Call For Presentations

Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Conference Date: Monday, April 28th 

Call for Papers Due Date: Monday, February 24th  

Speakers Notified: Monday, March 10th

Theme: Collaborate Seamlessly: Software without Silos 

Merge Conference: Connecting Code, Design, and Product is where product managers, designers, and developers come together to explore the overlaps between their disciplines and build exceptional software as one team. Our theme for 2025, "Collaborate Seamlessly: Software without Silos," focuses on breaking down barriers, fostering collaboration, and uniting diverse skillsets to create cohesive, innovative solutions. Through engaging talks and networking, the Merge Conference empowers teams to work seamlessly, strengthening the connections between product, design, and development to craft better software—and better outcomes—together. 

Are you passionate about bridging the gaps between disciplines to build exceptional software? Merge is seeking speakers to share insights and strategies around "Collaborate Seamlessly: Software without Silos." We're looking for talks that explore the intersections of product, design, and development—from cross-disciplinary collaboration to unified systems and shared workflows. 

We offer two speaking formats: 

  • Main Stage Talks (45 minutes): Deep dives into your experiences, methodologies, and lessons learned 

  • Lightning Talks (5 minutes): Quick, focused insights or specific techniques that sparked positive change 

While we've provided example topics below, we encourage you to surprise us! Share your unique perspective and experiences that could help teams work better together. Whether you're a product manager, designer, developer, or someone who works across these disciplines, we want to hear your story. 

Example Topics: 

  1. Idea to Launch: Product Lifecycle in Practice 

  2. Building a Culture of Experimentation 

  3. Engineering leadership / mentoring in an AI era  

  4. Crafting a Compelling Product Vision Together 

  5. Cross-Discipline Customer Discovery Methods 

  6. Shared Roadmaps  

  7. Estimating Complex Work Across Teams  

  8. Designing AI-enabled Experiences 

  9. Unified Design Systems: Developer-Designer Collaboration 

  10. Prototyping Together  

  11. The Return to Software Craft: Quality in an AI World 

  12. Building Quickly vs. Building for Scale  

  13. AI Powered Engineering: New Team Workflows 

  14. Modern Software Architecture: Human-AI Collaboration 


Submit your presentation no later than Monday, February 24! You’ll hear back from us by March 10.