January 18, 2020

Global Diversity CFP Day

Global Diversity CFP Day Oslo Norway

What is CFP?

A lot of conferences will require you to submit a Call for Papers, or CFP.
Usually CFP is just a paragraph or two for your talk abstract, a paragraph or two directly to the conference organizers, and then maybe special things like your Social Media Network handle.

Start Simple
Have your content written in some form Blog, Articles
Visit Conferences and Meetups, (Commercial conference - If not free there are discounted tickets)
To choose Topics
- Think about
- What excites you
- What fears you / What makes you sad
- The Ahaa moment
- Index card (note the topics down somewhere)
- Being passionate on stage - People like it
- Session should be useful and Interesting
- Know you audience, What they expect
- Try not to overestimate the level of expectations from your audience
- Nothing is too easy for any audience (there are mixed audience)
- Level your session properly
  - Beginner
  - Intermediate (Target your talks in this area)
  - Expert
- Sometimes beginners are the best ones to speak on topics
- Being an expert is not important
- Don’t be afraid to fail
- There can always be an expert attending your talk
  - Don’t let that bother you
- Answering to audience
  - Listen the question properly, repeat to make sure you are answering correct question or you understand the correct question. This has a lot of benefits
  - Be frank if you don’t know the answer
  - Don’t get triggered by the questions
  - Just relax, There is always a polite way to answer
  - Make sure you are not offensive
  - Your personal experience on a topic makes it your talk

Put your efforts in this, there are no shortcuts
Read and update
Don’t mix topics
People love stories, what you messed up, how you fixed things
The Title
- Very Important
- Eye Catching
- Sets the expectation
- You need to deliver on your topic
- Convince your audience that the talk is gonna be worth their time
- Title starting with name for framework sometimes work
The small abstract
- Language is important
- Should be easy to understand
- Event specific abstract is useful
- Structure it properly
- What problem you will solve
- How you will solve that problem
Ask for feedback, to work upon if your proposal gets rejected
- Sometimes you may not get the feedback or the feedback can be very generic
Some conf also provide speaker training
Sometimes conferences enforce templates
- Example Title slides
- You can be flexible with it
- if you are not comfortable politely reject this
- What you present is your property, you own it
- Title slide sets the moods