It's time to get writing

If you'd like to talk at UIKonf, now is the time to get active: Our call for proposal opens today. (Big shoutout to Vincent for bringing the CfP up and running 🙏)

Here is how it works

Propose a presentation through our anonymous CfP. Others will help you refine and focus it by making suggestions. Keep updating your proposal bearing those suggestions in mind.

If your proposal is selected at the end of the voting process, your travel expenses will be reimbursed and you will be our guests at our selected hotel in Berlin. Of course, we will also reimburse your ticket if you already have purchased one. In addition, you can choose to take part in a free 1-on-1 stage & speech training. And of course, you will also have access to all activities UIKonf offers its attendees.

Everything happens anonymously to focus on the content and not on the names. Remember that our Code of Conduct applies to proposals and comments as well, so please be nice.

The Timeline

17 Jan – 9 Feb: Submit your proposal on our CfP page or comment on already submitted proposals. We accept any topic you deem interesting may it be technical, design-focused, about building / running / failing a company or how to get a rocket into space using Swift - Inspire us! For inspiration, you can check out the speakers or videos of 2019.

10 Feb – 16 Feb: Comment on existing proposals to help the authors improve their talks. You can help talks you'd like to see at UIKonf 2020 become even better and maybe get elected for the final eight.

17 Feb – 23 Feb: A committee consisting of previous UIKonf speakers will do a preselection of the talks ahead of voting by the community.

24 Feb – 1 Mar: The voting week: our community and a committee consisting of previous UIKonf speakers will vote on their eight favorite talks. The final eight talks will be determined by equally weighing the votes from the public and the committee. We will inform everyone who participated in the CfP in the week after that and announce the chosen speakers one by one.

Don't miss the deadline - there are no exceptions for late submissions.

Changes in the organizer team of UIKonf

In September 2014, Engin, Maxim and Sabine were approached by Chris, Max, Peter and Matt asking if we were interested in taking over organizing UIKonf. Little did we know what we would get ourselves into… But we all thought that this project - a welcoming conference run by a few members of the community for the community - needed to continue and we were excited about this new challenge. Since we didn’t want to waste time setting up a new company and everything that came with it, we decided to run the project under Engin’s existing one, Fifteen Jugglers.

Five successful conference years later, Engin has decided to dedicate his time to other challenges. (You can follow him and his adventures on twitter.)

We want to thank Engin for the exciting five years we’ve been organizing and growing UIKonf together and for the courage of lending his our company for this purpose. We all played a big role in making UIKonf successful. However, it would not have been as easy and fun without Engin and Fifteen Jugglers.

UIKonf 2019 - All female speaker line-up

We’re very excited to announce that UIKonf 2019 will have an all-female* speaker line up on stage!

It is a fact that diversity in the tech industry is a problem. Even though there has been progress in recent years with more women joining and thriving in our industry, they are still facing many challenges and the only way to accelerate progress is to actively support it.

While we realize that diversity involves more than gender, gender is a large part of the problem. As one of the bigger iOS conferences globally, we want to do our part in supporting women in our industry and showcase some of the great women speakers out there. This is our way of raising awareness for the diversity problem while at the same time a celebration of all the women who follow their passion, muster up the courage to go on stage, and hold great talks despite the headwind they’re facing in our industry.

Diversity is not a new topic at UIKonf. Together with inclusiveness it has been one of our focus points since the beginning. We have invested a lot of effort and energy in putting together a diverse conference every year. Not only did we try to have speakers from all parts of the globe but also strive to achieve a balanced gender representation on the stage, each year. Beyond that we also had a scholarship program every year to support people from underrepresented groups or people for whom attending UIKonf would be a financial hardship.

Since we are inviting all speakers ourselves, this year we have to put our traditional anonymous CfP on hold. However, we still want to give an opportunity to speakers we might have missed during our research. If you think you or somebody you know should be on stage, please reach out to me at engin@uikonf.com. If you were looking forward to submit a talk for the CfP, it will be back next year. You’re also very welcome to join the UnKonference on Wednesday, May 29th and hold a talk there.

This will be a UIKonf to remember and we are very excited to see you all there!

[*] We use an inclusive definition of “woman” and “female” and we welcome trans women, genderqueer women, and non-binary people who are significantly female-identified. (Inspired by adacamp.org)

About endings and new beginnings

Our beloved co-organiser and your favorite MC Maxim has decided to dedicate more time building apps. After organising 4 editions of UIKonf together, we understand and respect this decision. All of us organisers are juggling a fulltime job, family / friends and UIKonf organisation which can be quite stressful at times.
We are super proud of how UIKonf has developed and continuously improved in these past years. And this journey would not have been possible without Maxim. So thank you, Maxim! We are grateful to have had you in our team and will miss you dearly. 💙

At the same time we are happy to welcome two new organizers in our team: Our long-term volunteer Julia Kallenberg has decided to join us as a "fulltime" organiser and will take over communication and website management while Sabine (that's me 👋) is escaping the cold Berlin winter for a short sabbatical. Julia is an iOS Developer at nebenan.de. She is also an avid traveler and a former project manager for renewable energies.

Also joining us as an organizer is Bianca Walterspiel Stromlund who will be supporting us with sponsor relationships. During the day, Bianca is managing Global Engineering Relations at Delivery Hero.

And we have three constants: Supporting the team as a professional event manager will again be Christine Braun (who is also happy to help organizing your professional event). And last but not least, Engin and Sabine will still be rocking UIKonf for you. We are looking forward to seeing you again!

Check out the full team here.

Mercedes-Benz.io sponsors 30 diversity tickets

We are very happy to announce that Mercedes-Benz.io is supporting UIKonf’s diversity program and helps us bring 30 members of underrepresented groups in tech to UIKonf 2018. This includes but isn’t limited to: women, people of colour, LGBTQIA+ people, and disabled people and generally people who are unable to attend without financial assistance.

We want to thank Mercedes-Benz.io for their generous support.

Mercedes-Benz.io is Daimler’s digital delivery hub working on products for the Sales and Marketing efforts of Mercedes-Benz and has offices in Berlin, Lisbon, and Stuttgart.