March 18, 2025, Willis Tower, Chicago, IL

From fledgling startups to established industry, the Midwest is home to a large, vibrant technology community. Chicago, in particular, has been a flurry of activity in the past several years, drawing attention from around the globe.

DevOpsDays Chicago brings development, operations, QA, InfoSec, management, and leadership together to discuss the culture and tools to make better organizations and products. The 2025 event will be the tenth time we have held DevOpsDays Chicago, and it should be better than ever before!

The format of DevOpsDays Chicago includes a single track of 30 minute talks in the morning, followed by Ignite talks (5 minute lightning talks). We spend the rest of the afternoon in Open Spaces, which are considered a key portion of the event.

There are four ways to propose a topic at devopsdays:

1. A 30-minute talk presented to the entire conference audience, usually in the morning.
2. An Ignite talk presented during the Ignite sessions (scheduling varies). These are 5 minute talks with slides auto-advancing every 15 seconds (20 slides total).
3. A Workshop presented during the conference, usually in the afternoon. These are 45 minutes long.
4. Open Space: If you'd like to lead a group discussion during the attendee-suggested Open Space breakout sessions, it is not necessary to propose it ahead of time. Those topics are suggested in person at the conference. If you'd like to demo your product or service, you should sponsor the event and demo it at your table.

General Guidelines:

• Be concise, but include as much detail as is necessary to convey your idea.
• Please provide at least three concrete takeaways that the audience will get from your talk
• Multiple entries are welcome.
• Submissions must be made by one of the proposed presenters; we do not accept proposals submitted on behalf of others
• All presentations must conform to the code of conduct.
• Proposals must be submitted via this site (click "Submit a Proposal" at the bottom of this page). If you have questions about our CFP process, please email: [[email protected]]

Ideas:

This is what we would like to know. Do you have an answer?

• The DevOps movement has been around for a few years now: Has it really helped your organization? Are there numbers for this?
• Did the culture of DevOps spread to other parts of your company? If not, why?
• Is DevOps the magic silver bullet which solved all your problems? What are the problems it didn't solve (although you thought it would)?
• Was there one tool or methodology in particular that was key to your organization's DevOps transformation? Tell us about the role it played and how it moved the needle.
• Were there unexpected problems during your cultural change into DevOps?
• Did the required skill-set of people change after starting to do things DevOps-Style?
• Did people leave because you "went DevOps"? Was this good or bad or both?
• Have there been technical changes after the culture in your team changed?
• Did the change affect the business/sales/marketing side?
• And of course: Has DevOps affected you personally? How do you feel about the change it brought to your work?

The "classic" DevOps questions are of course not fully answered, either...

• What is the role of QA/Tester in DevOps, how do we integrate QA in the continuous delivery process
• The impact DevOps has on traditional security/auditing/change control
• The impact of DevOps on HR policies, and the hiring process
• Help prove that DevOps can scale beyond the 5-8 person web startups, we love traditional IT enterprise cases
• With all the automation, data is still a hard thing to handle, how does it affect DBA's, backup strategies, ...

If you'd like some more specific topic examples...

• How about release management.
• Integrating security into the DevOps conversation
• How to handle budgets for DevOps initiatives
• DevOps and Working Remotely
• Value Stream Mapping
• Having DevOps make #monitoringsucks less

Our main criteria to make it to the top selection are:

• Broad appeal: How will your talk play out in a room of people with a variety of backgrounds? Technical deep dives need more levels to provide value for the whole room, some of whom might not use your specific tool.
• New local presenters: You are the only one who can tell your story. We are very interested in the challenges and successes being experienced in our local area. We are happy to provide guidance/coaching for new speakers upon request.
• Under-represented voices: We want to hear all voices, including those that may speak less frequently at similar events. Whether you're in a field not typically thought of as a technology field, you're in a large, traditional organization, or you're the only person at your organization with your background, we are interested in your unique experience.
• Original content: We will consider talks that have already been presented elsewhere, but we prefer talks that the local area isn't likely to have already seen.
• No third-party submissions: This is a small community-driven event, and speakers need to be directly engaged with the organizers and attendees. If a PR firm or your marketing department is proposing the talk, you've already shown that as a speaker you're distant from the process.
• No vendor pitches: As much as we value vendors and sponsors, we are not going to accept a talk that appears to be a pitch for your product. If you'd like to demo your product or service, you should sponsor the event and demo it at your table.
• Open Space Fodder: Will this talk help generate discussion during the Open Spaces?

Even more tips

• We like stories over theory. Examples of what your organization has done are fantastic.
• You don't need to write out the entire talk in your abstract, but please provide sufficient detail for the selection committee to get a feel for what your talk will include. Show, don't tell.
• Remember that this is a single-track conference - getting too deep into the weeds of a specific technology might make the content less accessible to all attendees. However, we will consider talks of this nature if they provide something special.
• Consider the tips in this blog post for even more suggestions on crafting a great proposal!

Travel and Accommodations

If you are coming in from out of town and your employer does not cover your travel, we will reimburse you up to $400 for flights (unless other accommodations have been discussed), and we will cover up to two nights at one of the conference hotels. If you have specific questions about travel reimbursement, please contact us at [email protected].

Code of Conduct

All speakers and participants of DevOpsDays Chicago are expected to abide by the event's Code of Conduct.

This Call for Papers closed on 2024-10-20 23:00 (America/Chicago).