An example proposal

Here's a proposal I submitted recently. It was accepted at NordicRuby in 2012, which took only 12 talks from a pool of 113.

Title: What Rubyists should Steal from Haskell and Clojure

Abstract: Ruby is a great little language, but that doesn't mean it got everything right. This talk will be a tour of the best features from Clojure and Haskell that you can't find in Ruby. The goal isn't to try to convert you to these languages, but to expand your knowledge of the best ideas in programming language design. We'll also see how understanding the rationale behind these features can help you write better Ruby.

If concepts like anaphora, destructuring binds, and monads aren't familiar to you, prepare to learn some powerful concepts. And don't worry: this won't be some voice-from-the-clouds, ivory tower tutorial. Just a pragmatic guy teaching cool ideas with simple examples. No neckbeard required.

Notes to organizers: (Here's where I gush about their conference a little.)

Then, I include the following quotes, gathered after my most-recent talk:

Bio: Ben has spoken in several countries and in multiple languages, in venues varying from tiny conference rooms to giant lecture halls.

He is the co-founder of the Boston Vim Meetup, creator of vimuniversity.com, and author of Speaking for Hackers.

When not demanding that everyone remap caps lock to escape, Ben writes code at thoughtbot, occasionally correctly.