DDD Europe 2024 - Call for Proposals - Software Modelling & Design Conference

Before submitting, please read about what we're looking for and consider our 15 Tips for an Effective Call for Papers.

Quick Summary

The Main Conference offers advanced 50min presentations and 2h hands-on labs aimed at expanding and improving software design.
DDD Foundations explains established DDD practices and concepts in a pragmatic way.
The pre-conference workshops are 1 to 3 days and cover topics in depth: DDD, modelling, software design, architecture, programming, ...

Submission deadline: February 15, 2024

Main conference (May 30-31)

This event aims at an experienced audience of engineers and architects working in complex domains (or aspiring to do so). Our mission is to explore software modelling and design in depth, expand and evolve it, and look beyond the boundaries. We draw inspiration from fields such as non-software design and engineering, science, mathematics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, ... We want these ideas to help us become better designers and modellers. We favour sessions about modelling & design over sessions adjacent to modelling & design.

Please submit:

Talks (50 min)
Hands-on Labs (2h): These sessions should consist of at least 50% practical, collaborative work by the participants. Modelling, coding, debate, practising techniques, ...

Some inspiration:

Software analysis, modelling, and design
Case studies, experience reports, post-mortems
Visualisation and collaboration techniques
Software architecture
Systems Thinking, Complexity theory, …
Product development
Testing and refactoring
Strategy, organisation, bridging technology and business
Distributed systems
Software design philosophy, psychology, sociology
Ideas that challenge Domain-Driven Design. Be prepared for intense debate!
Practical sessions
Crazy experiments

A great hands-on lab:

...favours practice over theory
...is focused on a domain, a methodology, or an approach, rather than a technology
...can range from experimental to well-known formats
...puts the 'work' in 'workshop': modelling, drawing, writing, discussing, coding, …
...encourages collaboration between participants (eg pairing or team work)
...makes you want to go to the office on Monday and change the way you work!

DDD Foundations (May 29)

DDD Foundations is a subconference focused on established concepts in DDD and software design: design principles, modelling, strategy, techniques, patterns, refactoring, testing, architecture ...

We're looking for 25 and 50 minute talks. These talks should be accessible to people with little experience working in a DDD team. Ideally, these sessions are practical and applicable. Where code is used, they must be understandable by programmers who don't know your programming language. We encourage livecoding demos.

Pre-conference workshops (May 27-28-29)

These workshops are 1 to 3 full days. These are similar to the hands-on labs, but more in-depth. People buy separate tickets for this, so keep in mind that they expect high quality and relevancy to their work. We pay a profit share with the speakers.

Programming languages & Technologies

The conference does not focus on any particular programming language or technology. If your session has code, participants should be able to understand it even if they don’t know the language or tech.

Spoken language

All sessions are in English.

Submission Process

Send us as many proposals as you’d like, for as many as the accepted formats as you like, before the submission deadline on February 15 2024.
Even before the deadline, we might start accepting proposals, so being early helps.
We might ask you to have a short conference call with us. Sometimes we like to ask for clarifications, or suggest changes to the contents or the format. If we contact you for such a call, it is not a guarantee your proposal will be accepted.
We’ll notify you at latest 60 days after the submission deadline whether your idea is accepted or not. We'll ask for a final confirmation before announcing you.
Even after you've been accepted, we'd like to help you make the most of your presentation or workshop. That's why we offer presentation support. We'll put you in touch with other speakers, to help you develop your material, be your soundboard, and give you feedback. We might also ask you to do the same for others. We've found that even for experienced speakers, a bit of back and forth can greatly improve the presentation or workshop.

Increase Your Chances

Evaluating a submission based on nothing but an abstract is hard. Help us get to know you and your ideas by:

Sending us links to your content.
Blogging about your topic.
Talk about it at a local meetup. There are plenty of DDD (and other) meetups across Europe, and most of them are happy to have new and inexperienced speakers.
Record your own video, ... Be creative!
We generally prefer talks that are not technology-specific, although exceptions are possible. Code examples in talks are welcome, but should be understandable by developers not familiar with your programming language.
Building a program involves lots of trade-offs, and often we have the painful task of refusing great proposals for other reasons than the topic. If yours is not accepted, please consider this an invitation to try again next year.
If you would like to pitch your product or service, we provide plenty of sponsorship opportunities. A 1-minute pitch at the beginning or end of your talk is acceptable.

Reimbursements

We'll pay for travel, accommodation, and professional child care, as well as access to the conference. If you have other requirements, please let us know.