What it's actually like to host a track at QCon
A look behind the scenes at how QCon tracks are curated, from designing the narrative and recruiting speakers to supporting them through to the day itself.
I’m in the middle of planning a track for QCon London 2026. It’s called Emerging Trends in the Frontend and Mobile, and by the time I introduce it on stage in March I’ll have been working on it since the autumn. It takes some time, but it’s an interesting process where I get to create the track narrative, find great speakers and support them as they prepare their talks.
I’m a Co-Chair of the Programme Committee (PC) for QCon London, which means I help design the overall conference and recruit the track hosts who curate it. This year I’m also hosting a track myself, so I can share what both sides look like. I certainly didn’t know how much went into this before I got involved with QCon, and I think more people would enjoy doing it if they knew the role existed.
There’s no call for papers
One thing that surprises people is that QCon doesn’t have a CFP. There’s no submission process, no abstract review. Every talk is actively recruited by experts in their field.
The Programme Committee looks at the current landscape of software development and designs the conference around the themes that matter right now. We think about this through the lens of Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm - we’re looking for ideas and practices that visionaries and early adopters have proven out, and bringing them to the early majority. QCon London 2026 has 15 tracks, each covering a distinct area. We find a domain expert to host each one, and those hosts go out and find the speakers.
The result is that every talk exists for a specific reason. Speakers are chosen because they’re practitioners with something real to share. Content comes from people doing the work, not people who happen to be best at writing proposals (those two groups overlap, but they’re not the same).
Who’s in the room
It helps to understand the audience, because it shapes everything the track host does.
QCon attendees are practitioners and they skew senior. According to QCon’s own data, around 46% are team leads or above (engineering managers, directors, VPs, CTOs, architects), another 30% are senior developers, and the remaining 24% are software engineers earlier in their careers. So roughly three quarters of the room have been around long enough to have opinions, and they’re looking for practical advice they can take back to their teams or ideas that inspire a new direction at work. They’re not here for introductions to well-known topics. They want depth, real-world experience, and honest accounts of what worked and what didn’t.
The attendee-to-speaker ratio is about 11:1, so there’s plenty of opportunity to start conversations and go deeper throughout the conference. Many attendees have been speakers themselves, whether at QCon or elsewhere, so the quality of discussion is genuinely high. You’re very likely to find yourself talking to someone who’s pushing boundaries or leading in their own area.
As a track host, keeping this audience in mind is the most useful thing you can do. We have years of feedback on what resonates and what falls flat, and the Programme Committee will help you calibrate. Talks need depth and relevance - if a talk doesn’t give this audience something they can act on or think differently about, it won’t land.
What the job looks like
You start by working with a member of the Programme Committee (your track champion) to shape the track title and abstract. This matters more than you’d think. Attendees won’t sit in one track all day, and there are often tracks and talks that appeal to similar audiences at the same time. There’s a degree of intentional FOMO built into the conference because it highlights how much value is on offer. So your title and descriptions need to help people self-select into the talks that are right for them.
From there, you’re building a story. Five talks is enough for a real narrative arc, but it won’t happen by accident. What’s the thread? Are you moving from fundamentals to cutting edge? Problem to solution? Theory to hard-won experience? I think about the journey I want the audience to go on, and work backwards to the talks that would take them there.
Speaker research is where it gets genuinely fun. Podcasts, blog posts, previous conference talks, open source work, LinkedIn deep dives. You’re looking for practitioners who’ve done something interesting and can articulate it.
Diversity matters here too, and not as a box-ticking exercise. The conference is better when it reflects the breadth of the industry, so we actively aim for a blend of backgrounds, companies, and geographies. Your track champion and the wider PC can help - QCon London 2026 is the 20th anniversary of the conference, and over that time it’s built up a deep network of past speakers, hosts, and co-chairs. If you need an introduction or a recommendation, there’s almost certainly someone who can point you in the right direction.
Once speakers are confirmed, you shift into a collaborative phase. QCon talks are 50 minutes, and given the audience, there’s a real expectation of depth. We offer training and rehearsal opportunities for all speakers, regardless of experience. I enjoy this part because you’re helping speakers find the best version of their talk - brainstorming the structure together, reviewing a draft deck, running through a practice session.
One thing I often end up discussing with speakers is delivery. It’s tempting to fully script a talk, especially a 50-minute one, but it rarely lands well. Audiences can tell when someone is reading, and it flattens the energy in the room. The delivery becomes more robotic, the connection drops.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write. I do a lot of writing when I’m preparing a talk - research, outlines, sometimes full articles or blog posts to work through the ideas. That process is valuable because it forces you to clarify your thinking. But the talk itself needs to feel more natural than that. Distil the writing down into what goes on the slides, know your material well enough that you can talk through it rather than read it, and leave room to be responsive to the audience. The best talks feel slightly off the cuff even when they’re thoroughly prepared.
None of this happens in isolation. Your track champion on the PC is with you throughout the process, and the conference team handle the logistics, so you can focus on the content and the speakers. That support makes a real difference, particularly if it’s your first time.
On the day, you introduce the track to the full conference at the morning overview, then host each talk throughout the day. You’re setting context, connecting talks to the broader story, looking after your speakers. It’s a long day but a good one.
What you get out of it
You’re essentially building your dream guest list. You get to seek out the people whose work you find most interesting, invite them to spend a day talking about the things you care about, and then be the person who introduces them. By the time the conference arrives, you’ve spent weeks diving deeper into your area of expertise than you normally would, and you’ve had conversations with people you’d never have had a reason to contact otherwise. It’s a brilliant side effect of the role.
Last year I hosted one of the flagship tracks and recruited Jinsong Yu from Meta as a speaker. Jinsong was the lead on the Orion project - the fully immersive AR glasses demonstrated at Connect in 2024 - and hearing about the engineering behind that was fascinating in its own right. But the unexpected value was in everything around the talk. Working with one of the most senior individual contributors at Meta gave me a window into how someone at that level thinks about problems, coordinates teams, and decides what matters. Those conversations fed directly into how I approach my own work. That’s the kind of thing you don’t get from watching a conference talk on YouTube.
Then there’s the social side. QCon London has 15 tracks, which means 15 hosts and around 75 speakers, plus the Programme Committee and the conference team. There’s a speaker dinner, social gatherings, generous breaks between talks. The conference team are brilliant at looking after everyone and creating space for real conversations. I’ve built some of the most valuable relationships in my professional life through QCon, and I know other hosts say the same.
I first got involved in 2017 when an ex-colleague, Peter Morgan, recruited me to host the JavaScript track. Through that conference I met Wesley Reisz, who was chairing the programme. Wes has been involved with QCon for years and has become a genuine friend - he has a knack for spotting what’s coming next in software engineering and architecture, and he’ll regularly reach out with something new he’s thinking about.
If this sounds interesting
QCon London 2026 runs March 16-18 and our track hosts for this year are all confirmed, but we’re always looking ahead. QCon runs conferences throughout the year, including QCon SF in November, and planning for future events starts sooner than you’d think. You can see the full list at qconferences.com.
If you’re interested in hosting a track or speaking at a future QCon, I’d love to hear from you. Just reach out and we can have a chat about it.