Johanna Rothman - Write a Conference Proposal the Conference Wants and Accepts

You might think you just start at the top and write a conference proposal. I have found that thinking about the proposal a little differently helps me create a better proposal. I start with a frame, something that my proposal readers might not see at all. That helps me set the context and create a great proposal.

Consider these steps to a conference proposal:

1. Frame the proposal: Understand who and what purpose the proposal serves.
2. Understand the five parts of the proposal: title, abstract, description, learning outcomes, and your bio.
3. Iterate on the proposal parts and strengthen your writing as you iterate.
4. Decide which conference(s) to submit your proposal.
5. Obtain the most timely feedback from your proposal.

I cant guarantee a conference will accept your proposal if you follow these steps. However, my acceptance rate climbed significantly when I started to think about conference proposals this way.

Thats because you can create a proposal the program committee wants to accept.

A conference proposal serves these purposes:

• Help the conference program committee select your proposal.
• Help the people at the conference select your session.

That business of selection means your proposal has to invite people to connect with your ideas.

These ideas help me frame that connection:

• Who do I want to connect with?
• What problems do these people have?
• Is there a specific context I want to address?

Your session has solutions that are not right for everyone. Your experience has a context, and that context matters. The context often helps me select who I want to connect with.

When you choose your audience, you start to clarify what you might want to say and how to frame your work.

Your proposal is the first way you connect with your audience.

For example, I only offer talks for people using agile approaches or trying to. Why? Because I restrict my consulting work to people who want to use agile approaches. (I also work in an agile way.)

I respect people who dont want to use agile approaches. However, I am not interested in consulting in their context. Im happy to discuss their issues over a cup of coffee. Not for work.

What if youre not a consultant? Its the same problem. Who do you want to connect with?

Beware of selecting a large class of people, such as Scrum Masters, agile coaches, or even managers. Yes, there are many of those people.

Because there are many of those people, they have many problems. Lots of people means lots of problems. And, they often need different answers depending on their context.

All of those contexts means you are unlikely to help all of those people in one session.

Its okay to start with a large class of people. Make sure you narrow your focus when you identify the problems those people have. (Ill talk more about this later.)

In a session at Agile 2019 about how to write a conference proposal, I sat next to a lovely guy who said he wanted to give a talk about helping teams be happy.

I asked why he wanted teams to be happy. I find that happiness is an outcome of being satisfied with the work, not a direct goal itself. He looked at me with astonishment. He said, Dont all teams need to be happy?

I said, No, not at all. Team members need to be satisfied with and proud of their work. You cant control a persons happiness, especially not at work.

Ooooh.

Im not sure what he thought after that.

I am sure that his thesisthat teams need to be happyis a response to problems he observed at work. That happiness response might have worked for him. But what matters more to the conference (and the audience) are the problems he observed.

Think back to the people you identified as the people you want in your audience. Use their problems to connect with them.

What problems does your potential audiencethe people you want to connect withhave?

People work in a particular context. You might think they have their problems for stupid reasons. You might even think they are wrong.

Remember, their context almost always drives their decision-making. You might think they make wrong decisions. They think that what they do makes total sense in their context.