Call for talks
What?
Our goal is a more ethical and sustainable games industry and we believe an important factor in this is what we choose to talk about and how.
We think that talks that focus on actionable, measurable change, are going to be instrumental in creating a better industry.
Theoretical vs Actionable
Theoretical talks focus on ideas and thoughts. They provide the foundation for making people think about topics but usually provide little in terms of steps that folks can implement themselves. It’s food for thought.
Actionable talks get their base from the experience of the speaker. They talk about their own, personal experiences, they can outline what they tried and why this worked or didn’t work. This gives the audience tangible material to work with, ideas to implement or things to change in their own work environments. People can act on the information provided as it’s presented in a format that do-ers, like game developers, thrive on.
Why?
Talks that call for industry change in a theoretical way: “we need more diversity” can be an important call to action for the folks at studios to try folding something new into their approach, but we believe that the most actionable talks zoom in and give the listener clear actionable steps: “how to retain diverse employees”
Talks that focus on being actionable, because of their practical approach, will be much more effective at meeting companies and devs where they’re at and will therefore help slingshot a much needed change.
And this is where conferences come in! So, what can you do as a platform that hosts all these incredible talks?
How?
You’re here, reading this page, fantastic!
Getting interested and seeing what could be changed is the first step.
Make the switch towards actively looking for and booking people who are able to talk from personal experience, understanding what constitutes an ‘actionable’ talk and what makes it different from a theoretical one. We believe a healthy balance of both types of talks is what will get us there!
We have a document that outlines topics we feel are instrumental to creating a better industry.
If you are looking for inspiration on what topics might be interesting to get people to come in and give a talk about, feel free to check out the full list of statements here.
Or watch a talk to get some ideas.
You can help lead the way by making a call for talks that focus on actionable topics and encouraging speakers to focus on what is actionable rather than theoretical.
See if their topic aligns with what is needed in the industry and whether their talk could provide other devs and companies with an idea on how to implement these changes themselves or learn from their experiences.
That’s it! You invite speakers to focus more on an actionable approach and with that help make real change more accessible for the industry as a whole.
Our dream vision would be that these materials then become publicly available, so that we can add them to our own library and provide access to all developers who wish to learn and create a better industry together.
There is a first draft of the sort of library we envision on the Lifetime in Games (MEG-P) website that we wish to expand on in great detail.
Reach out
Are you left with any questions after reading all this or would you like to get in touch to discuss things together?
Please reach out to us here:
