Our call for sessions for 2025 is now closed the following information is here for reference only.

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Our Ripples: Bristol call for sessions is now open.

The deadline for all submissions is 09.00AM (BST) Monday 21 July 2025

What we're looking for

We want to attract speakers and practitioners working in any relevant area, our participants like to hear a range of perspectives on a subject.

Practical approaches

Our participants love takeaways that can be applied to their own work. This can be by participating in workshops to learn new techniques or case studies of projects demonstrating how you approached a problem.

Authenticity and inspiration

We want speakers who will inspire our participants with their real-world experiences. Be bold, teach us something new, make us think, make us smile, be authentic but most of all, be yourself.

Fresh perspectives

Participants like a new way of exploring familiar challenges - practical, inspiring sessions that our participants can learn from and engage with.

Topics of interest

We look across the whole lifecycle at what it takes to build excellent digital services and products.  Below are the kind of areas we’re interested in, but there's a lot more, so if in doubt submit a session or get in touch with us.

What to create?

Experimentation, Lean Startup
Option evaluation, Decision making
Service Design
User Centred Design
Product thinking

How to deliver it

Successful delivery and delivery roles
Goals, OKRs, monitors, metrics
Estimating, Planning, Forecasting, Tracking
Methods and frameworks - emerging and established

How to build, run and secure it

Technical Approaches
Quality, Testing, Infosec
Operations and Observability
DevOps

Building together 

Effective Team Working
Team development and performance 
Facilitation, Workshop and meeting techniques
Leading, influencing, coaching, mentoring.

Creating successful organisations

Change and Transformation
Culture, engagement, communications
Scale, Flow and orchestrating teams
Learning and development, sharing and communities

Responsible, sustainable working

Ethical and social considerations and responsibilities
Sustainable, climate considerate practices
Using our talents for social good.

Personal development

Learning and personal development techniques 
Developing skills and careers in specific roles 
Ways of thinking and acting

Challenges, opportunities and calls to action

How will events, trends and emerging tech affect our work? 
What challenges and opportunities do you see ahead?  
Where, when and how should we focus our attention?
What do we need to talk about more, or less?

A quick note...

... about tech

Many of our attendees work with teams designing, building and operating software products and services.  We are particularly keen to learn about the opportunities and challenges of new tech and approaches.  Talks should be kept inclusive for people with no coding experience.  For example a talk might explain the benefits of a tool, but should avoid spending a large portion of time on code examples and intricacies of configuration.

... about AI

If you're considering an AI talk, please keep it grounded in what is beneficial now or in the very near future.  There’s no shortage of hype and conjecture, our conference is for practical and actionable ideas that will assist digital practitioners and leaders.  Talks about the impact of AI should avoid being only about challenges and have clear suggestions and calls to action.

Types of sessions

Our participants want to hear about actions or approaches they can take away and use in their own organisations. 

We encourage interactive sessions that involve the audience in the discussion or give them hands-on experience. You are also welcome to present a session about something specific you've done, but you should try to structure it so people can participate and not simply sit and listen.

We also welcome novel session formats and are supportive of experimental sessions that may never have been tried before. Feel free to contact us if you’d like to discuss it before you submit your proposal.

You can read about these in more detail in our guidelines for submitting a proposal. 

Our most common types of sessions are:
  • case studies
  • experience reports
  • talks
  • hands-on workshops
  • informal or format-based discussions 

Our participants like to hear a range of perspectives on any subject. For instance, on transformation you might want to present:

  • a case study on leading transformation
  • a talk about your experience of being part of a transformation programme
  • a group discussion about relationships with stakeholders in transformation 
Participant takeaways

We want our participants to have an idea of what they will get out of a session before they join it. So it’s essential to think about the clear learning points, or takeaways, your session will offer and include them in your proposal.

Equity, diversity and inclusion

We are fully committed to creating a welcoming, caring, friendly, safe and respectful environment for you.

Free of bullying, harassment, victimisation and discrimination, promoting empathy, dignity and respect for all. Where individual differences and the contributions of all are recognised and valued.

Our Code of Conduct describes the behaviour we expect from you.

Our review process

After the deadline closes, our programme panel will review all submissions. This usually takes around 4 weeks.

The review process is anonymous - all speaker names, biographies and other details are removed - to ensure the panel selects sessions on their merit and not on how well a speaker is known.

To help us ensure personally identifying information is not included in the process, do not include this information in your session descriptions. These include links to blogs or recordings.

We’ll let you know the result of our panel’s review, even if you’re not successful this time. If you are interested in receiving any feedback our reviewers have about your proposal, contact us. 

Factors that are considered when reviewing a proposal include whether:
  • the session will align with the conference themes and complement other sessions
  • the subject to be covered is clearly defined
  • the subject will be of interest to the audience
  • the content is of high quality
  • the session will be well organised and well delivered
  • participant takeaways are clear

How we support our speakers

Ripples: Bristol is organised by Software Acumen, professional conference organisers since 2004.  Our experienced team is there to ensure you get the most out of participating in the event.

Free speaker tickets

We offer at least 1 free ticket to the whole event for each session selected to be in the programme. The number of free tickets will depend on the number of named speakers and the session’s duration. We give:

  • 1 free ticket for a session between 45 and 60 minutes
  • up to 2 free tickets for a 90 minute session
  • up to 3 free tickets for a 120+ minute session 

We allocate free tickets to speakers in the order they are named on the proposal, unless you tell us otherwise. We also offer a discounted ticket for any named speaker (included on the submission) who does not qualify for a free ticket.

Your speaker ticket includes:
  • participation in the full event programme, including social activities
  • hot lunch and refreshments at scheduled breaks
  • CPD certificate

Expenses

We cover speakers’ travel and accommodation expenses in line with our speaker expenses policy. We will consider the financial cost of a session as part of our decision on whether to select it for the programme. If we accept your session, we’ll suggest a financial amount to cover expenses, depending on your location. 

See our expenses policy

Session Practice

We like to help develop speakers and provide a platform for a range of backgrounds, experience and perspectives. 

This year we will be asking speakers to give a dry run of their sessions before the event takes place, if your session is accepted you may be asked to do this in order to help refine the sessions and be given feedback ahead of time.

Supplies

We provide standard supplies for sessions, like sticky notes, markers, pens and paper. We’ll cover the cost of, or supply directly, any additional materials you need to run your session (within reason), for example printing (if submitted to us in advance). Just tell us what you need when you submit your proposal.

Audiovisual equipment

We provide screens and connections to display material from speakers’ own laptops.

Local knowledge

We’ve run conferences in Bristol for almost 8 years and know the local area well. Contact us if you have any questions about travel or accommodation, or if you want to know more about what to do or see in and around Bristol when you visit. You can also check out our location page.

What we expect from our speakers

If your session is included in our programme, there are a few things we need you to agree to as a speaker at our events. Do not submit a proposal if you feel you cannot agree to these.

As a speaker you will:

  • abide by our Code of Conduct
  • promote your session in the build-up to the event
  • deliver your session and participate in the event
  • respond to any requests we make to ensure your session is ready, such as making sure the review panel’s feedback has been addressed, or reviewing the programme or your slides
  • avoid any activity before the event that would bring it into disrepute or violate the code of conduct
  • ensure you have the correct visa if you are traveling from outside the UK

Our full terms and conditions are set out in the submission form.

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M Shed external view of entrance
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