Run a workshop at a conference: what OOP 2026 shows

If you want to run a workshop at an industry conference, the programme of OOP 2026 offers a precise example. The software architecture conference by heise conferences runs from 10 to 13 February 2026 in Munich and has reserved its first day, the Tuesday, for half-day and full-day workshops and tutorials, as heise announced on 17 September 2025. The programme lists eleven such sessions, and on the three following days more than 120 talks in seven parallel tracks are added. For two of the workshops the programme states caps of 20 and 40 participants, which means for speakers that a workshop needs its own abstract with a clear working result for a small group.

OOP 2026 in figures: 11 workshops next to more than 120 talks

According to heise, OOP Konferenz by heise addresses software architects and experienced developers as well as IT project managers and product owners. Jutta Eckstein chairs the programme. Eleven track chairs and more than 100 reviewers selected the roughly 120 talks from over 400 submissions, according to the announcement of 17 September 2025. Arithmetically, about three in ten submissions make it into the programme, although the announcement does not say whether the workshops are included in the number of submissions. Our founder Marin Niehues reaches around 10 per cent with his own submissions, so the bar at an industry conference with a reviewed programme is high, and it applies to workshops as much as to talks.

In the OOP programme, all workshops and tutorials fall on Tuesday, 10 February. The count is 11 sessions, of which 3 are full-day from 10:00 to 17:00 and 8 are half-day, running either from 10:00 to 13:00 or from 14:00 to 17:00. Eleven workshops against just over 120 talks make up around 8 per cent of all programme items, and that is exactly why it is worth looking at how these few places are built.

What a workshop at a conference is

A workshop is a conference format in which the participants work on a task themselves under the guidance of a speaker and take a result home with them. At OOP the formats are called workshop or tutorial and last half a day or a whole day. A talk, by contrast, is a time slot in the programme in which a speaker explains a view on a subject to a room, and how long such slots are is described in our article How long is a conference talk.

The article on conference session formats shows the whole range of formats. For the workshop, every person needs guidance and room for their own work, which is why programmes often cap the group.

Run a workshop: half-day or full-day in the OOP programme

The split of the eleven sessions can be read from the published programme:

The half-day example comes from Marcus Nörder-Tuitje and Ingo Düppe. The programme says: "Im Workshop analysieren wir eure Pipelines" (in the workshop we analyse your pipelines), and the group then develops "konkrete Schritte, um eure Architektur zu stärken" (concrete steps to strengthen your architecture). The participants thus bring their own material and go home with steps they can apply in their company. The full-day example by Roman Pichler has 20 places, the smallest group in the programme, and according to the programme it aims to show participants how to organise product management so that value creation and employee satisfaction turn out as high as possible.

That two people are listed for five of the eight half-day workshops is a practical hint for a submission. If you run a workshop with a partner, you share the facilitation of the group work, and with a group of 40 people it takes two pairs of eyes in the room.

How to write the abstract for a workshop

From the examples, five building blocks for a workshop abstract can be derived, and you can check them against any call for papers:

1. The working result comes first: Both examples state in the abstract what the participants hold in their hands after the session, namely concrete steps or a new organisation of their own area.
2. The participants bring material of their own: In "Roast your Pipeline" the group's pipelines are on the table. A workshop on someone else's case, by contrast, feels like a talk with exercises.
3. The duration follows the result: Three hours are enough for a single problem, seven hours for a whole area of work. Assume you plan three hours, then 20 minutes of introduction, two hours of group work and 40 minutes of review could be a framework.
4. The group has a cap: The programmes name 20 and 40 participants, and a number in the abstract shows the programme committee that you have thought about the room and the support.
5. A workshop can be run by two: A second person shares the support of the group work with you, which shows the committee that every group is guided.

The topic of a workshop and the topic of a talk can share the same root, but they are submitted as separate abstracts, provided the call has room for both formats. How you plan the submission in time is covered in the section on the schedule further down.

Run a workshop or give a talk: a calculation with assumptions

How the two formats work out for you can be compared with a simple calculation whose assumptions are laid open. Assume a talk lasts 45 minutes and 100 people sit in the room, then 75 hours of attention are spent on you in total. Assume a half-day workshop lasts 3 hours and 20 people take part, then it is 60 hours of attention. The totals are similar, but the workshop spreads them over 20 professionals who worked on their own case for three hours and experienced you as an expert while doing so.

For the path to a commission, this difference counts, because anyone who has guided 20 people through a problem for three hours knows their cases, and they know you in return. The assumption of 100 people in the room and 20 in the workshop is an example and no measurement, but the calculation shows what the formats can be compared by: the number of participant hours and the depth of contact, even if fewer heads sit in the room.

The schedule: when a workshop has to be submitted

The OOP schedule shows how early the submission falls. According to the conference's submission system, the deadline for contributions was the end of June 2025. The programme went online in mid-September 2025, and the conference began in early February 2026, which put 225 days between deadline and conference. The analysis of 2,415 conferences in our article on the lead time of a call for papers gives a median of 50 days between deadline and start, so OOP plans more than four times as early. If you want to offer a workshop at a conference in February, you therefore prepare the abstract in the spring of the previous year.

1. In spring of the previous year: choose the topic and check which conferences have workshops or tutorials in their programme.
2. Up to the deadline: write and submit the abstract with working result, duration, cap and material.
3. After acceptance: work out the schedule, tasks and documents for the group.
4. On the workshop day: secure the contacts of the group before they scatter across the talks of the following days.