Sorry that you think it’s a rude decision that we’re limiting submission from DDD4 to UK-only speakers. You are right that we have had international speakers at the previous events.

We have had incidents at previous events where overseas speakers did not show up on the day, or arrived after their scheduled sessions. The result was that we had to reshuffle the agenda at very late notice. Each time we made changes to the agenda we received negative feedback from attendees in their evaluations. Also, for the last two events we’ve also had roughly twice the number of speaker submissions as we have slots on the day and we have had to turn down submissions from many highly-rated local speakers.

DDD4 is run by a group of volunteers from the community, supported by Microsoft. For DDD4 we decided to limit speakers to the UK for three main reasons. First, we believed it took too much of our time to manage international speakers. Second, we wanted to limit the risk of late changes to agenda due to travel issues. Third, we wanted to ensure that we gave local UK speakers the greatest opportunity to talk to a wider audience.

We realise that this means that we may miss the opportunity to hear from international speakers (many of whom have been great in the past), but we think it is the best way to ensure a great experience for all attendees. We will review this decision after DDD4 as part of our regular reviews and would be happy to hear more feedback.

Thanks for your continued support of DDD and good luck with your session in the voting!