Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@reylejano

reylejano/helpful-hints-submitting-a-conference-cfp.md

Last active March 7, 2025 22:44
Show Gist options
  • Save reylejano/b78b054e3d6943c330d6852501d4d7df to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Save reylejano/b78b054e3d6943c330d6852501d4d7df to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Download ZIP
Helpful Hints for Submitting a Proposal for a Conference CFP
Raw
helpful-hints-submitting-a-conference-cfp.md

Helpful Hints for Submitting a Proposal for a Conference CFP

The following are resources from others on submitting a proposal for a conference CFP

  1. Lachie’s 7 step guide to writing a winning tech conference CFP by Lachlan Evenson

  2. The KubeCon CFP – How to Speak at Kubecon by Kaslin Fields

  3. Tips from Davanum Srinivas aka Dims

  • Title should evoke interest (almost click-baity, but not too long)
  • Should talk about open source-y things (not commercial products)
    • Projects not products
  • Authors should be diverse (different companies, inclusive etc..)
  • Should not repeat anything that was done already (kubecon or not)
  • Should be interesting, something new, something that makes the reviewers/attendees go Aha/TIL
  • Talk about problems/challenges and how to overcome them
  • Talk about options and why you are advocating for what ever you are talking about
  • Your passion should come through in the abstract, funny is fine, don't be too serious
  • Do not underestimate the power of the "Benefits to the Ecosystem section" It is VERY important
  • In Benefits, do call out how your talk will add to the community knowledge base, tools, processes, people etc.
  • Also call out different personas who you may be targeting in your talk and the value provided to each
  • Avoid acronym soup as it drives away attendees
  • Don't do a vendor pitch, reviewers can smell it from a mile away
  • talk about "end users" NOT "customers"

Rey's tips

  • Read the conference track descriptions carefully and make sure your topic aligns to the track you are submitting for
  • The talk does not include/focus on products (unless it's a vendor's conference) and is only focused on open source projects that are appropriate or aligns with the conference
  • If the proposal is for a KubeCon + CloudNativeCon CFP, pay attention to the "Benefits to the Ecosystem" section, this is not a copy pasta of your proposal. See tip from Dims.
  • Add github repo links, references, and resources appropriate for your talk
  • Make your proposal stand out. If there were multiple proposals on the same topic, how does your proposal stand out? This is hard to have clear guidance but here are some examples: do you have a unique (non-generic) title, is your description well-written and attracts in-person attendees, do people have a clear idea on what they get from watching your talk
  • The proposal shouldn't be a bulleted list of topics of what the talk will cover without any explanation of why those topics and how it benefits attendees to learn about those topics -- this happens more than you think
  • Perfect grammar is not required. This is my take as a reviewer, I recognize many experts are not native-English speakers and English may be the submitter's 2nd or 3rd language (or more). For me, perfect grammar and writing in an active-voice is not required.
  • Don't use a LLM such as ChatGPT or other generative AI to solely write your proposal -- conferences may exclude proposals written by generative AI
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment