Talks Brainstorm - Open edX Conference 2025

Discussions - Public
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This is the brainstorm thread for talks topics for the 2025 conference.

There will be two tasks - the current one for the brainstorm and picking a topic to submit, and a follow-up task next sprint to write up the actual proposal. The whole team participates in brainstorming talk ideas, regardless of who actually attends the conference.

Timeline

Current task

  • [Sprint 337] By Nov 1st: Post your talk ideas in the current thread
  • [Sprint 337] By Nov 11th: Review & reply to other people’s ideas, pick your own talk & get a :+1: from Xavier on the choice.

Next sprint

  • [Sprint 338] By Nov 15th: Write up your proposal & post it for review
  • [Sprint 338] By Nov 25th: Submit your final talk proposal

Getting ideas

You can read the same thread from previous years for ideas:

Avoid suggesting tutorials or “HOWTOs” - these ideas are easy to get, but they take a lot of work and time to prepare afterwards, and usually have smaller attendance.

In general, try to focus on talks that our clients or prospects might attend - it helps a lot if it’s not only technical, but also focuses on outcomes for the learners and the instructors, or the community at large.

Think about what you have worked over the last year – what got you or our clients excited? The more you use materials you have already worked on, the easiest it will be to prepare the talk. Avoid new topics or ideas specifically that require development or research specifically for the talk.

Be opinionated in your talk title (think of what would make you click on an article title) - it should attract the attention, and make people curious about what you are going to say.

Timeline

  • [Sprint 337] By Nov 1st: Post your talk ideas in the current thread
  • [Sprint 337] By Nov 11th: Review & reply to other people’s ideas, pick your own talk
  • [Sprint 338] By Nov 15th: Write up your proposal & post it for review
  • [Sprint 338] By Nov 25th: Submit your final talk proposal
4 Likes
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I don’t know how much sense it makes to submit the same talk twice, but I think my previous topic is still worth exploring since runtime theming is still WIP but hopefully will be merged by next release.

5 Likes
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My talk ideas:

  • Why We’re Dogmatic about the Tools We Use to Communicate

    • I can only really present this talk if the proposal I presented at the summit is accepted. I would discuss the importance of using communication tools that are open source (preferably), searchable, and transparent (I’d refer to resources like Karl Fogel’s Producing Open Source Software for guidance).

  • 12 New XBlocks for WGU

    • I’d introduce the new XBlocks OpenCraft has built / will build for WGU from a product and user point of view.
    • EDIT: I don’t think there were 12 XBlocks in the end; I’m in the process of checking this number.
3 Likes
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My ideas:

  • The Core Contributor Handbook: Your New Best Friend

    • This proposal will only work if my summit proposal is passed by the community. In this talk I’ll cover the newly developed Core Contributor Handbook, that supports both new and experienced CCs. I’ll discuss how to effectively navigate and submit updates to GitHub, as well as highlight the resources available to enhance contributions.

  • Killer Product Proposals for Seamless Upstreaming

    • This talk will focus on crafting compelling product proposals that resonate. I’ll cover the Open edX product proposal process and suggest effective ways to align internal company proposals for seamless upstreaming experiences. I’ll review some examples and share tips on how to make proposals clear and engaging for both technical and non-technical contributors.
3 Likes
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I see Sarina mentioned that “talks submitted prior to 12 November will get a quick pre-review and a chance to resubmit!” Should we take that into account @antoviaque?

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Last year, IIRC, most of us submitted for early review, but didn’t get any feedback.

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That’s odd. I got early feedback so I could make changes.

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I can be wrong. Let’s make a poll:

  • I received feedback and my talk was accepted
  • I didn’t receive feedback and my talk was accepted
  • I received feedback and my talk was not accepted
  • I didn’t receive feedback and my talk was not accepted
0 voters
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Since targeting this deadline would force to rush the brainstorm in one sprint like last year, and that this rush didn’t seem to have been worth it, I used the full length of time until the publication deadline to do our brainstorm properly. But if you want to submit your proposal for an early feedback round, by November 12th you will have a talk topic picked & approved, which could be submitted as a draft, before the final review of the full proposal.

2 Likes
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My talk ideas:

  • Handling Open EdX instances at scale – what it means for an operator to host and manage 10s of instances – opportunity to introduce Harmony (and Grove)
  • Benefits of contributing back Open EdX – how the community benefits from all the contributions with examples, like blockstore, Harmony, and other improvements that have influence on the community
8 Likes
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My talk ideas.

  1. How to kick ass as an Open edX developer
    • I want to talk about the skills you need to excel as an Open edX developer. Starting with the basic hard skills like debugging, python, Django, containerization, etc. but then focusing extensively on two “power skills”: communication and empathy. I want to focus on the importance of putting yourself in other people’s shoes - how understanding and being understood can make you a much more successful developer, and how you can develop these skills by participating in the community.
  2. Dispatching Discovery
    • I don’t know the details of this yet, but I want to talk about the deprecation of the discovery service and what we [have been / will be] building to replace it.
9 Likes
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My talk ideas:

  • The “developer side” of the Libraries Relaunch — We will probably have a Product talk about this, and we can complement it with how developers can use/extend the authoring framework. This could include deprecating the library-authoring-mfe.
  • We submitted a talk about the Tagging Project last year, but it was rejected. I think it is worth reviewing and trying to submit it again.
6 Likes
13

My talk ideas:

  • Content Libraries for Content Authors – best practices for using Libraries v2 in your courses.
    In this talk I would highlight:
    • Content-reuse features added for Modular Learning including content syncing and Problem Banks
    • Studio draft content search – course + libraries content
    • Using tags and collections to organize library content
    • (by the time the conference rolls around, we should have ) the process for migrating content from Libraries v1 to v2.
  • How to contribute to Open edX – I really like both of @cassie 's talk ideas, and would reference them both in this talk.
    • Core contributor’s handbook – how it’s a useful reference for non-core contributors too.
    • How to find work to do
    • How to join working groups
    • Best practices for contributions (test coverage, product review)
    • How to grow from a “contributor” into a “core contributor”
7 Likes
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Automatically Tagging Millions of XBlocks: A Use Case for OpenedX Hooks Extension Framework

In this talk, I would like to introduce the OpenedX hooks extension framework, specifically openedx-events and openedx-filters, and demonstrate how it helped us and 2U tag millions of xblocks. (Note: We should confirm the actual number with 2U, as it has been in use for approximately one to two years so we should have some real numbers)

This was an idea I had for a talk at last year’s conference, but unfortunately, I did not submit it in favor of another proposal.

8 Likes
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My talk ideas:

  • AI-enhanced Learning Components

    • In this talk I would talk about how the “Short Answer” and “Coding with AI Eval” XBlocks allow for dynamic AI-driven evaluation and live coding execution.

  • Improve content engagement with interactive components

    • In this talk I would focus on how interactive XBlocks like the “Accordion” and “Timeline” add value by engaging learners in a more dynamic way.
5 Likes
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My talk ideas:

  1. React context vs. React Redux: Explain each one and detail pros and cons. In addition to presenting examples of use. A React context implementation for library-authoring is currently being used in frontend-app-authoring MFE, but also there are some other parts of frontend-app-authoring that are implemented with React Redux.
  2. Modular import/export taxonomy tags: I feel that this import/export system has a lot of potential for a talk. It can also be used to explain the implementation of taxonomies/tags since that topic was not touched on in any talk last year. Has potential for improvement.
  3. Talk about Taxonomies/Tags and their current use cases: course, units, library components
5 Likes
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Upgrading Ancient Open edX Deployments: A Journey Through Challenges

There is certain demand on this topic. We have a client that we upgraded from Hawthorn not so long time ago. The process wasn’t trivial at all and there is zero documentation on how to do this. I’m sure that many old instances still exist in the wild and their owners have no ways to upgrade them due to “official” tooling not working anymore. In this talk I would talk about how I did this, and what problems left unresolved.

5 Likes
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Kudos for the proposals! Lots of good ones already, and I have a much less comments or changes to suggest than in past years so far - well done :)

For reviewing the proposals, I will reply here when I have specific comments or suggestions - if not and your proposal looks good, I’ll just mark your comment with a :heart: - that means :+1: :slight_smile: (I might still comment and ask for changes even with a heart - so check the comments below :) )

It can make sense to resubmit a topic, but then make sure to take into account the fact that it was not accepted the first time. Try to improve it accordingly: make the title more catchy, take more of an opinionated approach, in general try to see what could make the target audience more curious to hear what you have to say. ote that the audience is not always very technical - making it interesting for non-technical folks helps broadening the appeal.

Good topic talk - but rather than dogma (which sounds like following rules for the sake of it), I would focus on the actual reasons - independence, ability to master and improve our tools, dogfooding…

Also, note that people might not have heard about the plan/proposal by the time they vote on talks - not everyone will be a core contributor (or have paid any attention to the summit…). Starting with a short recap about the summit and proposal will likely help some to get the proper context to evaluate the proposal.

Also a good talk - but worth trying to find a more catchy title & angle - maybe something like “Mission Impossible: Building 12 High Quality XBlocks in 2 Months for WGU”? Or something about how WGU managed to get 12 new types of students interactions in front of their students, with only 2 months of lead time. Bringing the suspense of the rush and small amount of time (especially given the size of the institution) could help build a story people would want to listen to :slight_smile:

+1! Though I wouldn’t call it the “core contributor” handbook - but more the Open edX Handbook, so that it is not constrained to just what affects core contributors, but potential all project contributors and users. Also, it is more inclusive to say “Our new best friend” - this way as the talk presenter you position yourself at the same level as the audience, not above it.

And same remark as for Ali - people might not have heard about the plan/proposal by the time they vote on talks, so starting with a recap of that would help them understand why this talk would be useful.

@navin This sounds like a good talk! It might be useful to state quickly what the difficulty was, so it’s easier to understand the challenge. Anyone can “tag” millions of rows in a database with a simple SQL query - what made this challenging?

Also worth reaching out now to 2U to propose to co-present the talk.

Good one, but there will likely be quite a few other talks about AI components that providers have developed, so you will need to differentiate yourself from the crowd. Why should people pick this talk or these components over others’?

It might be worth co-submitting a talk with product, to divide the time/topics? It will have more chances to be accepted this way than trying to get multiple talks on the same topic, and will reduce the workload preparing it. It can also reach more people, by not being too technical the whole time.

Sounds good, but see my comment above about resubmitting talks - it needs to be reworked before resubmitting.

The second talk might need a bit more of an angle - how are those interactive components more “engaging”? Is there some tangible result or number you can use to bolster the claim?

It might be an interesting talk, but it seems narrow in terms of audience and focus - it might be worth broadening the target audience or changing the angle a bit.

Likely a good theme, but “a feature doesn’t make a talk” - you still need to take an angle, and have something to say about that feature, which the talk title should preview.

3 Likes
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As for my own proposals - I have reworked two proposals from last year. I changed the focus, angle, and categories:

  • How to Become a Contributor? An Open Source Masterclass: Want to get more involved in the project, contribute to Open edX and understand better the mechanism of open source contributions? Making your first contributions can be a daunting prospect, regardless of technical background. But fear not! This talk will propose a gentle introduction to the topic, and equip you with what you need to get up to speed. This session will distill essentials from the Open Source Masterclass MOOC, as well as the rest of the Open edX onboarding courses.

  • Technical Oversight Committee - 2025 Elections Kickstart & Recap: The governing body of the Open edX project, the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) is holding its elections in the coming months. In this session, candidates for the 2025-2027 term will introduce their programs, and current TOC members will provide updates on the recent projects and discussions in the TOC.

A notable change would be to recategorize the Open Source Masterclass as a Workshop – I know I am always warning against workshops, as they tend to take a veryyy long time to prepare and have smaller audiences. The difference here being that the workshop is already prepared - it’s the content of the MOOC, which is mainly being adapted to the format & audience, shortening existing materials to fit in 90 minutes. It would also be a great occasion to test some of its materials with a live audience. (And if anyone is interested in participating to its presentation let me know!)

The TOC proposal is also a bit different from last year’s, because it is more focused on its upcoming elections. I am also submitting it to the TOC for review now, some changes might come from other TOC members.

5 Likes
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I won’t be attending the conference because of schedule conflicts (I’ll be at the coworking week, though! :sun_with_face:), but if I participated (or if anyone is interested in picking these topics – @DouglasDraper perhaps?), I’d suggest these topics:

Open edX should capture the professional training market. Why hasn’t it, and how can we change that?

The professional training market is vast, requiring continuous skill development across various industries. However, many organizations still rely on outdated training methods or rigid proprietary platforms. Open edX, with its open-source framework, is ideally suited to address these needs but has struggled to gain traction. The issue can be solved in three steps: finding the gaps, identifying barriers to entry, and implementing a penetration stragegy.

The same case could be made with Canvas and Moodle:

Unlocking Potential: How Open edX Can Outpace Canvas and Moodle

The traditional LMS market is dominated by established players like Canvas, which is practically closed-source, and Moodle, infamously known for its clunky interface. The Open edX platform, with its customizable and adaptable framework, is well-positioned to evolve and meet the diverse needs of educators and learners. Let’s work on a strategy that will allow Open edX to not only catch up, but potentially outpace its competitors in the “residential” LMS market.

6 Likes