The annual BCS SPA Software in Practice conference brings together experts and practitioners to share the latest thinking in software development.Now in its 26th year, our conference has a tradition of active participation. We intend to continue this tradition in an entirely online format this year.We encourage conference sessions that bring people together to work and learn and most sessions are highly interactive, involving participants and session leaders on an equal footing. This results in a conference like no other and consistently excellent feedback from all those who attend.All participants at the event are required to follow the SPA code of conduct. The annual BCS SPA Software in Practice conference brings together experts and practitioners to share the latest thinking in software development.Now in its 26th year, our conference has a tradition of active participation. We intend to continue this tradition in an entirely online format this year.We encourage conference sessions that bring people together to work and learn and most sessions are highly interactive, involving participants and session leaders on an equal footing. This results in a conference like no other and consistently excellent feedback from all those who attend.SessionsSessions are 45 minutes, or 90 minutes or 180, with breaks in the middle of the longer sessions.We believe in the power of doing, be it through practice, thoughtful evaluation, discussion or games. In this way everyone can be an active participant and learn by doing. It helps give SPA it's unique atmosphere.Our objective is for the online format to offer the same interactive, collaborative experience. We will provide online collaboration tools to support our presenters and audience. If you prefer to use other tools, we will work with you to link your tools into the online conference experience.What topics are we looking for?We are looking for subjects that are interesting to anyone involved in software development, from any aspect of software development - technology, people, practice and process.We welcome a wide variety of perspectives - new ideas, old ideas rediscovered, techniques the presenters find useful and want to share, problems the presenters would like to work through with a group of their peers, experience reports, creativity, the unexpected, reflection and fun. We’ve also had some great sessions on topics you might not expect at a software conference, like sketching, speed reading, and education. We encourage sessions that give us opportunities to think about and try out a wide range of things.At SPA you can experiment and try something new, or bring a session you’ve perfected elsewhere - we value both. We like to see in your proposal how you’ll make your session interactive and get participants involved. Early submissions get feedback to help them improve, and accepted sessions will be assigned a shepherd to help with preparation, so we’ll support you along the way.Who do we want to hear from?Anyone involved in the process of developing software, whatever your role - product manager, artist, developer, musician, business analyst, designer, ...We particularly encourage speakers who are new to presenting. If you submit early, our feedback process will allow you to tune your proposal before the final review stage.The submission and selection processYour submission is anonymous right up until we have the draft programme - then we just check no-one has too many sessions in the programme, or several at the same time.The earlier you submit your proposal, the more chance you have of getting early feedback to help you improve your proposal. Submissions can be edited until the submission deadline of 15th April 2021.What we offerWe will help you make your session the best it can be, both through our feedback process prior to the submissions deadline and our shepherding process if your session is accepted. The first two named presenters of each accepted session receive a free ticket to the conference. If you have already purchased a ticket before the programme is announced, you will receive a full refund. We have set out the terms and conditions for our speakers. Please be sure to read before applying.