Call for speakers

The planning is now almost done and we expect to have the completed program ready late October. Send your speaking proposal today to: aarhus@jboye.com. We’ll update this page regularly.

Current openings

These conference tracks currently have openings:

• Going mobile – get in touch
• Digital strategy & governance – get in touch
• Online communication – get in touch
• Standards & Technology – get in touch!

We’re making an extra effort this year to find female speakers. View a brief explanation in this 1-minute video.

Do you have a story to share?

We would like to hear from you if you are able to answer ‘yes’ to one or more of the following questions:

• Have you made a substantial change in the way your organisation is communicating online in terms of content, design, user involvement or internal processes?
• Is your intranet making a real and measurable impact on business or have you experimented with new social features that could be showcased on the intranet track?
• Have you navigated through some of the complex challenges for digital managers?
• Have you recently gone through a vendor selection- or implementation process (e.g. WCM, search, portal) giving you insider views to share?
• Are you willing to share your expert perspective on one of our 10 conference track or host a 3 hour workshop?

Speaker benefits

As a speaker, you:

• Get to share your experiences with your peers
• Can interact with the most influential web and intranet professionals
• Receive advance feedback on your presentation and your slides
• Receive a complimentary conference pass, including access to social events

Who can submit?

• Users: To present a case study from your organisation or your perspective on a subject
• Analysts, authors and consultants: To provide market insight or “how to” guidance
• Vendors: To provide expert presentations without marketing or sales-hype

All accepted presentations are based on the merit of the proposal, the individual speaker, the relevance of the topic, and a speaking slot being available. This goes for vendors too.

How to submit a proposal?

1. Before submitting, please review the topics to be covered and the information about the conference.
2. E-mail a relevant proposal to aarhus@jboye.com. Please include a) a 100-200 word abstract, b) 200 word speaker bio, c) photo of speaker, d) speaker contact information, e) which conference track your talk would fit on
3. We will contact you if your proposal is accepted. Feel free to e-mail us with inquiries about the processing of your application.

Please note: We do not accept sales pitches or marketing presentations. PR firms should only forward proposals submitted by the actual presenter. If you will be coordinating a speaker’s participation, please provide all your contact information in addition to that of the speaker.

Speaker requirements

As a speaker we ask that you:

• Allocate time for at least one conference call with your session moderator and/or fellow session speakers around 30 days before the conference.
• Provide a professional quality presentation on the agreed topic.
• Provide your presentation to us in electronic form for distribution to the conference attendees before the conference begins.
• Stick to the time allocated for your presentation.
• Stay around and attend the conference including the social events. We are looking for speakers genuinely interested in the topics we cover and interested in engaging in conversations with other conference attendees. We politely ask hit-and-run speakers to consider other conferences

Delivering a good presentation

Most presentations will be part of a conference session covering the same topic. Times for presentations can range from 10-45 minutes, but the vast majority is 15-20 minutes followed by 5-10 minutes of Q&A.

If your presentation is supposed to be 20 minutes long, getting through 45 slides is almost impossible. Also, remember that slides with many builds take more time than a slide with no builds. A good rule of thumb for most people is 1 slide for every 3 minutes of presentation. The best thing to do is to time yourself in advance!

Make sure your slides are legible. In general, nothing below 18pt type is going to be legible by anyone who is not sitting in the first few rows – 24pt and up is usually safe.

Speaker substitutions

Speaker substitutions are generally not allowed. Our speakers are chosen for their knowledge and communication capabilities, not because of who they work for. If for some reason you need to cancel, please let us know ASAP, and provide replacement recommendations in case we do not already have a speaker on the waiting list for that particular topic.

Who is the audience?

This conference is intended as a user conference and a substantial majority of the conference participants are hard-working web & intranet professionals, e.g. working with titles such as digital manager, project manager, intranet manager, editors, IT strategists on the buy-side.

Participants travel to Aarhus from all over the world to attend the conference. In 2011, about 50% came from Scandinavia, roughly 25% from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, 20% from rest of Europe and 5% from rest of world.

Vendors and agencies are also very welcome to attend and speak, but they normally only make up a small part of the audience and we have very few speaking slots for vendors.

How big is the audience?

We expect 300 participants at the conference. With 5 parallel tracks each day, that means you can expect between 25 and 100 for your talk, depending on how popular it is. People are free to mix and match the program, so that they can move from track to track during the day, but we are planning to ask people to sign up in advance, so that we have some indication of how many will come to your talk.