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Proposal Guide

Developing a solid proposal for any conference comes down to a few core principles and a few recommended practices.

Regardless of the conference, at its core, a good proposal has a...

  • Clear outcome
  • Clear target audience
  • A compelling narrative
  • The reason why you're the right speaker for your topic (the pitch)

Most conferences follow a similar proposal structure:

  • Abstract
  • Description
  • Pitch

Conferences, such as Codeland, have a more comprehensive proposal submission structure, but even in their situation, the structure is meant to tease out the same talk details listed above.

Abstract

300 - 600 characters (1 - 3 paragraphs)

Your abstract should be highly-engaging and have a compelling hook: it should "sell your talk." It's critical to remember that an abstract is likely the only summary a conference attendee will have, and for that reason, it's in the best interest of the conference organizer(s) to make sure this excites/engages their attendees.

In a concise way, the abstract should answer these three questions:

  1. Who is the target audience?
  2. What will this talk teach you?
  3. What problem is this talk tackling?

Description

500 - 1200 words

An extension of the abstract, the description is a reasonably detailed breakdown of the talk mechanics (live coding, audience participation, slides, etc.) and a more detailed breakdown of how you plan to address each chunk of your abstract. This is entirely for the organizers, and not made public to the attendees.

Pay close attention to what information the organizers do or do not want in included. This can be a common oversight if you're submitting the same talk to many conferences. As an example: RubyCentral, who organizes RailsConf and RubyConf as that description exclude personally identifying information. While others ask specifically for past speaking experiences and/or examples. Watch out for github.com repos and/or YouTube videos of past speaking engagements. In either situation, you many be identifying yourself.

As Justin Searls does in his talk proposal "Workflows," in a situation where you feel this information helps build a case for why your talk is valuable for their audience, prepend the source with "(warning: identifying information)" to give the choice to the organizers.

What's the flow of the talk?

Walk through the talk journey for the attendee; a beginning, middle and end. In theatre we call this the "story arc."

Beginning

In a theatrical context, the beginning would include all the exposition: characters, environment, and themes. In a talk, we do something similar:

Characters: Who are you? and what about your experience (or lack of) qualifies you?

Environment: What's the problem and it's context (e.g., technical environment)? and... How do you know that it's a problem?

Themes: Will there be slides, live-coding, group participation, etc...?

Middle

Building a case is the next step. Again, for a theatrical context, we call this "rising action" where the characters will use various tactics to achieve their objective. (This is where all the drama comes in and problem becomes obvious.)

What's a plausible solution? and... What experience have you had or researched that supports that solution?

End/Conclusion

Every story ends with a resolution and implied or explicit "call to action;" and so will our talk. When I was in acting school, my teacher told us, the audience should always leave feeling compelled to do something, and at the very least, feel something profound.

While we won't achieve this 100% of the time, it's a good target to have. Now, that doesn't mean the "something" is mountain moving or earth shattering. Instead, think of it as a specific take away; something that could be acted on tomorrow (figuratively speaking) and compel the audience into a considering another approach now or in the future. So...

What's the call to action? and... what can be done tomorrow (figuratively speaking) to make a positive change in the attendees life?

Pitch

2 - 3 paragraphs

Why this? Why now? Why you? (in this order)

I've found this section to harbor the meat and potatoes of every talk. A friend of mine (Nadia Odunayo - @nodunayo) brought to my attention that what I wrote in the Pitch for "Difficult Conversations" was my actual Abstract.

The motivation, heart and passion to give this talk is often found in this one section, and for that reason, cannot be undervalued or overlooked.

Regardless, tell the organizers why and show your passion for it. Don't throw this away with message to the organizers or some trivial 'just because' like statement. This is your moment to really hit on what compelled you to help other developers through the problem/solution you're speaking about.

Make it rich and full of you.