Call for Speakers

LOGIN's goal is to continue to be the most informative technical conference in the industry. In our third year, we hope to achieve that goal with world-class speakers and information packed sessions, focusing entirely on developers and the challenges they face in our changing and expanding market.

LOGIN offers its speakers tremendous opportunities for exposure and recognition. Sessions will attract many technical professionals interested in learning from your expertise and experience. Speakers who are already well established can continue to build their reputation, sharing new expertise and strengthening their already popular presentations. LOGIN provides the following benefits to speakers:

• Complimentary registration to the conference, exhibition, keynotes, and exhibit events. Speakers are generally responsible for their own travel and hotel accommodations.
• Daily access to the exclusive Speaker/VIP Lounge.
• Speaker listing and company reference in the conference program and conference web site.

We hope that you will be able to participate in this event and look forward to your submission.

Peter Freese
Conference Director
LOGIN 2009

Speaker Submission Process

Submitting a speaking proposal for LOGIN is a multi-step process. First, you should read and understand the acceptable session formats at LOGIN, documented in the LOGIN Speaker Guidelines. Next, complete the speaker information form to provide biographical information. This only needs to be done once, even if you are submitting multiple session proposals. Finally, you should complete the session proposal form for each of your proposed sessions.

Submission Steps

Read the Speaker Guidelines
Complete the Speaker Information Form
Complete the Session Proposal Form

Top 5 tips for getting your proposal accepted at LOGIN

1. Submit a proposal on one of the many identified areas of interest. The advisory board has put a good deal of thought identifying areas that we feel are relevant to attendees. If your proposal is the only one for an area we are interested in, it will have priority over all the proposals outside our identified topic ideas.
2. Avoid any marketing slant in your proposals, particularly if you represent a service or technology vendor. LOGIN will host no sponsored or commercial sessions, and proposals which appear to be sales pitches in disguise will be rejected.
3. Focus on areas of your expertise. The audience of LOGIN consists of experienced industry leaders who want to hear from experts. Avoid areas where you aren't experienced or recognized as an expert. Give stories about your own experiences, rather than theoretical ideas.
4. Spend time writing a quality abstract. A poorly written or overly terse abstract indicates that you aren't willing to prepare in advance. The abstract is the most important part of your proposal and the basis on which it will be judged.
5. Submit your proposal well before the January 21 deadline. By the end of the call for speakers, we will have selected many of the sessions already and your proposal will be competing with every other proposal for a shrinking number of speaker slots.

Have a question not answered here?

Send an email to speak@loginconference.com and we'll try to help.

Areas of Interest

Following is a list of topic areas of interest for LOGIN 2009. You are not limited to these topics; however, preference will be given to talks in these areas.

Please note that these are not meant as session titles to be parroted back to us; we're looking for you to relate your unique and individual experiences that will preferably relate to these interest areas. We prefer sessions covering your actual experience with the topic in question. We will select “X worked like this and didn’t work like that” sessions over “I think X will work like this” sessions. We prefer war stories over speculation, even if those war stories are a few years old.

Programming/Technical Track

Live game operations:

• Collecting crash reports and log files
• Deployment procedures
• Cluster Management
• Providing data APIs to third parties
• Data-mining

Large-Scale server architecture:

• Low-level scaling tips on Linux and Windows
• AI techniques for MMOs
• Memory management for long-running servers
• Design patterns for scalability
• Chat filtering for spam and content
• Embedding the latest scripting languages
• Area of interest tracking and bandwidth optimization

Client Technologies

• Developing cross-platform clients
• Client memory management issues
• Challenges of browser-based clients
• Keeping download sizes small and patch times short

Next-generation technology

• Dynamic environments and their impact on bandwidth and AIs
• XML or object databases as an alternative to relational DBs
• The impact of many-core processors on server and client architectures

Design Track

Production

• Content creation pipelines: methods for building massive worlds.
• Managing the content creation process
• Lessons from bad designs and broken processes

Content Design

• Narrative design techniques: storytelling in a shared universe
• Dynamic content systems: can they be successful?
• Trends in modern content design

Systems Design:

• Educating the player through game systems
• Directing the player experience
• Online game design in a world of cheaters

Next-Gen Design

• Building online games for the console generation
• Watch my back: cooperative online gameplay design
• Portable worlds: game design for pocket platforms

Legal Track

Youth oriented virtual worlds and MMOs

• What responsibilities do hosts have to protect children?
• COPPA
• Monitored chat
• “Age play”—when kids get into adult virtual worlds

Headaches over fees and collecting them

• Changing biz model for MMOs from subscription to a free to play to microtransactions
• Electronic gift cards. Major issue of state regulation as to expiration, redemption, and escheat laws

Violence in video games

• Have we gone too far?
• When a 12 year old kids knows that a “headshot” is worth way more than a bodyshot, does that translate to anything in the real world?

Virtual Games and the intersection with gambling/lotteries

Music in virtual games

• What are the rules?

Business/Globalization

• Broadening demographics
• Children’s MMO’s
• IP crossover / cross-pollination
• Recession proof?
• Funding / financial planning for game studios
• Innovations in payment / monetization / business models
• Green / environmental issues facing the games industry
• Game business in Russia / Brazil / Vietnam / South East Asia / Middle East etc.
• Reviews of emerging markets by region
• Games Industry 2013
• Academia and the Industry
• HR / Operational Strategies
• Successful strategies with international partnerships
• Case studies relating to international product launches
• Cour case simulations
• Legal implications with globalization and content distribution rights
• Best practices in EULA / TOS for 2009

LOGIN acknowledges that vendors and service providers are valuable members of our community and will consider talks that include commercial elements where appropriate and relevant, while discouraging straight product pitching.

Community Track

Community Relations in General

• What are current companies doing wrong / not doing enough of?
• What is the future of Community Relations as a discipline in the gaming industry?
• Calculating the ROI of Community Relations
• Defining optimal ranges of authority and responsibility of a Community department

Community Relations – Operations

• Building a Community organization and processes from start to game launch
• Community and company-wide message discipline
• Community Relations and cross-product / company brand promotion
• Technology and tools for successful and innovative community efforts

Specific Community topics

• Building Community for episodic and other non-MMO games

Topic guidelines are not all-inclusive or restrictive. All original and innovative submissions will be considered.

Submission Timeline

November 24, 2008

Call for speakers opens. Abstract submission begins.

January 21, 2009

Call for speakers end. No abstracts accepted after this date without prior approval.

February 4, 2009

Sessions selected and speakers notified.

May 11, 2009

Conference opens.

Submitting Abstracts

You will be able to submit abstracts via an online submission process.

Read Speaker Guidelines
Speaker Information Form
Session Proposal Form

Need More Information?

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View current agenda
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