Speaker Guide

We welcome you as an Open Source Days 2026 speaker, hosted by The Academy Software Foundation. The event will take place in person in Los Angeles, California on July 19, and will be streamed virtually.

This is your official event speaker guide. Please bookmark this page for easy reference. If you have any questions, please email Cassandra Reyes-Jones at [email protected].

Please click through the tabs on this page to access information.

• Speaker Registration Deadline: Wednesday, June 17
• AV Requests Deadline: June 19
• Virtual Speaker Pre-records Due: July 16
• Speaker Slide Due Date: July 17
• Event Date: July 19

To confirm that you will be presenting, please register as a speaker by June 17.

Registration information will be sent in a separate email. If you need this information sent to you again, please contact Cassandra Reyes-Jones.

J.W. Marriott Los Angeles L.A. LIVE

900 West Olympic Boulevard,
Los Angeles, California, USA, 90015

The schedule will be announced on June 4 and posted on our website using sched.com. You will receive an email from sched.com asking you to create your account. Please upload your bio and photo by June 5 if any details are missing.

Please note:

• Session Presentations and Multi-speaker presentations (panels) are 20 minutes. 
• Lightning Talks are 10 minutes.

If you have a conflict with the timing of your talk or find that it conflicts with the content of another talk, or need help uploading your bio and photo, please contact Cassandra Reyes-Jones at [email protected].

Any additional AV requests are due by June 19.

• The room will include a screen, projector, (1) wireless microphone, and (1) handheld microphone. Panels will be provided with an appropriate number of microphones.
• All speakers must submit their slides by July 17 (July 16 virtual) to be added to a master deck, no personal laptops will be used during presentations.

If you require additional AV, please email Cassandra Reyes-Jones with those needs by June 19. The Academy Software Foundation will make every effort to accommodate additional AV needs; however, final approval for additional AV requests will be made on a case-by-case basis.

Due by July 17
All speakers must submit their final presentation slides before the event. 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.

You can download the optional PowerPoint template here, but please note that you are not required to use this. Please upload your final presentations here, these will be used for your presentation onsite.

Please note that your presentation slides should be submitted in .PPT format to this folder and must be formatted in 16:9.  Please submit final slides and recordings to this folder with the file naming convention as “Session Title – First Name_Last Name. Files should be sent as .PPT and any custom fonts must be shared as well.  If you have any questions or cannot upload your file to google drive please email [email protected].

Pre-Recorded Video Due Date: July 16

Virtual speakers will pre-record their talk, which will be played during their scheduled session time. Please note that all presentations must have at least one speaker who will be presenting in person.

• Some suggested tools to use for recording are Quicktime, Google Hangouts, Zoom, a screen recorder, or something similar. The recording should show your slides/screen as well as you presenting using a picture-in-picture style format.
• Please use one of the following file types: MP4 or MOV (under 5gb), dimensions: 1280 x 720 (720p), 1920 x 1080 (1080p).
• Ensure you have stable internet access. A hardwired connection is preferable for your recording. If a hardwired connection is unavailable, turn devices off that will affect your connectivity during your presentation, and make sure that anyone in the house is not on devices and/or consuming bandwidth.

Helpful Zoom Documents and How-to’s

• Enabling HD Video – This is disabled by default, so you will need to enable it before recording.
• Recording Side-by-Side for sessions with more than one speaker
• How to Record in Zoom Instructional Video – Created by our production team to guide you through recording your presentation for either single or multiple speaker sessions, as well as providing tips on lighting, cameras, and audio.

We have multiple options for uploading your pre-recorded presentation:

• Share your file with [email protected]
• Add your recording directly into the Google folder (please email [email protected] to confirm we received your file)
• Or let us know if you have an alternate method (DropBox, file-sharing service, etc.)

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, diversity, 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, which can be found here. 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 presentation.

Do you have speaker or schedule-related questions?

Please get in touch with Cassandra Reyes-Jones at [email protected].