Member-only story
How (not) to Respond to a CFP
Over the last few years, I have submitted a lot of talk suggestions to conferences and events through their Call for Papers (CFP); I’ve had a lot of rejections and been accepted to speak at a lot as well.
I’ve also been involved in reviewing submissions for events and conferences and trying to decide which ones to pick and which to reject, which is always challenging.
In this blog post, I wanted to share some tips on filling in a Call for Papers for an event.
Too short
When writing about a talk idea, make the description or synopsis a manageable length. If the person evaluating the submissions doesn’t know what the talk will be about, how can they assess it properly or trust that it will be a good talk for the audience?
Your submission extract should be long enough to give the conference organisers enough context to understand what you will be talking about and why it’s worth picking your submission over the others.
Too long
Equally, your submission should not be too long. It doesn’t need to be an essay; you don’t need to write out an entire blog post or article in your submission. Save that level of detail for the talk itself.
