45 minutes)

We want to make sure we take care of experienced developers and our community in general as well. If you’ve tackled a complex problem lately, please share!

Some topics that might be great for these sessions:

  • User Interface: Custom Views, Animations, Navigation, etc.
  • Android Support Libraries
  • Material Design
  • Permissions and Security
  • App Architecture
  • Testing
  • Accessibility
  • Continuous Integration
  • Benchmarking Tools
  • Google Cast and Nearby APIs
  • Android TV, Wear, and Auto
  • IoT Devices and Platforms
  • Android for Work and the Enterprise
  • Game Development and Augmented Reality

We’d also like to encourage proposals that focus on our community as a whole. Things like:

  • Android community involvement
  • Professional / career growth and development
  • Teamwork and collaboration
  • Learning, teaching, sharing
  • And everything else awesome about our community!

Remember, these are just possible suggestions and not an all-encompassing list. If you’ve done something interesting, please do submit a proposal!

Type 3: Showcase/highlights (20 minutes)

For our 20 minute sessions, we’re envisioning topics like:

  • You’ve got something awesome and technical to show off, but don’t need 45 minutes
  • You’re sharing an API, library etc that you want the community to use and it’s more of a “show and tell”.

Submission Guidelines

  • Please submit as many proposals as you like, but we’ll only select a single proposal per speaker.
  • Reviewers will use the following selection criteria when voting on submissions:
    • Technical — Does the content have technical substance (if applicable)?
    • Relevant — Would the topic be interesting to a group of Android developers?
    • For intermediate and advanced level talks, they will also look into:
      • Fresh — Is the information covered new or a new approach to a common problem?
      • Immersive — Does the proposal cover many aspects of the topic in-depth?

Speaker Reimbursements / Stipends

We want everyone to be able to come and speak, regardless of their financial situation. However, it would help us tremendously if you or your company can cover any costs. We’re happy to list you or your employer as a sponsor to recognize your contribution.

Please let us know in your submission if that’s possible. Companies who cover speaker travel will be listed as sponsors.

For speakers we’ll provide:

  • $150 per night lodging (two nights, total $300)
  • Complimentary conference pass
  • Flights — Up to $500 for domestic and $1500 for international.

Exceptions:

  • If your talk has more than one speaker only one will be covered.
  • 20-minute talks won’t be provided with a stipend

Thanks for reading. Now let’s get on with the submissions!