Advices for junior conference speakers

You might already be a famous speaker, but chances are you’re not. While some conferences do anonymize submissions, most of them don’t. Don’t think about it in a negative way: even community-led conferences need at least to break even - and commercial conferences want to make money. Famous speakers will tend to attract money, in the form of more/better sponsors and more attendees.

To increase your chances of being selected, I’d suggest to first build up your reputation. You don’t need to be world-famous, just to have people having heard of you already. User groups are a great opportunity for that because the money factor stated above doesn’t apply.

User groups are actively searching for speakers, because you have one superpower that not many people have: you’re willing to step on the stage, and have attention focused on you.

On a related note, not all conferences are born equal: whether you like it or not, there’s a "coolness" factor attached to each of them. This is shown in how fast tickets are sold. Some do sell the whole number of tickets in less than an hour, while some are never sold out! Hence, the next step in starting small is to first select the conferences that will appreciate your contributions the most.

Another tip is to choose one’s type carefully. Everybody wants to reuse one’s existing talk, so that the 45 minutes' track is usually the most crowded. On the other hand, workshops require a lot of preparation time that not every speaker has. You can improve your chances of being accepted by submitting such a workshop.

Note that designing a proper workshop requires a lot of time and preparation: it’s akin to a half-a-day training. Don’t underestimate the task!

Read the conference and CfP website carefully. It generally provides a lot of hints regarding what the conference expects in terms of contributions. Adjust your submission to those guidelines to improve your chances.

Also, it doesn’t hurt to check previous versions of the conference: it’s a treasure trove for what the conference expects in terms of contribution.

Finally, for some conferences, the committee responsible for the choice is openly displayed. While it requires more than a bit of work, you might want to search for their specific interests. That will probably give you a lot of additional data to base your submission on.

Most conferences allow multiple talks. Even though you might not have more than one ready, this is a fantastic opportunity to increase your chances.

Let the probabilities stack in your favor: each submission adds to your chances. However, don’t overdo it: I limit myself to 4 talks, 5 for very selective conferences where I do want to get selected.

More than that and it might brodcast the signal that you will commit to talk about anything to get in. This is probably not true.

Most conferences have a very strict process: they open the Call for Papers, then wait for the due date. After that, the committee checks all submissions - and there might be many, and selects the best fit. The reasoning is that only by having all submissions can you achieve a degree of fairness regarding the ranking.

The more I submit, the less I’m convinced by this approach. When you need to grade hundreds of selections, there are bound to be oversights, omissions, and/or mistakes.

On the other hand, some conferences may accept submissions as early as possible. This stream-based approach has a few advantages:

Conferences in general publicly display their approach. Submitting to a conference of the "streaming" type early do increase your chances.

Despite all your best efforts, more often than not, you’ll receive the dreaded email about your talk not being selected. While this is obviously not the expected outcome, this is part of the game!

Every speaker, even professional ones, faces rejection. Think about it: if you submit 4 talks, you might have at most 2 of them accepted. Hence, the best acceptance/submission is 50%, while the average is more around 20%-30%.

It’s like for pull requests: just as you’re not your code, you’re not your submissions. Accept probabilities are not in your favor, and face rejection with the same maturity.

Depending on the nature of the presentation, it might have specific requirements to plan for in advance:

Some conferences might require you to use one of their themed covers' slide. This is their game, so I’d recommend to abide by it. A bit harder is when you need to use a whole template: while it’s nice to comply with such requests, I don’t thinks it benefits anyone. Because it requires to re-do the entire slide deck, I generally push back - the cover slide is enough IMHO.

However, even when re-using slides from the same talk I already presented, I always create a copy and set the conference logo on the cover slide. The people behind the conference have put a lot of effort into the organization, it’s only fair play to promote their brand by doing so. Plus, they generally provide logos, so it’s a no-brainer.

You last slides should contain relevant reference informations such as:

The last slide will be the one displayed during the traditional Q&A: that allows enough time for interested attendees to take a photo, for future references.

When you are stressed, you’ll probably talk faster than intended, and even skip some parts of your talk. Hence, you should plan for that, and plan for more content than the expected talk duration.

Worst case, you won’t be able to go through all the content, and that is fine. Just make sure it feels natural, and skip to the last slide, while keeping time for questions.

Most conferences will offer you some kind of beverage for speakers before their talk, generally water. If not, you should prepare for it yourself. Talking during a long time will probably dry your mouth, and you’ll be happy to have to drink something.

As an added benefit, in the case you have a blank during the presentation, you can always take a sip, which might give you a chance to gather your thoughts and get back on track.

Closely related to the previous point, I need to mention the "out" part of drinking. I noticed that with age, my bladder has become smaller - this is sadly a constant among ageing males. As a precaution, and to avoid having to leave the stage mid-talk, I always go empty my bladder just before the talk.

On a related note, avoid any spicy food - or too much alcohol - the day before your talk. And if in a foreign country, I’d also avoid any new food and new drinks.

I always come early to the stage - when I can, in order to get enough time to prepare my place. That includes:

My point is: the stage become your place during your talk. You should make it as you intend it to be so that you feel comfortable, and you can focus solely on the talk.

If you’re not used to big audience,

I’ve been in meetups as small as 10 persons, but the biggest ones are hardly bigger than 50. With 50 people, it’s still possible to look at nearly everyone in the room, trying to engage them with your gaze.

After that, it becomes much harder. I’d suggest focusing only on a few, in different parts of the room. To accomodate such audience size, the room is so large that people won’t notice if you look at them, or 2 rows below anyway.

Also, there always is a handful of people who are nodding or smiling during your talk. Try to focus on them specifically, as this brings you positive reinforcement, and help you stay "in the zone". You can always handle attendees who seem to disagree during Q&A.

If there are spotlights, chances are they might blind you. In that case, don’t try to focus at all, but do try to gaze where the audience is, even if you don’t perceive them.

The talk has been delivered, there’s time for some questions.

Just because the allocated time slot has been passed doesn’t mean you’re done. You should stay in the room for a little while, to allow people who had no time to ask their questions - or those who were to shy - to come to talk with you. Just be considerate to the next speaker and remove your stuff so he can start preparing his set: nothing is worse than a speaker that continues monopolizing the stage after his allotted timeframe.

If your talk started a discussion, that’s great! Invite those who are interested to go out of the room, find an appropriate place and continue the discussion.

After some experience speaking in different countries, I’ve come to realize there’s a significant cultural gap between countries.

Some jokes that send the whole audience to laughter in some countries could likely be considered inappropriate - or even offensive - in others. If you’re not sure whether a specific comment/joke is appropriate for your audience, just don’t try.

But it goes much further: in some countries, the audience doesn’t react to your jokes at all. Likewise, they don’t ask questions, and they don’t tweet about your talk, and hardly give feedback.

While frustrating, it is as it is. You may try to invite the audience to interact with you, but don’t try to strong arm it. Just accept it, don’t take the lack of interaction as a personal offense, and go on.

Some conferences like to offer a grading system. While this gives a nice warm feeling inside if one comes out on top, it’s not actionable. The most important bit are the comments: that will help you improve the next performance of the talk.

If the conference doesn’t propose a feedback form for attendees, you can propose one e.g. Twitter. Sometimes, incentives make it easier for the audience to take part.

After the talk, it’s very important to publish the link to your slides. There are several ways to do that:

Whatever path you choose, you need to make people aware of them. I use Twitter for that, as I have no Facebook account - and don’t want to.

The main issue comes from finding the right hashtag for the tweet. Either use the one provided by the conference, or their Twitter handle (or both).

Just after the talk, take some time to analyze how your presentation went. It’s not about saying it was shit, or that it was the best ever, but about what and how you could improve. If you know people who attended your talk and who you trust, ask for their feedback. Even without that, you probably have impressions on what went well, and what went less well: write them down now. This is a great time to get ideas for the next time, when the conference submission virus hits you again!