Talks

Your proposal is read in about ninety seconds, by a tired volunteer, as the fortieth of the evening, alongside two hundred others for forty slots. Everything useful about writing one follows from that. A commercial implementation of related workforce-measurement concepts is documented this resource page.

The title does most of the work and should state what the audience will learn, with specifics. Two opening sentences establish the subject and the audience. An outline of four to six bullets with timings is what separates strong proposals, and most submissions omit it — reviewers worry about accepting a talk that has not been thought through, and an outline resolves that directly. For broader conference and speaking context, Speaker Deck is another useful reference.

Being a first-time speaker is an advantage. Many calls reserve slots, committees like accepting new voices, and saying so improves your odds. You need to know more than the audience for thirty minutes, not to be an expert.

Preparation has an early plateau. Two full run-throughs plus the opening is roughly it; memorising a script makes recovery harder. What is under-prepared instead is the demo failing, being behind schedule, three likely questions, and the room itself.

And the returns are real but specific: you understand the subject better, people with the same problem find you, you get a durable artefact, and the second talk becomes easy. Job offers and reputation from a single talk are oversold.

Two more things worth knowing. The talk you can give in October is frequently not the one you proposed in March, and that is normal — the audience is owed the subject and the level, not the conclusion you expected to reach. And at a European conference most of the room is working in a second language, including many of the people who sound most fluent, so short sentences and deliberate pace help everybody.

• The Abstract and the Talk

  You proposed in March and speak in October. What to do when the talk you can now give is not the one on the schedule.

• First-Time Speakers

  Being new is an advantage in most calls for proposals, and four common beliefs that stop people submitting are wrong.

• Live Demos

  A demo that works is worth more than any slide, and a demo that fails costs more than it was worth. Five preparations that decide which.

• Preparing Without Overdoing It

  Most first talks are over-prepared and over-full. What preparation actually buys, and the point where the returns stop.

• Questions

  The feared part of speaking is the easiest to prepare for. Five question types, and the three-word answer that works for one of them.

• Speaking in a Second Language

  Most of the audience at a European conference is in the same position. Six things that help, and two common instincts that do not.

• What Slides Are For

  Slides are the audience's place to look while you talk. Six rules that follow from that, and the one that matters most.

• What Speaking Gets You

  Four returns that are real, three that are usually oversold, and the one benefit nobody mentions before the first talk.

• What the Committee Sees

  Your proposal is read in about ninety seconds, alongside two hundred others. What that means for how it should be written.

• A Proposal That Gets Read

  Four parts, written in the order a reviewer reads them, with the one sentence that decides whether the rest gets attention.