Speak

This year all speakers need to be presenting in person. This is a decision we have thought long and hard about, based feedback from delegates and the challenges encountered, our conclusion is that, as primarily in-person event, having in-person speakers only provides a significantly better experience for speakers and attendees. 

Normally SQLBits has a huge number of submissions. To ensure your abstract stands out, please ensure your abstract reflects your session and clearly shows what the delegates can expect. In previous years we’ve had submissions where the abstract is just a single sentence.  In our experience abstracts like this are extremely unlikely to be selected. View our guidance here for writing abstracts.

A title should answer the question “what is the attendee going to get out of this?” So, what will they learn, how will it make their life easier, how will it help them at work, etc? The abstract should identify a problem (if there is one), touch on the solution and then describe how you’re going to help them solve it.  In your abstract we strongly recommend you include:

• What it is about.

• Why is this interesting? 

• Will there be a demo? If so, please explain a little about it. 

• The benefits of attendance. (Really important; 4-5 bullet points. For example, You will learn…) 

We would suggest you avoid making your titles and abstracts fit the event theme; whilst it can be amusing it generally leads to poor titles and abstracts that don’t help the selection team and attendees understand the session.

If  you are looking for some inspiration, try this great read on writing session abstracts from Benni De Jagere. Additionally, former session selector lead Rob Sewell offers insights on the data from 2023 selections in this blog.

A key categorisation of sessions is Discipline, as SQLBits covers the full spectrum of job functions and skills performed by data professionals, Discipline allows attendees find sessions relevant to what they do.

If your session falls into two or more disciplines, please choose the primary and secondary disciplines on submission. The SQLBits team may discuss the discipline you’ve selected if we feel it fits better into a different discipline. 

Decision Making and Leadership –This discipline examines how effective leadership and data-driven decision-making enable the successful design, delivery, and evolution of data solutions. It addresses the full spectrum of leadership responsibilities: prioritising initiatives, ensuring governance and compliance, aligning stakeholders, and selecting technologies that deliver maximum business impact. Sessions highlight strategies for navigating rapid technological change, managing complex projects, and fostering adaptive, high-performing teams through continuous upskilling and talent development. Participants will explore frameworks, behaviours, and practical approaches that help leaders make informed choices, drive cultural change, and ensure data solutions are scalable, trusted, and future-ready.

AI –Discover how organizations can leverage data to make smarter decisions and drive success using AI. Covering cutting-edge tools and techniques for seamless AI deployment and monitoring, including the full ML lifecycle, model monitoring, and data governance. Learn how intelligent agents and AI copilots are transforming business automation, with a focus on the importance of high-quality, accurate data—providing insights on how to make these tools work for any organization while also addressing the challenges and potential pitfalls to ensure AI systems run smoothly and deliver real impact.

Analytics – Analytics sessions are focused on analysing and getting insights from data, whether that’s through, Excel, Power BI, TSQL, Python or Spark Dive into the world of data with the Analytics discipline, where you’ll help attendees understand cutting-edge data platform design & architecture, innovative & robust data engineering, and tackle real-world challenges such as managing data quality, ensuring data security, and optimizing performance.  This discipline encompasses a wide array of analytics data platform services, including Microsoft Fabric, Real-time Streaming,  Azure Databricks, SQL Server BI, Analysis Services, PowerBI,

Data Science and Machine Learning –Understand the latest breakthroughs in Data Science, Machine Learning. Dive deep into cutting-edge tools and technologies, including intelligent agents, and advanced techniques designed to solve real-world problems with greater efficiency, accuracy, and innovation. Learn how to develop projects from inception to full-scale production, covering every step of the Data Science pipeline—from data collection and processing to model development and deployment. Explore how advanced tools and technologies, such as automation, and predictive models, enhance and transform Data Science processes at every stage. Whether addressing complex challenges or optimizing everyday tasks, gain insight into how these advancements are reshaping industries, improving decision-making, and driving significant impact across various sectors.

Data Transformation and Integration – Data almost always has to be moved and transformed to make the most of its value. This discipline consists of topics related to tools and techniques for ingesting and transforming data across the many platforms. There many ways to achieve this and the sessions technologies in this space include Python, TSQL, Data Factory, Power Query, Data Pipelines, DBT, Airflow, Notebooks, Power Automate

Datastores – This discipline is dedicated to all aspects of data stores whether its on-premises or in the cloud, Azure, AWS or GCP, relational, no-sql or data lakes.  The discipline will be comprised of topics related to the design, development, administration, installation, maintenance, and management of data estates including Performance Tuning as well as topics about data ingestion, transformation, and processing within a large-scale data mesh architecture. SQL Server, Snowflake, Postgres, Data Lake, Delta Lake all are technologies in this discipline

Reporting and Visualisation – In today’s data-driven world, the ability to transform data into compelling, digestible information and insights is a necessity. This discipline encapsulates visualisation subjects such as user experience design, storytelling and interactivity, real-time dashboards, custom visuals and accessibility considerations. Beyond visuals this discipline also covers data preparation and customisation through Power Query and DAX, performance tuning and best practices for report sharing, collaboration, and security within the Power BI ecosystem.

Application Development – Covering the full software development lifecycle, from requirements capture through to putting the software into the hands of the users. Help attendees learn how to build applications that use data, whether its using entity framework to access the database, Data api builder to provide a rest endpoint, embedding power bi reports leverage tools, these are all areas. use new techniques, architectural patterns, or frameworks.

DataOps & Automation – DataOps is the art of getting data solutions into production, building infrastructure, configuring, deploying, managing and monitoring. Show attendees how they can leverage technologies such as powershell and python, bicep and terraform, Github and Azure Devops, Data Dog, Azure Monitor, to operate your data solutions.

Soft Skills – Always a popular topic, this discipline will navigate the essential aspects of professional and career development with sessions covering interpersonal skills, diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI), and collaborative communication skills across diverse teams. Soft skills to be effective managers and the knowledge to be better leaders in a data centric environment

50 Minute Sessions

These are our most popular session length and form the vast majority of SQLBits sessions. Enough time to look at a topic in depth, but not so long that delegates become fatigued. 

20 Minute Sessions

We expect 20 minute sessions to be a brief overview of a particular topic.  Please ensure that the content fits into this time frame and isn’t rushed, there isn’t much time for introductions or questions.  We are only looking for a very small number of 20 minute sessions.

We have four levels of session. We expect most sessions delivered will fall into the Intermediate and Introduction areas, apart from the Blow Your Mind topic, where we expect the sessions to be Advanced.

• Strategic: Is an high level view of a solution, in the context of other technologies. Provides attendees with an understanding of choices and how solutions are positioned.
• Introduction: A basic introduction to a topic, should assume very little experience with a topic.
• Intermediate: Builds upon some existing knowledge to a good level that would be used in day to day function by an experienced person
• Advanced: Deep dive at the advanced levels of a subject. Speakers delivering these sessions should possess considerable experience in the topic.

You can’t pick a particular day, as it makes it very hard to schedule. If you can let us know what days you cannot do, we will take that into account when scheduling.

We are limiting speakers to submitting 10 sessions this year. this includes Training Days.

Confirmed speakers can book accommodation through SQLBits and will be sent full details after selection. The speaker hotel options are the Celtic Manor Resort, Coldra Court or Ty Newport.

The primary speaker will get access to the whole conference, excluding training days. 

A co-presenter will get a pass for the day they are presenting. 

If you’ve paid to attend SQLBits but are subsequently selected to present your session – congratulations! We will make a refund on any days you have paid for that you get free as part of your speaker compensation.

If you are planning to submit but also don’t want to wait to secure a hotel room, we strongly recommend booking a hotel with flexible terms so if selected, you are able to cancel your room and rebook via the speaker accommodation booking service we offer.

Gathering feedback from our attendees takes a little time, usually a few weeks.

The call for speakers form has a section where you can list any requirements that you may need from us to be able to present (such as a wheelchair ramp or a stool as an example) and we will do everything we can to accommodate.

Please feel free to contact us at speakers@sqlbits.com for any questions about this.

At SQLBits we seek to provide content at the very highest standard for our delegates. We expect all our speakers to have some experience, and don’t feel SQLBits is the right place for someone to make their first solo presentation at a large event.

If you’ve spoken elsewhere but are new to the SQLBits stage, welcome! Great to have you here. If you’re looking for a bit of extra support, you’ll notice in the submissions process we offer you the opportunity to team up with a seasoned speaker to boost your confidence. Or, on the flip side, you could be a mentor looking to guide someone on their speaking journey.

SQLBits is committed to providing an inclusive, welcoming and harassment free environment for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment in any form.