Would you like to speak at Commsverse 2025?
Commsverse is a community conference. Our content is sourced from volunteer speakers who have a passion to share their knowledge with others freely. Each year we open our doors and accept content from speakers all over the world. To help you with your submission, please read through some key information to ensure that you are able to commit to speaking should you be selected.
Submission Timeline
Call for content is open until Feb 14th 2025 23:59 GMT. You have until this date to submit your sessions. We are unable to accept submissions beyond this date. Sessions will be reviewed after this date with session offers being sent out on 1st March 2025.
If you receive a session offer, you will have 7 days to accept your place. We give you this time to align your calendars and seek any approvals you need to attend. If you do not accept the offer within the timeframe, your offer may be removed and offered to another speaker. If you need more time, please contact us within the 7 day period so mitigations can be put in place.
Who Can Submit
Anyone in the community can submit content that is suitable for one of our content tracks. You don't need to be an MVP or experienced speaker. We welcome all abilities and encourage new speakers to submit. If you are new to the speaking circuit we can provide coaching and buddy schemes to help build your confidence leading up to the event.
The most important ask of you is that you submit content that you can confidently speak about. Generally this means you have had real-world, hands-on experience in your topic and can speak from a position of experience and authority. We are not after Microsoft regurgitation sessions where you're re-presenting a marketing session or read a document on Microsoft Learn. We want sessions from the coalface. These are the most valuable to the community. You'll need to be prepared for questions on your topic that you should be able to answer on the spot and not "take it offline".
However, there are a few no no's. Regardless to whether your company is sponsoring our event or not, you can submit a session in our community call, but it must not be about your product. This means no direct or indirect product / service sessions where your topic can only be achieved either using your product or where your product is an alternative to a native method. Your content must be aimed at community knowledge sharing of Teams and Microsoft developed native tooling / methods that attendees can benefit from freely and without having to sign-up for services / products that are not included in Microsoft 365 licensing.
This includes trojan horse sessions where a speaker is sponsored to deliver a session on a neutral topic but positions a vendor solution as part or all of the solution to the session problem statement.
Sessions must be delivered in neutrality. This means avoiding content that over promotes your employer e.g. "We at Acme have X capability, or we at Acme do Y" etc.
Above everything your session must add value to the Teams community that can be freely implemented without conditions.
Session Submission Limitations
You can submit up to 3 sessions for consideration. These can be changed / updated until the call for speakers period has ended. After that, they cannot be altered. The number of sessions you submit does not increase your chances of being selected. Sessions are chosen based on their quality and relevance. A well crafted submission is worth 10x more than 4 ambiguous sessions.
Please do not submit sessions that you have previously delivered at Commsverse unless there has been significant developments in your topic at industry level, these sessions will not be considered.
Multi-Speaker Sessions
Multi speaker content sessions are permitted. However, your session must be at least 45 minutes in duration. Sessions of less length have very little value to the attendee when delivered by more than one speaker.
We will consider multi-speaker panel discussion session submissions in the 25 minute category however.
The maximum number of speakers per content session is limited to 2. The maximum number of speakers per panel discussion is limited to 4.
Please ensure that ALL your speakers are added to your session submission. They can be changed afterwards, but you must make it clear on the submission how many additional speakers your session proposes.
Any sessions submitted as a single speaker and then post session offer turn out to require co-speakers, then they may be rejected.
Use of AI
In previous years we have seen an increase in the use of AI to create session proposals. We don't mind you doing this, but you should check and edit the abstract to make sure it is accurate and in keeping with the session you're planning to deliver. Full disclosure, all submissions will be checked using AI to detect how much of the content is computer generated. We don't want to see abstracts promising deep dives into several topical areas for a 25 minute session! We want real world sessions from real world experience, not regurgitated marketing presentations or 'what you learnt reading Microsoft Learn'.
Sorry, but our attendees love the real world content. If they wanted the marketing hype sessions, they'd go somewhere else, like Microsoft Ignite.
Payment & Expenses
We do not pay speakers to speak at Commsverse so don't ask. This includes payment in the guise of full expenses paid. We do not pay for your airfare, parking, taxi, or business airport lounge access. As a community we want speakers who are willing to volunteer their time and knowledge.
Those that are able to seek sponsorship from their employer should do so. We will in all cases provide the following support to speakers to ease the cost burden to attend:
- If you are flying into the UK we will organise a taxi transfer from Heathrow Airport to the Speaker Hotel on your arrival. We will also organise a taxi transfer from the event back to Heathrow if you are leaving whilst the event is in progress e.g. 19th June.
- We will provide you a room at our speaker hotel for the nights of the 17th and 18th June (check-in Tues 17th, check-out Thurs 19th). All single occupancy (no sharing) at our cost
- We will provide transportation from the speaker hotel to the venue and back again throughout the event
- We will provide food and drink throughout your stay
- We will pay for any parking charges you incur whilst staying at the hotel or venue if you are travelling by car