No more “Expert, Intermediate, Beginner”: Classifying talks in Call for Papers/Conference agendas

I am currently working on creating the new Call for Papers for the next WeAreDevelopers World Congress and one of the feedback items we got was that levels like “Expert, Intermediate and Beginner” don’t make much sense. First of all, speakers do not choose the right level as they are worried that a beginner or expert talk will not attract enough audience. Secondly, attendees might feel peer pressure to not watch the “beginner” talk, as that might be more suited to be a workshop.

So I thought that instead of levels, I ask speakers for classifications:

• Case Study – “How we use Kololores.js in company Blumentopferde and how it made us 30% more effective”
• Deep Dive – “Looking under the hood of Kokolores.js and why it works so well”
• Technology Introduction – “How Databaserandomising will change the way you think about structured databases”
• Tool Explanation – “Taking the pain out of Kokolores.js with Pillepalle – a visual interface and API to get you started quicker”
• Thought Piece – “Kokolores.js isn’t the answer – we need to approach this in a different way”
• Expert Advice – “How we scaled Kokolores.js to 231242 users and what to look out for”
• Level Up – “So you started using Kokolores.js – here is how to become more efficient with it”
• Learnings – “How we got rid of Kokolores.js and what it meant for our users”
• Creative – “Did you know you can use Kokolores.js to do Pillepalle?”

This should make it easier for audiences to pick a talk without having to value themselves. What do you think?