Program Contributions

Call for Papers

R5 Summit 2026 is seeking proposals from practitioners, advocates, and transitional contributors. Share your frameworks, your stories, and your unanswered questions with a community prepared to validate them.

Submissions open · Deadline: Rolling basis pending committee alignment

We Want to Hear From You

R5 Summit has always been a conference by practitioners, for practitioners, and occasionally about practitioners. Whether you have a framework to share, a case study to present, or simply a title that implies expertise, we encourage you to apply.

Submit a Proposal Submission Guidelines
Session Tracks

What We're Looking For

Proposals should fall within one of our four primary tracks. Cross-track submissions are acceptable if the track ambiguity is intentional and can be defended during review.

Engineering & Platform

Platform, Infrastructure & Systems

  • Service ownership and its absence
  • Legacy system coexistence strategies
  • Distributed systems at human scale
  • Infrastructure migration narratives
  • Documentation as an organizational problem
  • Container orchestration and the meaning thereof
  • Architectural decisions and their consequences
Leadership & Culture

People, Teams & Governance

  • Leadership rotation models and succession
  • Psychological safety in distributed teams
  • Mentorship patterns for the post-mentor era
  • Offboarding as an engineering practice
  • Reorganization as a continuous process
  • Calendar culture and meeting governance
  • Institutional memory preservation techniques
AI & Automation

AI, LLMs & Responsible Deployment

  • Prompt engineering for organizational contexts
  • LLM-assisted knowledge management
  • AI ethics in ambiguous permission environments
  • Agentic system governance
  • Synthetic content in enterprise communications
  • AI readiness for organizations in motion
  • Automation and the human cost of velocity
Emerging & Undefined

Adjacent Topics & Novel Frameworks

  • New frameworks in early-stage definition
  • Post-agile methodology proposals
  • Interdisciplinary approaches to engineering culture
  • Topics the committee has not yet categorized
  • Conceptual sessions requiring audience co-creation
  • Frameworks with fewer than three defined pillars
  • Other (please specify, using a term we haven't heard)
What Makes a Strong Proposal

Submission Guidelines

✓ Strong Submissions

  • → Include at least one undefined acronym
  • → Reference a specific organizational challenge without naming the organization
  • → Propose actionable insights that require additional context to act on
  • → Address a common experience the audience has never seen articulated
  • → Present a framework with a minimum of three and maximum of five pillars
  • → Draw from personal experience at a former interim position

✗ Submissions We Decline

  • → Product pitches with fewer than four slides of context-setting
  • → Proposals claiming to have "solved" a problem
  • → Sessions that begin with a definition of terms we all know
  • → Proposals recommending a single tool as the complete answer
  • → Submissions with excessive confidence and insufficient hedging
  • → Abstracts that explain what the talk is about in the first sentence

Tips from the Program Committee

  • Titles work best when they contain one word that makes the audience feel slightly uncertain.
  • A good R5 Summit abstract raises more questions than it answers. This is intentional.
  • Preferred formats: talk (45 min), short talk (25 min), discussion (40 min with facilitation), and "I'm not sure yet" (to be determined at submission).
  • Speakers with experience transitioning out of interim roles are particularly encouraged to apply.
  • The committee responds well to abstracts that use the word "alignment" at least once but not more than three times.
  • If your talk has a subtitle, the subtitle should be more specific than the title without actually clarifying anything.
  • Co-presenters are welcome. Please note that co-presenter alignment is the speaker's responsibility.
Why Speak at R5

Speaker Benefits

🎟

Complimentary Registration

Full conference access for accepted speakers, including workshops pending availability.

🎤

Platform & Visibility

Speaker bio and photo on the R5 Summit website, program, and select promotional materials.

🤝

Speaker Dinner

Invitation to the Speaker Dinner on Day 1 evening, pending venue and RSVP alignment.

📹

Session Recording

Your session may be recorded and made available for asynchronous engagement, pending your consent and our A/V budget.

👕

Speaker Merchandise

Exclusive R5 Summit speaker t-shirt. Size selection available pending inventory confirmation.

📜

Speaker Certificate

A digital certificate of participation suitable for LinkedIn and portfolio inclusion. Framed version available for an additional fee.

Apply Now

Submit Your Proposal

Complete the form below. All fields marked with an asterisk are required. Fields without asterisks are strongly encouraged.

Submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis by the program committee. You will receive confirmation of receipt within 5–7 business days pending committee availability. Acceptance notifications will follow pending program finalization.