Speaker Guide

We are excited to welcome you as a speaker for BazelCon 2025 taking place Monday, November 10 – Tuesday, November 11, with Training & Community Day on Sunday, November 12. The event is taking place at the Omni Atlanta Hotel at Centennial Park in Atlanta, Georgia.  

Please bookmark this link for easy reference, and click through the tabs on this page to access the information.

• Schedule Announcement: Thursday, September 4 
• Speaker Registration Deadline: Tuesday, September 16 
• Additional AV Needs Deadline: Thursday, October 9 
• Slide Submission Deadline: Thursday, November 6 
• Event Dates: Monday, November 10 – Tuesday, November 11, 2025
  • Training & Community Day: Sunday, November 9 

To confirm your participation and secure your speaking slot, it’s important to complete your registration by Tuesday, September 16, using the details you received in your notification email. If you need those details again, please contact Carolyn Ingalls.

BazelCon will take place at the Omni Atlanta Hotel at Centennial Park:

190 Marietta Street NW
Atlanta, GA 30303

Please visit our Venue & Travel page for more information and to book your hotel accommodations.

If you require a visa letter, please register for the event and then complete the visa letter request here.

Please note the following:

• Provision of a visa letter by The Linux Foundation does not guarantee visa approval, as final approval is made at the sole discretion of the government of the event’s host country.
• The Linux Foundation strongly recommends requesting a visa letter at your earliest convenience and contacting your local Embassy/Consulate with any visa questions you may have.
• The Linux Foundation processes most visa letter requests in (3) business days.

If you are applying for travel funding and have not yet submitted your request, please do so as soon as possible. The deadline for travel funding applications is September 14, 2025, at 11:59 PM EDT.

Please note that talk acceptance does not guarantee travel funding.

The schedule will be announced on Thursday, September 4, and posted on our website using sched.com. You will receive an email directly from sched.com asking you to create your account; please upload your bio and photo if needed.

Session Formats

• Feature / Technical Talk: 25 minutes + 5 minutes Q&A
• Lightning Talk: 10 minutes – no Q&A
• Birds of a Feather: 1 hour

If you have a conflict with the timing of your talk, find that it conflicts with the content of another presentation, or are having problems uploading your bio and photo, please contact Carolyn Ingalls.

Please note the following technical requirements:

• All speakers must supply their own computers and HDMI adapters to use during their talk.
• Speakers should format their presentation slides in 16:9.  
• The room will include a screen, projector, and (2) microphones.
• In International Ballroom A-D, a downstage confidence monitor can be used to display the speaker notes in your presentation slides.
• ADDITIONAL STEP FOR LIGHTNING TALKS: In order to save time transitioning between lightning talks, we have decided to compile presentation slides into a single deck. Please grant Carolyn Ingalls edit access to your Google slides or upload the final PowerPoint deck to this folder by 5:00 PM EDT on Thursday, November 6.
  • The file name must follow this format: Complete Session Title + Speaker Names. 
  • If you create your presentation using Google Slides, you can continue to make changes to existing slides in your presentation until 8:00AM EDT on the day you are scheduled to speak because we will be linking the slides.
    • Important note: if you add, delete, or change the order of the slides, the linking will not work properly.

If you require any additional AV, please email Carolyn Ingalls with those needs by Thursday, October 9. The Linux Foundation will make every effort to accommodate other AV needs; however, final approval for additional AV requests will be made case-by-case.

Due by Thursday, November 6

Before the event, all speakers must upload their final presentation slides to Sched.com. In addition to providing a hard copy for accessibility purposes, we find that adding the presentations before the event helps to drive interest in attending the session.

Please note that your presentation slides should be uploaded as a PDF and formatted in 16:9.

To upload slides, follow these instructions (guide with visual examples):

• Log into your BazelCon 2025 speaker profile through Sched.com 
• On the top of the page, click “Manage and Promote Your Session”
• Click “Add Presentation”
• Click in the “Select a File” box and add the PDF document (note: there is a 50MB size limit)
• Click “Upload,” and your slides will automatically be saved or send them to Carolyn Ingalls, who will upload them on your behalf.

A branded PowerPoint template can be downloaded here. Use of the template is optional.

In collaboration with the National Center for Women in Technology (NCWIT), the Linux Foundation has created an online course designed to teach the viewer about inclusion and unconscious bias. We highly recommend all of our speakers watch the course to learn tips/tools to use when speaking to encourage inclusivity in presentations and messaging.  

Please read, and abide, by our code of conduct. Our code of conduct is strictly enforced. We ask that speakers especially review this code of conduct and are careful to be inclusive in the words and images used during their presentations.

If you have any other platform, speaker, or schedule-related questions, please contact Carolyn Ingalls at cingalls@linuxfoundation.org.