How to get your conference talk submission accepted (opensource.com)

[Posted January 23, 2014 by jake]

Over at opensource.com, Ruth Suehle covers a talk from the recent linux.conf.au (LCA). The talk looked at the process of choosing the talks for LCA, and what constitutes a good talk topic and abstract. There is lots of good information on putting together a talk proposal that is applicable well beyond just LCA. "When you write your submission, begin by looking at last year's program. See the depth and types of topics covered and think about why those were the ones that were submitted. If you can, take a look at blog posts from the previous year to see what people found the most interesting and popular." Don't forget the LWN.net CFP deadlines calendar to help keep track of upcoming CFPs.

How to get your conference talk submission accepted (opensource.com)

Posted Jan 24, 2014 23:22 UTC (Fri) by sjlyall (guest, #4151) [Link]

Talk on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbg2txfYbaM

or downloadable as mp4:

http://mirror.linux.org.au/pub/linux.conf.au/2014/Wednesd...

How to get your conference talk submission accepted (opensource.com)

Posted Jan 25, 2014 12:58 UTC (Sat) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (2 responses)

I can't help but think this is a terrible idea. You should submit a talk because you have something unique to say, not chose your topic because it is likely to be accepted.

How to get your conference talk submission accepted (opensource.com)

Posted Jan 25, 2014 14:52 UTC (Sat) by justincormack (subscriber, #70439) [Link] (1 responses)

But if the people who have to choose the talks can't tell you have something unique to say and don't accept it you don't get anywhere.

They did seem to have an overt bias towards people who have spoken before though.

How to get your conference talk submission accepted (opensource.com)

Posted Jan 31, 2014 13:00 UTC (Fri) by willy (subscriber, #9762) [Link]

As someone who's served on a program committee before ... "duh".

We're trying to choose "the best" talks. Part of that involves having a good speaker. Even if it's the most awesome topic in the world, having a speaker who mumbles, reads their talk from their slides and can't get their points across makes for a talk that attendees will not rate highly. Conversely, having Tridge talk about the lint he found in his belly-button that morning will have the entire conference buzzing by the lunch-break.

So it's very easy to accept a talk by proven speakers. That said, it's not the *only* factor that a program committee will take into account, and if you look at the lists of speakers at various conferences, you'll find new speakers at just about all of them.