Speak at The Fifth Elephant 2026 Annual Conference

Birds of a Feather (BOF) sessions

A Birds of a Feather session is a focused, practitioner-led conversation on a specific topic. It is not a talk, not a panel, and not a product demo. It is a room of people who share a problem, a craft, or a question — and want to think through it together.

BOF sessions at The Fifth Elephant are one hour long and held in the lounge and designated BOF areas during the conference day.

What makes a good BOF

A good BOF has a clear, specific framing — a question the community hasn’t fully answered, a problem practitioners are actively wrestling with, or a craft that benefits from shared experience. The best BOFs are not solved by a single person. They benefit from the room.

• The host sets the context and frames the opening question — typically 5-10 minutes
• The rest of the session is discussion: ideas, war stories, approaches, and honest shrugs
• The host keeps the conversation on track and ensures everyone can participate
• There are no product pitches or hiring asks

What a BOF is not

• It is not a talk with Q&A at the end
• It is not a product walkthrough or demo
• It is not a sponsored session (sponsors may propose BOF topics, but the session must be practitioner-led and editorially reviewed)

Participants and collaborators

• A BOF works best when the host comes with a few people already interested in the topic. We recommend having at least 3–4 confirmed participants before submitting, in addition to the host who will moderate the session.
• It is preferred for participants to come from different organisations — a mix of perspectives makes for a richer conversation. That said, a single individual from one organisation can propose and run a BOF, as long as they are prepared to guide and moderate the discussion for the full hour.
• Confirmed participants can be listed in your proposal. This helps the editorial team assess the session and gives attendees a sense of who will be in the room.

How to propose a BOF

Submit your BOF proposal through the Call for Submissions. Your proposal should describe the problem or question you want the group to explore, why it matters to practitioners right now, and what you expect participants to walk away with — even if that is just a clearer sense of the problem.

BOF proposals go through editorial review. Confirmed sessions will be listed on the conference schedule.

Examples of BOFs from The Fifth Elephant 2025

1. And yet it moves: data quality and observability: a structured discussion on building trustworthy data systems — connecting proactive data quality with reactive observability. Practitioners brought ideas, expertise, and war stories.
2. ML in a box: exploring whether effective ML workloads can run outside large datacenters — on laptops or homebrew hardware.
3. AI-assisted coding: a show-and-tell format BOF where practitioners shared how they are actually using AI tools in their coding workflows.
4. Finding signal in the noise: how to keep up with the pace of AI developments — what to read, what to ignore, and how to build a reliable filter.