
Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected - promptworks
https://www.promptworks.com/blog/why-your-excellent-talk-was-rejected
======
mivok
A lot of the comments here are complaining about the last point in the article
(the n00b), asking how on earth you get started if you have to have presented
before in order to present. The article is telling you exactly how to do that:

\- Speak at local user group meetings. Most of my local meet ups are
constantly calling for speakers, and it's an excellent way to get practice at
presenting in a lower stress environment. It's not always small audiences
either, I've seen and given talks with 50 or more attendees at a local meet
up. As for getting accepted, organizers are always in need of talks, and
organizers are not getting 6 submissions per month, they're usually lucky if
they can fill every month with a talk, so you're much more likely to be
accepted.

\- Maintain a blog. Writing articles on your blog is practice for writing a
talk, and gives you a steady stream of ideas that can be turned into a
presentation fairly easily.

I'm going to add a couple more:

\- Give a lightning talk at conferences you attend. As well as giving you
practice, you are also visible to all the attendees, including people who will
be selecting talks at future conferences you submit to.

\- Submit to smaller, more focused or more local conferences. You can't expect
to be accepted at huge popular conferences speaking in front of hundreds of
people on your first try. Submitting to more focused conferences gives you a
better chance of being accepted.

These steps aren't going to make it so that you're immediately accepted at
large conferences, but they give you the start the article is claiming you
need. And finally, if you're rejected, don't give up. Conferences do take
chances on new speakers (although probably not all new speakers who submit a
talk), and being rejected doesn't mean your talk is bad, or that your skills
are bad, just that you didn't get it this time.

~~~
ohjeez
> Submit to smaller, more focused or more local conferences. You can't expect
> to be accepted at huge popular conferences speaking in front of hundreds of
> people on your first try. Submitting to more focused conferences gives you a
> better chance of being accepted.

And also it lets you make a fool of yourself with a smaller audience.

Very few people are good at something the first time they try it. Why do you
imagine you're a great presenter the first time out? As with anything else,
make your mistakes in small domains.

~~~
TheOneTrueKyle
If you are interested in public speaking, but don't have too much practice in
speaking, I highly recommend checking out a local open mic and trying out some
stand up.

Easier to look a fool telling jokes than look a fool making a valid point.

edit: or Toastmasters

~~~
wallflower
+1 for Toastmasters.

Among other things, Toastmasters will cure you of what ails many accomplished
speakers. That is, the verbal or non-verbal tic (umm, ahh, so, like, wild
gestures, hands in pocket).

------
edthrowaway
There's a possible ugly 5th heartbreaker: "we love your topic and experience
but you look too old and unhip for our hip frontend conference".

I've been rejected for conferences where every speaker that was accepted
looked well under 30. At the least, no one had grey hair.

It's frustrating to me because the very same conferences are highly vocal
about seeking diversity, and do usually end up with some gender diversity
(although non-Asian/non-White speakers are almost always poorly represented).
But there's no age diversity: everyone on stage is between 20-30, or else goes
to a plastic surgeon and dresses to look that age.

~~~
gnarbarian
Totally agree. I've noticed something else similarly disturbing. The people
who advocate the loudest for demographic diversity aren't really interested in
diversity of ideas. They want to see men and women of all shapes and colors
saying similar things. If you want thought provoking talks, diversity of ideas
is far more important than having a group of speakers that looks like captain
planet and the planeteers.

I want to see talks where presentors have radically different approaches to
problems. I want to see Zed Shaw and Douglas Crockford have a passionate
explitive laden argument about the merits of Ruby vs server side JS only to
see Ken Thompson or Rob Pike blow their minds with a talk about go. So what if
they all happen to be white guys. What matters is they have interesting things
to say and vastly different perspectives coming from long careers in the
industry honing their craft.

~~~
autarch
I don't see these two goals as being mutually exclusive. Even if they are,
it'd be good to aim for a balance, rather than just choosing one entirely over
the other. They're both good goals for a conference.

~~~
gnarbarian
Many people don't agree with me and that's OK. I literally couldn't care less
about demographic checkboxes when listening to a talk about technology. The
number one priority should be having thought provoking, relevant, and high
impact talks about technology at a technology conference. Seeing these talks
and engaging in conversations about the technology should be the number one
priority for attendees.

Ideas are what matter to hackers and engineers. If someone doesn't want to go
to a conference on concurrency and distributed algorithms because a
demographic de-jour isn't speaking then that person isn't passionate about the
subject of the conference and the conference is better off without them there.

That may seem harsh but I'm just throwing my opinion out there for the sake of
diversity of ideas ;)

~~~
samstokes
_I literally couldn 't care less about demographic checkboxes_

Then you are not the audience those "demographic checkboxes" are there for.
(Neither am I.)

I'm a white male engineer, and I've never had the experience of going to a
tech conference and wondering whether I'm supposed to be there because I don't
see anyone else who looks like me. That experience is common for engineers who
are women, POC, or in various other demographics.

For all I know you might be a member of one of those demographics, but if you
"couldn't care less" then I assume you haven't had that experience either.
That doesn't affect your right to an opinion, but it does mean you are not
fully considering at least one reason that demographic diversity is important.

 _Ideas are what matter to hackers and engineers._

I haven't met a single hacker or engineer who wasn't also a _person_ , and
other things that matter to _people_ include feeling welcome and accepted.

If you're accustomed to feeling welcome and accepted at technical conferences,
it's easy to say that feeling welcome and accepted doesn't matter to you at
such conferences. If most conferences _didn 't_ make you feel that way, it
might matter to you more to find one that did.

One way to make people feel welcome and accepted is to reduce the extent to
which they feel like the "odd one out", in as many senses as possible.

As autarch points out above, this isn't an argument for accepting any old talk
so long as it fills some demographic quota. It would be a strange conference
that _replaced_ quality of ideas with demographic diversity in their talk
selection criteria. Rather, it just means conferences have _more than one_
criterion to optimise for. Multi-objective optimisation is complicated and
involves tradeoffs, but "all or nothing" is unlikely to be optimal.

~~~
Kalium
A warm, diverse, welcoming, and accepting technical conference that contains
no interesting technical content is less a technical conference and more a
purely social gathering. There's really nothing wrong with that, but at that
point it's no longer meaningfully a technical conference.

Perhaps there's a desirable balance to be struck here.

~~~
samstokes
That was the point I attempted to convey with my last paragraph:

 _this isn 't an argument for accepting any old talk so long as it fills some
demographic quota. It would be a strange conference that replaced quality of
ideas with demographic diversity in their talk selection criteria. Rather, it
just means conferences have more than one criterion to optimise for. Multi-
objective optimisation is complicated and involves tradeoffs, but "all or
nothing" is unlikely to be optimal._

Hopefully we can agree that a conference which had interesting technical
content _and_ was welcoming to a broad range of people would be better than a
conference that had only one or the other.

~~~
gnarbarian
I think we mostly agree. The difference is I believe what makes people
comfortable at a technology conference isnt superficial hangups about race and
gender, it's the ability to talk shop about that technology and have
meaningful discussions surrounding that topic.

The jist of my opinion is this: The subject technology should always be the
highest priority at a technology conference.

~~~
arthurdenture
> The difference is I believe what makes people comfortable at a technology
> conference isnt superficial hangups about race and gender

If you consider the feeling of being, say, the only person of color at a
conference to be a "superficial hangup", then perhaps your beliefs about what
makes people comfortable have not been closely examined. It sounds like a
statement about what makes _you_ comfortable.

------
baby
Seems like a lot of people don't understand the noob part. Let me explain:

Imagine you pay a lot of money to attend a conference. And I'm not even
talking about flight+food+hotel as some conferences' cover are pretty high
(blackhat). Now you go in a talk and discover that the speaker is just
horrible. The topic might be interesting but you get nothing out of it because
the speaker is just bad.

Now this is a problem because as an attendant you're no happy, and this is the
responsibility of the judges of the CFP. They need to work to protect you from
these kind of talks.

I'd much tolerate beginners at smaller conferences, or meetups. This is where
you can get experience before going to a bigger one. A one that might even
give you money and pay for your travel+accommodation.

By the way, I think most of you people have no idea how bad talks can be. In
more academic conferences, foreign speakers make a big chunk of the talks and
some of them can't speak english at all. It's painful for everyone to sit
through that kind of talk. (Note that I'm a foreigner myself, just saying that
some of us are EXTREMELY BAD AT ENGLISH (not going to point fingers).)

~~~
jazzyk
Many attendees don't care, the trip is paid for by the company. It is a nice
trip to an attractive location (sunny Florida in winter, etc).

At most conferences I attended, there were scores of presenters who, frankly,
sucked, or the supposedly "technical" topic turned out to be unabashed
product/service pitch.

~~~
baby
> Many attendees don't care, the trip is paid for by the company

And many still care even though their company pays for them.

> the supposedly "technical" topic turned out to be unabashed product/service
> pitch.

That's another issue though, bad content.

------
timtadh
Honestly, applying to speak at industry conferences is a very frustrating
experience. I have given lots of talks at my university, I have spoken at
local meetups, and at one local free conference where the organizers knew me.
Students and other attendees at my talks often tell me that my talks are good.
However, trying to break into the "conference" circuit has been difficult as I
have never gotten any direct feedback from anywhere I have submitted to and
often wonder if they read my proposal at all. They sometimes even forget to
inform you that your talk has not been accepted! It is a bit ridiculous.

In contrast, while I don't want to paint a rosy picture of academic
conferences, you always get detailed feedback on your paper/talk that you
submit. It may be biased, it may be frustrating, but at least you can tell
that someone at least looked at your paper/talk and gave you some feedback.
Industry conferences never do this.

------
carsongross
Heartbreaker #6 - The Your Company Did Not Sponsor This Conference Topic

Heartbreaker #7 - The You Don't Have Any Personal Contacts on The Conference
Circuit And Aren't Particularly Attractive Or Personable Topic

Heartbreaker #8 – The intercooler.js You Are All Doing It Wrong And You Should
Feel Bad Topic

~~~
hedwall
DevOpsdays actually have very well written article about how sponsorship works
in their context.

------
BJBBB
Have done reviews for IEEE, APEC, and ACM stuff. There can be many reasons
that a presentation is not accepted. Some rejects are a simple instance of
subject matter not matching the scope of the symposium. Or there can be some
problems with the math and other technical issues. Another unfortunate and not
uncomman issue is where the English syntax and/or grammar is so poor that the
meaning of the proposal is lost. And there can be the occasional submittal
that is a bit before its time - it has happened to myself. Example is the IEEE
(PSES and other societies) is probably at least 15 years behind the ACM on
matters of software safety and test methodology. Members of the ISPCE tech
committiee recently approached me about a session on software safety analysis
for the 2017 symposium; yet my submittals for similar presentations were
rejected at least twice during last 10 years, by this same group of people.

So a rejected presentation proposal may not have necessarly been a poor idea.
Please do not take rejections personnaly.

~~~
eganist
> So a rejected presentation proposal may not have necessarily been a poor
> idea. Please do not take rejections personally.

There's also the case of having too many good talks and simply having to
tailor the conference around a specific track of talks that might make the
most sense for a given audience or for a given industry focus.

------
jazzyk
There is a big elephant in the room here:

Most conferences have been converted to strictly money-making entities.

Here is how it works:

\- a RFP is published

\- you submit

\- you get a response: "Unfortunately, your proposal did not get accepted,
however, we have a limited number of time slots for sponsors. If you become a
silver sponsor..." In other words, you can submit any crap, as long as you
provide "sponsorship".

This may or may not apply to DevOps Days, I don't know enough about it. Also,
the above does not invalidate some good points made by the author regarding
selecting the right angle of the presentation, etc.

~~~
chrisseaton
I've never seen that. Has anyone else?

I've had talks rejected from places even where we were sponsoring.

~~~
johnbellone
I have seen talks rejected from places where we were silver sponsor. But that
being said, most conferences I go to the platinum/gold sponsors are all over
the tracks. Even if they don't know a lick about the topics.

------
wirrbel
Can't argue much with these criteria. Yet why "previous presenter experience"?
If you are afraid of inexperienced speakers to deliver a boring talk, why Not
just give them a 10-15 minute slot?

Them, I am reminded that many speakers tour many events with the same talk. I
rather like the idea of having fresh speakers on stage over the 4th instance
of the very same old talk.

~~~
krschultz
I think of it as a ladder that you progress through as a speaker. This reduces
risk for the organizers, but it's also good for your growth as a speaker. If
you think you can just hop right into a conference talk with no warmup, then
the earlier steps should be a breeze.

\- Short meetup talk (10-20 minutes).

\- Long meetup talk (20-40 minutes)

\- Conference talk.

The only gotcha is that most meetups are not recorded. That makes it difficult
to apply for conferences outside of your hometown.

~~~
st3v3r
Most meetups would not have an issue with you bringing a friend who would
record the talk for you on their phone or with a camera. As with all these
things, make sure to ask the organizers first, though.

------
bcantrill
Like many here, I totally and vehemently disagree with the fourth reason for
rejection (the "n00b"): if someone has a proposal that is worthy of
presentation, they should be given the opportunity to present -- regardless of
their age or experience. There are many reasons for this, including the most
obvious one that if every conference insists on experience, no one will be
able to get that experience. But the reasons for not depending on prior
presentations run much deeper: if you are going to evaluate a proposal based
on the speaker's prior presentations, you are tautologically unblinded in your
review process. Having an unblinded review process is a grievous mistake: when
conferences aren't blind in their reviews, they end up confirming their own
biases more than selecting the best possible work. (I have always felt this
way, but my feelings on this were galvanized by my own experiences inside the
sausage factory[1] -- and for the conference that I am currently
organizing[2], we are emphatically double blind.)

I understand the problem of creating engaging presentations as well as
compelling content, but there are ways to achieve this other than being
prejudicial. For example, if you want to create an invited talk or two for
those whose presentations the program committee particularly likes, great. And
if you want to provide presentation coaching for those who you accept who
haven't presented before, even better. (I have provided this coaching
informally in the past, and have found that a little coaching can go a long
way.) But a blinded review process must be viewed as a constraint on the
problem: to do any less is to deprive ourselves of the new ideas and
presenters that provide us our collective vitality!

[1] [https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-
sessions/p...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-
sessions/presentation/cantrill)

[2] [http://systemswe.love/](http://systemswe.love/)

~~~
st3v3r
"if someone has a proposal that is worthy of presentation, they should be
given the opportunity to present -- regardless of their age or experience"

At the same time, it sounds like they had many, many submissions that were
worthy of presentation, and this was a bigger conference. There are smaller
conferences which are not as inundated with presentations to which newer
speakers can apply, and from there apply to the bigger ones.

It's just like everything else in life, where you have to prove yourself on a
smaller scale before being allowed on bigger things.

~~~
bcantrill
Sorry if my wording was confusing: I mean that they should pick the most
qualified based on the proposal -- not that they should expand the scope of
the conference to accommodate every plausible submission.

As an aside, I do not understand why my comment is being voted down; is a
double blind review process that controversial?!

~~~
st3v3r
Part of the proposal is the presentation, and thus the person's ability to
present.

------
dahart
I've never been to a conference that didn't have a high percentage of first
time speakers. In many ways that is what provides the value of a good
conference. One of the largest ACM conferences is SIGGRAPH, in which graduate
students generally present.

As long as there's content, and the speakers receive some communication about
being prepared, practicing, and ensuring they will meet the time limit, how is
there so much worry that it's preferable to reject good abstracts than take
the risk??

On top of that, it seems like risky presenters with good abstracts could
easily be given the opportunity to send in a video of them speaking or have a
phone call with a conference organizer.

Given these things, it's seems sad to trivially reject based on inexperience,
it hurts the conference more than the applicants, and of course gives the
impression the conference cares more about style than substance. I realize
that's a rash decision making wild generalizations based on a small amount of
text... OTOH that is probably how some of those less experienced applicants
feel.

------
DrNuke
Pretty harsh with the noob, we have all been there in a very distant past,
aren't we? Just accept the most promising noobs and pack them all into the
same session with a navigate chair and a senior speaker ready to rescue every
single talk.

~~~
exelius
I think it's more "a paid / sponsored conference isn't the best place to get
presentation experience". Especially when you have a plethora of experienced
presenters to choose from.

~~~
slantedview
The experienced presenters tend to talk about the same things, over and over,
at conference after conference. Selecting for "noobs" injects diversity into
what is otherwise a well-worn conference circuit by many of the non-noobs.

~~~
exelius
On the other side of the coin, people tend to ask about the same things, over
and over again -- so a professional presenter will hit more of the points that
people are interested in.

------
verelo
How has no one mentioned the gears in the background on this page yet? It's a
touch distracting, but there is some smart stuff going on to make them line
up.

Sadly the CSS is optimized, which makes understanding its implementation a
little tough, but i suspect it'd make for fun reading!

~~~
timv
The background is a canvas element - the gear turning is implemented with
javascript.

~~~
verelo
Thanks, I should have said CSS/JS, it too is impossible to read due to the
optimization.

------
eganist
> Heartbreaker #4 – The N00b

> [...]

> This presentation would have been accepted if we had seen speaker talked at
> local meetup groups, had a recorded presentation we could view, or
> maintained a blog so that we could foresee of how he would present his ideas
> and build an argument.

Perhaps we were outliers, but @buu700 and I were accepted to BlackHat and DEF
CON with no prior speaking experience outside from a dry run of the talk to a
single meet-up.

One delivery -- and the talk as delivered in both conferences ended up being
far different from that specific instance. Now if the article suggests that
just doing it once is fine, cool, but if it's suggesting a track record of
past smaller conferences, I'm inclined to disagree, as are the reviewers for
the largest conferences.

It _helps,_ but being bereft of it certainly doesn't disqualify you.

~~~
krschultz
Had you presented to the meetup before applying or only after you knew that
you were accepted in the conference? Even having done a talk once is far
better than most applications.

~~~
eganist
Delivered it deliberately _in preparation_ for a submission (i.e. before we
even submitted the talks but knowing full well that that would be the end
goal). Both the talk and delivery were engineered with those audiences in
mind, so we restricted recording and distribution of the talk at the prior
OWASP meetup until after it was published at BH/DC.

It didn't go all that smoothly at DEF CON (which I'll freely attribute to us
both being conference noobs), but it went pretty well overall, all things
considered.

Don't know if we'll have anything interesting to talk about next year, but I'm
looking forward to potentially doing it again.

------
wernerb
"We found every submission to be of high quality. We will now explain why your
talks are actually garden-variety by using landscaping metaphores"

Jokes aside. The issues raised are very good, but I can't help but think
biased to a certain intended crowd. How does the panel(?) stay objective? Are
the different views on topics and how to formulate the synopsis (exaggeration)
perhaps relevant to a certain type of conference attendee and so deserving of
a separate conference track?

------
jupiter90000
From the viewpoint of a self-supporting individual (not having someone else
foot the bill) who would only be interested in learning about new topics in a
field, does anyone here think it is worth hundreds to thousands in cost to
attend a conference, and why? Is there anything there one would definitely
miss about advances in the field if not attending? Or is it more about
(essentially) self-promotion?

------
pendext
To add a personal anecdote, I was accepted to speak at a large regional
conference as my first speaking gig. I explicitly stated I did not have any
previous conference experience. I attribute this partially to having a
relatively niche topic.

I was lucky enough to give the talk twice at a local user group prior to the
conference, which helped with the actual conference talk, I am sure.

------
brightball
Just to reinforce the last point regarding blogging and presenting locally,
they are 100% correct. I've never actually submitted a talk for a conference
but I've been speaking to local programming groups fairly regularly as well as
blogging for the last 3-4 years. Regularly is a couple of times per year or
slightly more often.

I don't get paid to do any of it, I just really enjoy talking about this
stuff. Through these talks and blogging I've been recruited by 3 different
companies to contribute to their company tech blogs and I was invited to speak
at a rather large and exclusive conference where I was the only speaker not
from a HUGE company on the docket.

It happened because I was giving the talk locally, somebody affiliated with
the conference drove in from about an hour away to hear it and then stuck
around to invite me to speak. I never considered that conferences would
recruit but apparently they do.

------
sakopov
If you're very new to public speaking but dying to give it a shot try
submitting an entry to KCDC. It's one of the biggest dev conferences in the
Midwest and they do accept rookies with very little to no experience from all
over the globe. A good friend of mine had his first talk at KCDC a couple of
years ago. No blog. No github account. Just a very good topic and a
willingness to push limits and share his passion. It's also opened up a ton of
other opportunities for him.

------
slantedview
> Heartbreaker #4 – The N00b

Everyone is a n00b at some time. But being a conference n00b doesn't mean
you're not an expert on the subject of your talk, that your content is not
original, that you're not an excellent speaker, or that your talk would not be
excellent. All it means is that you're a n00b to public conferences. The
wholesale discounting of candidate talks based on such narrow criteria is
foolish.

------
pimterry
So many of these articles never cover what 'good' looks like, only bad. What
does their perfect pitch look like? Which abstracts blew them away? What topic
surprised them most (in a good way)?

Both good and bad examples are important, but articles like this that include
only the rejected outlines just feels quite discouraging.

------
partycoder
Try to improve your talk by presenting it first in a meetup, get some
feedback, and most importantly find the right levels of detail for each part
of the presentation.

The topics need to also be aligned consistently around a larger theme, that is
closed by a concrete conclusion that people can ideally apply in their life.

------
Roboprog
It can be difficult to get "hard data" about a topic, as most of us certainly
don't have that available in our day to day work. The best you can hope for is
to find somebody else's academic research, and then riff on it in an
understandable, enjoyable, manner, I guess.

------
Murkin
We ran 2 large conferences and 2 large meetups and about 90% of CFPs get
rejected for a simple reason:

Everyone are submitting to talk about the exact same subject.

"Whats new in Angular2", "Using Redux", etc.

------
gravypod
> We had several great pitches from people who have never given a talk before;
> we asked about presentation experience as part of submitting a talk and we
> did a little googling too. It’s crummy to turn away such a good
> presentation, but it’s also risky to entrust your conference audience to
> someone who has never presented before

I don't care about how a presenter presents their information at a _technical_
conference. If this was a conference for public speaking and entertainment I'd
think it's important then.

------
patja
I was expecting the noob to be rejected for not knowing how to spell the word
'amateur' correctly.

------
robertcope
So, in order to be a presenter, I must have already been a presenter?

~~~
Etzos
It looks like a blog would also suffice. Although I had the same initial
reaction: it feels like a rather overzealous exclusion.

~~~
delinka
You don't just drop someone without presentation experience onto a stage in
front of hundreds or thousands with a laptop and a projector. That's a great
way to get negative reviews for the conference from the attendees.

Much like you don't hire someone with no experience writing software to come
in a write you a brand new point-of-sale system for your chain of a thousand
stores just because they're enthusiastic.

~~~
Etzos
I think you're making an assumption that I disagree with the conclusion of the
article when in reality, I don't. My _initial reaction_ was that it was overly
exclusive and in a way, it is. They don't give a chance to those with no
experience doing this kind of thing, which makes the bar for someone with no
experience that much higher.

However, I don't think this is wrong, especially for such a large conference.
If this were a smaller conference then I think it would actually be
overzealous, but that is not what I think in this case, which is why I said it
was only my initial reaction.

I would also like to add that the example summary given shows more than just
enthusiasm, it shows knowledge of topic as well as the ability to convey that
information in a concise and reasonable way. So, a more apt comparison would
be not hiring said person to build your brand new POS system just because
their academics were good and make a nice resume (just without job
experience).

------
imron
I like the spinning cogs in the background.

~~~
rkangel
It was a lovely design idea, but I found it distracting as I was reading. A
bit like how a running video elsewhere on the page draws the eye, the cogs
moving as I scrolled distracted from the text.

If they just were behind the title and opening paragraph, they would scroll
out of view relatively quickly. You'd get the nice effect, but stop being
distracted.

------
saurik
Before any of the rest of this, I want to say that this is a useful article
for people as conferences actually do think like this, but my comment is then
to point out that not all conferences do, and that I generally prefer
attending ones which don't.

> The premise is good, but the abstract is so short we have no idea where this
> is going to go. Even if the speaker were experienced and a known conference
> superstar, it is hard to give the presenter a speaking slot without more
> detail.

When you go to a performance by a standup comedian, you don't read an abstract
first: if there is even a title it is probably arbitrary or a gag.

When I go to a conference and am choosing to bother going to see a talk, I
select talks based on who is speaking, not based on their abstract.

In my experience, a good speaker is interesting no matter what they are
talking about, and otherwise the talk ends up being disappointing no matter
how on point the abstract is to my interests.

You might then ask: "but surely the good speaker is capable of making a good
abstract?", but the best talks are also coordinated and topical and _deep_.

The person whose talks I _most enjoy and now never miss_ is essentially
incapable of making an abstract ahead of time, as his talk is based on his
thoughts and passions at that moment, and are about topics so compelling that
after the talk I would have a hard time summarizing it other than "you really
should have been there".

You might then ask "but is the speaker actually good if the audience member
can't summarize the talk?", and I will claim the exact opposite: if you can
replace the talk with a summary of the content and (maybe) the slides, you
should not be wasting anyone's time with a talk.

This is something both many conferences and many attendees fundamentally seem
to not "get": they ask for peoples' slides, as if they have meaning. One may
as well ask for a photograph of the empty sets for a play they missed instead
of a video of the performance, that is how much content you can recover from
the slides and abstract of a good talk.

> It’s crummy to turn away such a good presentation, but it’s also risky to
> entrust your conference audience to someone who has never presented before.

But this is also how you get extremely loyal speakers who will speak at your
conference for free while refusing to even bother speaking at other venues. It
is also how you manage to show your audience "something new" instead of "the
same old people that every conference gets to speak as they are the safe bet /
known quantity".

The absolute best regular conference I go to, by _far_ , gets all of this: the
couple that runs 360|iDev works with new speakers to hone ideas (many speakers
I have talked to are incredibly grateful to this conference for giving them
"their break"), but doesn't even bother with an approval process for _known
good_ speakers, and they then aren't afraid to have sessions at their
conference with neither a title nor an abstract, just a name, a bio, and a
"placeholder" title and abstract that are devoid of content. It is seriously
the only conference where I really find myself interested to bother attending
any of the talks past "I guess I absolutely need to try to see this so I can
talk about it with other people tonight _sigh_ ".

Expanding into the category of atypical conferences, XOXO takes the cake, but
it is half-festival, was never sure if it was anything more than a temporary
concept, and doesn't really have a "topic" that is easy to describe. But, the
Andy's hand-nurture first-time speakers based on core attendees and prior
speakers "nominating" people they really want to see give talks, many of whom
are artists or bloggers who might even "perform" in various ways but have
never given a talk. The schedule has names and bios, but not a single title or
abstract.

------
jsprogrammer
>submissions were uniformly good

><list of different reasons some submissions were not good [and in one case,
_you_ would have been picked if not for this not good quality]>

please.

What are the chances this submission was brigaded to the top^ spot?

^[http://hnrankings.info/12725337/](http://hnrankings.info/12725337/)

~~~
jsprogrammer
Just ate it up, eh?

