Proposing successfully

1. Keep it short and punchy.

Most conferences get over a hundred proposals. Put yourself in the shoes of an organizer who has read 30 abstracts before yours, and wants to do 10 more before he stops for the day. Think of it as speed dating: you've got 5 minutes to pique his interest and get him wanting to hear more. Remember that your proposal should make the reader want to see your talk.

2. Include social proof.

When you give your talks, look for feedback on Twitter (and solicit some if there isn't any). Save links to the good stuff and include them in your proposal (quote, plus a link to the original; the link is important). This technique has two substantial benefits. First, it assuages an organizer's concern that he's going to pick a bad speaker. It makes his life easier, which is extremely good for you. Second, since not a lot of speakers will do this, it will make you stand out from the crowd.

3. Titles matter.

Shoot for intriguing and memorable, in that order. Come up with a couple candidates for your title and get input from friends. Which talk would YOU rather hear?

4. Have a good bio.

Do cool stuff and talk about it.

4. Work hard to stand out.

At the very least, reach out to the organizers with a friendly email after submitting. Tell them you're excited about their conference and that you'd love to speak.

However, since you're trying to stand out from the other submitters, try to be extra creative.

For my first talk, I really wanted to speak at RailsConf, a fairly competitive venue. Since I had no track record of successful talks, I was asking the organizers to simply trust that I was going to do a good job. That's a pretty big risk for people who really care about the quality of their conference.

To allay this fear, I wrote up the first two minutes of my talk, and recorded a video of me giving it to my empty office. After a dozen takes or so, I had something I was proud of. I threw it on youtube, and sent a link to the organizers with a heartfelt note expressing my interest in speaking. (Wanna watch the video? Here's the private link)

To my amazement, the reply that came back was from Chad Fowler, a massive figure in my field.

His response was the following:

"Thanks for your email, your proposal and the video! I LOVE what you've done with the video especially :)

We're still working on the program obviously (given that the CFP hasn't closed yet) but we'll definitely give yours an extra-special-close look."

Could I have asked for a better response? No way.

All that, because I was willing to take an extra hour of work into the proposal process.

I got accepted, by the way.

More recently, I decided I really wanted to speak at RailsBerry, a conference in Krakow whose website and CFP made it look like an amazing experience. To up my chances, I sent a hand-written note on thoughtbot stationary to the organizers (and even threw in some stickers as bribery).

At the FedEx store, I realized that unless I overnighted the package, it wouldn't arrive before they did the first round of talk selections. Standing there, I realized I wanted this badly enough, gritted my teeth, and paid the $120 in postage.

Another acceptance. This time to the most quirky, personality-filled, and well-executed conference I've ever attended. Worth every penny.