Talk proposals are short descriptions of a talk that are submitted to conference or meetup organizers. Talk proposals are often submitted to a CFP (Call For Proposals) put out by conference organizers.
Proposals typically consist of:
- Title
- Get people interested and excited
- Be vague enough that you have wiggle room when creating your presentation
- Be specific enough that readers know what you’re talking about
- Description (1-2 paragraphs)
- What’s the main idea? What are some sub-topics? What’s the conclusion?
- What will the audience come away with?
- Some people include bullet points with a rough outline of the talk
- Keep people interested
- Be vague and specific :)
- Show the reviewer that your talk has substance
- Outline
- not required but helpful for both the speaker and reviewer
Need inspiration?
- Example Talk Proposals from the WSC 2013 Handout
- Check out the descriptions of talks at any conference you attend - usually the published description IS the talk proposal
- Take a look at Write/Speak/Code's 2016 talks
Consider doing the following:
- Intended Audience
- Outcomes/Conclusions
- Outline
- Description/Abstract
- Title
Take a look at Rebecca's talk proposal repository and her proposal template.
Feedback to give when reviewing proposals:
- Do you understand what this talk is about?
- Does it have enough relevance to attendees? ("What's in it for me?")
- Will this talk fit in the time allotted?
- Has this person thought through all the points they want to make?
- Would you want to see this talk?
Find opportunites to speak that would fit with your goals and topic.
- 1-2 big conferences - also include the call for proposal CPF deadline, if easily findable.
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- Find 1-3 regional conferences (same thing, include CFPs if available)
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- Find local meetups
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Resources:
- https://github.com/WriteSpeakCode/own-expertise-2014/blob/master/speaking-opportunities.md
- http://lanyrd.com
- http://twitter.com/CallbackWomen
- http://calltospeakers.com
- Mailing Lists: DevChix, TechLadyMafia, Systers (more academic-leaning)
- Meetups: ask organizers, discussion groups or mailing lists
- Where do your leaders in your industry/community speak?
Brainstorm of speaking opportunities, including CFPs (collected Fall 2014)
- Grace Hopper (Women in CS) - fall
- OSCON (Open Source) - summer
- PyCon - CFP 9/15
- JSConf
- RailsConf
- RubyConf
- JavaOne - CFP March/April 2015
- Big Boulder
- StrataConf
- 360iDev
- HopeX
- DefCon
- ShmooCon
- OWASP
- Velocity
- EuroPython (summer - Berlin)
- Fluent
Language-agnostic:
- BangBangCon
- Desert Code Camp (~Phoenix, AZ)
- AlterConf (Gaming, Boston, NYC)
- Open Source Bridge, June
- ConFoo (Montreal) - CFP open
- StrangeLoop (emerging tech) - CFP open
- Tallahassee Code Camp - CFP 10/1
- Barcamp Philadelphia (unconference 11/15)
- QConNewYork
- DataGotham - currently postponed
- Self Conference Detroit - spring
- Madison+ Mobile
- CanSecWest
- Web Conference at Penn State — CFP Open
Language-Specific:
- SpaceCityJS (Houston, TX) - CFP 12/13
- JSFest (Oakland, Berlin) - CFP open
- GoRuCo
- GothamGO - CFP 9/9
- JavaLand, Germany - CFP 9/26
- Drupaldelphia - CFP 9/11
- PyGotham (Python, NYC)
- SunshinePHP, Miami - CFP 9/30
- BackboneConf (Cambridge) - CFP 9/2
- Nodevember, Nashville - November
- Perl::Dancer (Hancock, NY) - CFP 9/11
- Austin Code Camp - CFP 9/28
- Clojure eXchange, London - CFP open
- PyTennessee - CFP opens Oct 1st
- PyData NYC - sometime this fall
- All the PyDatas!
- PyOhio - next summer
- PyTexas - October
- Ruby Nation (Washington, DC) - next summer
- Ladies Who Code meetup
- Women Who Code NYC - lightning talks (next one is November)
- HTML5 meetup - events are series of lightning talks
- Hack and Tell
- NYC Beginner Programmers
- NYC Python (Python) - featured talk nights bimonthly, lightning talks, shorter talks during office hours
- NYC Flask
- PyLadies (Python, women developers) - demo nights
- NYC Machine Learning
- NYC Data Science
- Rails Girls Workshops - speaking opportunities between actual coding
- Philly.rb
- Girl Geek Dinners (Philly)
- Cocoaheads
- Internet of Things meetup (NYC)
- NY Tech Meetup
- Ignite Talks
- DBCx