Instructions for authors

Procedure for Considering Applications

1. Submit your talk by the deadline.
2. Discuss all details with the supervisor from the programme committee, complete the talk.
3. The programme committee selects the talks on a competitive basis by voting. You may be asked to revise the talk and have an audition to make a final decision.
4. Prepare the talk with the supervisor. It is strongly recommended without exception to have an audition of your talk by a supervisor.

Program Committee members will acknowledge all submissions within a few days. Submissions will be reviewed for quality and relevance, and the acceptance decision will be emailed to the corresponding author.

When you submit your talk, you are giving the rights to the conference committee to publish it in conference proceedings and reference them in conference materials such as booklets, newsletters, website, etc.

Please pay attention!  You have more chances to get into the program of SECR if your talk has not previously sounded at other specialised conferences, or this talk was substantially updated and revised in the light of feedback received at the events. 

Speakers (authors of the regular and lightning talks, roundtables, workshops) will get free passes to the event: one free pass per accepted talk.

Authors, whose talks have not passed a competition, can participate in the conference on the price for the date of registration at the SECR site.

In the case of several co-authors, only one speaker will get a free pass.

In case the speaker is declined for participation in the regular talk format, the lightning talk format can be offered.

How to write an annotation

The topic and a short description in Russian and English are published in the “Talks” section on the conference website.

A short annotation is usually contained in 1-3 sentences. Its purpose is to capture the essence of the talk: it is not necessary to present the issues raised during the presentation, it is necessary to outline the answers to them.
The maximum length of the annotation is 1000 characters, including spaces.
The maximum length of the topic is 100 characters, including spaces.

Examples of brief descriptions

1. Example 1: “If participants have problems with designing interfaces, in my report, they will be able to learn about some ways of using DSL for the modification of automatically generated forms. This approach is not covered in the current literature, but our successful implementation shows that it works.”

2. Example 2: “I will share my experience in communication with difficult customers based on seven years of work and over 20 successful projects, which will be presented in the form of case studies with analysis/conclusion. I think that participants will be able to apply this knowledge in their daily work since some of these situations have occurred more than once with different clients.”

Theses or a plan of a talk is an extended description and outline of the talk in Russian or English. This information is necessary for the supervisor to understand the talk better.

1. The content of the theses or the plan of the talk should fully reflect the essence of the future talk: it is necessary to present not only the subject area of the talk but also what specific issues will be disclosed in the talk, what solutions (scientific, technological, innovative or other) are proposed by the author.

2. Many authors send a detailed description of the problem and justification of its importance, and in the talk, they promise to disclose the solution. This is not enough: the solution itself must be stated and justified, whether it is an original idea, a new combination of ideas or a successful practice. It is desirable to relate the proposed solution to analogues available in the public domain.  

How to make a good talk

Everyone has own understanding of how to make a good talk. Below are just basic principles that must be kept in mind during preparation.

1. The talk must be interesting for listeners. This item is from the “Captain obvious” repertoire, but it does not negate its importance.
2. Our conference - for testers!
3. Any talk is interested if the audience understands the ultimate goal. Even if the talk is dealing with unknown technologies, approaches, methods. If you understand the meaning of the action, you try to grasp the process because there is always a chance that you will face such a task in your life.
4. Do not expect that the meaning is obvious to an audience. Most of the listeners do not know the nature of your tasks and the challenges of your platform. It is better to explain clearly in the beginning.
5. The talk should not be much to go into private affairs in a specific technology. Often, such a depth involves the lack of obvious practical value for the listeners. Even for your colleagues on the technology. The purpose is not clear.
6. Add practical cases to your talks. Listeners will be grateful to you.
7. Remember the Death by PowerPoint.