Cornucopia of call for speakers tips

Before even speaking at a conference, you need to be accepted (duh), which mean that you need to submit your talk to the CFP (Call for Proposals). We commonly call those "call for speakers". The CFP is the moment when you need to shine, and prove to the organizers or track chairs that you are worthy to be on the stage. No matter how much experience you have, or how amazing your submissions are, you are competing against multiple speakers, and there is no way to guarantee you'll be selected. The selection process is and will always be subjective no matter how it is managed. With that said, there are things you can do to improve your chance of being one of the event speakers.

How to choose your topic

One of the things to be a great speaker is that you need to choose a topic that you know enough about to share your knowledge legitimately on a stage, and one that you are passionate about. Knowing enough is not... enough. If it's a topic that does not interest you, how can you make it interesting for the people in the room? Note that I didn't write that you need to be the main expert, nor even an expert on the topic: you just need to know enough to be able to fill the time you are allowed to talk about your subject, and being able to answer related questions to what you demonstrate. You do not need to know everything, and "I don't know, come see me after the talk, I'll get your coordinates, I'll do my homework, and will get back to you with an answer" is a perfect reply to a question you can't answer. I'm one to believe that there is no topic that hasn't been blogged about or spoke at a conference or a meetup before, so don't prevent yourself to speak about a topic of your choice because it has been done before. You will definitely share a different angle, and bring your own sauce to it.

If it's your first time speaking, I suggest you do a brain dump first. Write EVERYTHING you know technology-wise in a document. Once it's done, take the time to review that list, and remove the one you don't think you can talk enough about, not sure you can make them interesting, that you aren't excited about, or which doesn't fit the targeted audience for the conference you want to submit to. From that list, you may have a feeling about the topic(s) you want to share on stage, but if not, start working on their abstracts: it will be easier to choose after.

The abstract

Once you select your topic, you need to write the abstract. You can also start with the title, but I always prefer to start with the abstract so it will give me a better idea of what my talk will be about, and based on what I wrote, I can decide what will be the best title.

As for the topic ideas themselves, I suggest you also do a brain dump: write down some bullet points about what could be in the talk. Everything from specific aspects of the technologies to how you want to show it. Like with any brain dump, don't overthink it, just write things down. You'll end up with an unordered list of potential talking points or demo which will be too long for the time you have. From that list, decide what you would like to have in your talk and as much as possible, try to evaluate if these will fit in the allocated time (it's hard to do at first, hence why once you work on your talk, practicing it is the way to go).

Some people just write the abstract down right away, but with that high-level list, it will be easier to craft a proper abstract that will have specific information instead of a blurry sense of what people will learn in the 30 to 60 minutes you'll have to shine on stage. A good abstract has three key components:

Who are the target audience, or what level of knowledge you need to enjoy this talk?
A high-level sense of what the talk is about, with some specific aspects.
What is it for them, the attendees? In other words, what will they concretely bring back home or why should they give you their most precious currency, time, and spend it in your conference room.

As an example, for a talk on Argo CD, I preferably want people with some basic Kubernetes knowledge as I don't want to use my time to explain YAML syntax or what the kubectl command is. I will mention that I will introduce Argo CD and the benefits of using it with a GitOps patterns. The attendees will go back home or to their offices knowing how to get started, and some of the basic features they need to be successful.

So with that in mind, you can craft an abstract that is, as a reminder, basically your sales pitch. It needs to resonate with the conference organizers, but also with the attendees as this is what will be shown on the event agenda. I suggest you write something between 500 and 1000 characters, closer to the minimum suggested here. If it's too long, most people won't read it all, and even some submission form will have lower character limits. When that happen, I start from my original abstract remove the less important part of it, or do the exercise of writing it better.

For some abstract ideas, go on your preferred conference and check last year's agenda, or give a closer look to the ones I have.

The title

The title is as important if not more than the abstract. I can tell you by experience that many attendees won't even read your abstract, so the only thing that will help make them decide if they want to go into your room or the other one for conferences with multiple tracks, is this. The reality is that it may be the same for the people selecting the talks as there is no way to read all submissions completely on the first filtering. Some will, but trust me, most will only read it after you pick their interest.

It's the time to highlight your conference subject in a catchy, educative and interesting way. It's up to you to find a right balance between a none shitty clickbait title and still something that will catch people's attention. I don't have much tips about this than “do your best”. I would suggest that you share the title with your co-workers or friends working in your field and get their opinion while ensuring they still have an idea of what is the talk about.

The benefits or extra information section

Some conferences have that additional field to give extra information just for the people selecting the talk. The abstract should do a good enough job that this shouldn't be needed, but usually if it's there, it can serve two purposes:

Help the person decide if your talk is worthy of their conference even if they don't know enough about the topic itself.
Give them information you couldn't fit in the abstract, or more right to the point opinion on why your talk would kick some asses and be beneficial for the event and the community.

So use that section to reiterate important points from your abstract they may have missed, but also talk directly to the organizer. If they don't have a speaking experience field, use it for that too (see the next section for speaker experience). You previously wrote about the benefits for the attendees, but what are the ones for the organizers. Is this topic the latest things the cool kids talk about in the industry? Is it something that isn't talked about much, but you believe it should be? Why is this topic would be better than the other ones? Take the extra characters provided by this field, if it's there, to be more specific about your talk: the points you decided to keep before writing your abstract that you were not able to fit in a concise description of your talk, add them here. It's your biggest sales pitch after the abstract.

Your speaker experience

Most conferences will have a field to add information about past experience as a speaker. It does not need to be in a professional setting at a conference. It can be when you were at school or for a lunch bag session at work. It does not even need to be as a conference speaker. Add your participation in livestreams or podcasts. Anything that involves you talking to an audience, live or not, in-person or online is a plus. The best is to also be able to share previous slides you created, or even better, recording of previous talks. Some conferences will record and publish them online, but even you having a video tutorial on your YouTube channel will do the trick.

If you don't have anything at all, take this opportunity to emphasis the fact that you are eager to give your first talk, and passionate about this topic. As a rule of thumb, most conferences give a chance to new speakers, but not all since it's a bit of a gamble for people paying to listen to talks. It's easier to start at meetups since they need new speakers every month.

If you have experience, you have two choices there:

Pick and choose the best of the best to add to this submission field. I suggest a maximum of two talks with the slides, so they can see the visual material you will use, and a recording if possible so they can see how you speak plus your vibe on the stage. They won't read or watch everything, it's just to give them an idea.
Play the numbers' game. If you spoke to a couple of events already, list them all if possible. Even better, create a speaking page that you can share as a "one link to rule them all". It gives a wow effect! See mine as an example. It doesn't need to be that elaborate: it can be a simple GitHub repository like the one I've created for our CEO, John Dietz.

If you choose option two, here is what I usually submit to keep the wow factor in case they don't click on the link:

I have extensive experience as a public speaker: I gave more than 190 talks in 23 countries. You can find my speaking history at https://fred.dev/speaking/, which also include slides, and recording for some of them.

The process

Most conferences let you submit at least two talks (smaller conferences won't have a limit), and I suggest you submit more than one if you had multiple topics ideas. The more submissions you get in, the better chances you have to be selected. If all of your talks are selected, first congratulations, but if you feel it's too much to prepare more than one talk, you can always tell the organizers. Do not worry, they rejected many other talks, and not because they felt they were bad: they probably have to choose between multiple good talks, because of the limited opportunities of the schedule vs the number of submissions.

Some conferences will wait to the end of the CFP to start the selection process, but some don't. Even when advertise as such, for being on the selection committee at a couple of conferences, most of us start the selection as soon as they come in, even if we don't alert speakers until the decided date. It's a lot of work to review all the submissions, even for smaller events, and usually this is done by volunteers that will do it when they have free time. So all this to sensitize you to the fact that, when it's possible, submit as soon as possible. Best-case scenario, you'll have more chances to be selected as the committee will be less overwhelmed, and won't have seen already multiple talks with the same technology or approach. Worst-case scenario, it will change nothing, but you won't be stressing out last minute to submit a talk.

Lastly, if you already have a talk you give somewhere else, please reuse it for other events unless you don't want to give it again. I won't say more about this because it can be a whole blog article in itself, but reuse them except if the conference is paying you to speak (as in giving you money for your time as a speaker, travel & expenses is a different thing and should be a given, even if it's unfortunately not).

In the end, there is no guarantee, even if you spoke at prestigious events before, that you have a lot of speaking experience and that you work at a well-known organization. I wish you all the luck there is, especially if you are new to public speaking as we need new faces, and more diverse ones than the old white dude writing these lines. Once you get selected, feel free to check my article on public speaking tips. Good luck on your next CFP!