The rules will vary from conference to conference, but broadly, strong proposals achieve the following things:
- Describe a problem that is being solved or addressed
- Outline the solution or journey, with specific examples
- Clearly state what the audience will take away
In some cases, it may make sense to add additional information, such as why you are particularly qualified to speak on this topic.
Here are some tips for how to sharpen your abstract-writing skills:
Strong talk proposals tell the reviewers (and eventually, the conference attendees) exactly what to expect. Now is not the time to be coy.
A handy way to assess whether your proposal aligns with your expectations is to show the proposal to a colleague, and ask them: "What would you expect to learn from attending this talk?"
Here is an abstract that was highlighted by Ian Coldwater on Twitter:
Learning from Failure: Why a total site outage can be a good thing by Alex Elman, for VelocityConf 2019
Here's a shorter, sweeter example of an abstract that hits all the notes: Configuring Clusters: Optimizing PKS for your Use Case from Angela Chin and Nikita Rathi.
Humans love stories. Even if your talk is a "how to" guide on a technical subject, try to structure the talk around a story.
Nadia Odunayo does a particularly great job of storytelling.
You might not always be a subject matter expert about your topic. That's OK! You should still pitch it, but think about what unique perspective you might bring.
Maybe you built a side project using a certain programming language. What is the side project about, what motivated you to start it, and what drove you to choose this language?
- I created deck to help Pivots submit talks to SpringOne Platform
- A worksheet to guide you through the writing process
- "How to get your submission accepted at NDC London" by Chris O'Dell: Video
- "Why your excellent talk was rejected" by Sarah Gray: Blog
- "What your conference proposal is missing" by Sarah Mei: Blog
- Speakerline.io, a resource by Nadia Odunayo