2026 WiDS Puget Sound

Call For Proposals and Panelists

Thanks for your interest in contributing to the 2026 WiDS Puget Sound conference! Please read carefully for essential details.

Conference Details

• Audience: 200 data enthusiasts with varied backgrounds and experience levels. A majority of attendees have either 2-5 years of work experience in data or post-graduate degrees in related fields. You can assume attendees have familiarity with key concepts in data science.

• Session length: Talk sessions will last between 20 and 25 minutes. The timing will be confirmed at the time of acceptance (late January - early February).

• Conference space: A majority of talks will take place in the main conference room with the full audience. A small number of talks will be held in breakout rooms that hold about 30 viewers.

Speaker Eligibility

• We welcome submissions from people who identify as women and/or gender minorities.

• Applicants should be at least 18 years old.

• Speakers must be available to attend the IN PERSON conference on May 8, 2026 in Mercer Island, Washington. Unfortunately, we do not have funding available to assist with travel expenses. We encourage candidates to ask their employers or universities for financial support, if needed.

• We do not have specific educational or professional requirements, but background experiences may be considered if/when they are relevant to the merits of your proposal.

• Due to the large audience, we will primarily select candidates with past experience speaking for large audiences. We will consider proposals from less experienced speakers for talks planned in the smaller breakout rooms. We highly encourage newer speakers to submit the optional 1-minute recording as part of your submission.

• The sessions will be streamed and recorded; any applicants that require employer permission will be asked to complete any required steps as a condition of acceptance.

Talk Proposals

For the 2026 conference, our volunteer team has curated a list of 4 specific topics that we will feature at the conference, and we are asking for proposals on these topics. We have included a fifth option to allow for submissions on any topic related to DS, ML, or AI. Given the expected volume of submissions, the acceptance rate will likely be significantly higher for entries on the 4 specified topics.

Topics

1) Modeling Monitoring and ML Ops

You've trained a model. What comes next? Walk us through your model's journey to production and beyond. We’re looking for talks on real-world approaches to model deployment, monitoring, versioning, reporting, data drift detection, and responsible ML operations. Share your frameworks, tools, or lessons learned from keeping ML systems healthy, scalable, and observable.

2) Agentic AI

Rapidly growing investments in agentic AI are redefining how we build and interact with data systems. We invite sessions that explore architectures, workflows, ethics, limitations, or practical implementations of agentic AI—whether in research or industry. We welcome perspectives of skeptics, enthusiasts, and everyone in between.

3) Soft Essential Skills for Thought Leaders

Technical knowledge is only a start. Strong communication, leadership, collaboration, and storytelling elevate the impact of data work. Propose sessions that help data professionals navigate organizational change, influence decisions, or grow in their careers through better human skills.

4) Data Science for Social Good

Share your stories of data-driven innovation fostering positive community impacts. We're seeking talks on data science applications that benefit society, especially examples from government, nonprofits, education, or community organizations.

5) Other Topics in ML, DS, and AI

Get creative! Feel free to submit any topic in machine learning, data science, or artificial intelligence that you think would be a valuable contribution to our conference.

Talk Submission Requirements

• Profile: You will need to create a profile in order to submit proposals or apply to panels.

  • Headshot & Bio : These will only be used if your talk is accepted, in which case they will be used to advertise your session at the conference. You can update this later on by logging into your profile.

• Abstract: Please provide a summary of your proposed talk (300 word limit). Strive to convince reviewers that your topic is compelling and important to share with data professionals. If accepted, your abstract will be used to advertise your session to potential attendees. Remember to remove any personal identifying information so our scoring remains anonymous.

• Background: Please describe any experience from your academic and/or professional background that contributed to your expertise on this topic. Answers can be in list or paragraph form.

• Speaking Experience: Please describe your previous experiences with public speaking, including setting and approximate audience sizes. If you have extensive experience, you may include links to past talks or relevant presentations instead of submitting the optional video

• One-minute video (optional): Record yourself explaining who you are, why your topic is important, what attendees will take away from it.

Review Process

Volunteers will anonymously review submissions (without the optional video content) and score each proposal based on a rubric. Once all reviewers have submitted scoring, the team will meet to make final decisions. The videos may be taken into consideration for deciding between closely scored submissions, as evidence of comfort speaking on your topic.

Panel Candidates

Topics

We are excited to host two panels at the conference. The topics are listed below; exact titles are to be determined.

1) Data Challenges in Health & Medicine
From HIPAA rules to illegible handwriting, the obstacles to data-driven innovation in the medical field are nearly as abundant as the data. These challenges are strewn across every subset of health care and medical research industries. We’re looking to fill a panel with diverse speakers who can share insights into different aspects of the industry, the impediments they encounter, and how they adapt to deliver data solutions.

2) Overcoming layoffs - Lessons in career resiliency

Layoffs are a looming reality that we cannot afford to ignore. We aim to bring together voices from across the data community who have experienced, navigated, and overcome being laid off. We invite panelists who want to share their honest stories, practical strategies, and lessons learned about resilience, reinvention, and growth after a difficult setback.

If you would like to be considered as a panelist for either session, please click LEARN MORE AND SUBMIT A PROPOSAL below.