Crafting a Winning Conference Talk Proposal - and getting it selected
Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of here's an idea worth playing with in which I am going to cover how to craft a winning conference talk proposal. Now I hope you're doing really well. It's extremely warm here in The UK. I've got the air conditioning on in my office studio, so there's a bit of a low rumble behind me. That's the air con trying to keep me cool on what is about 30 degrees here in The UK, Esquirtio.
Rob:Love it. So today, I'm gonna share some ideas about how to craft that winning conference talk proposal. Now, obviously, if you've overcome the hurdle of wanting to do some public speaking at a conference, an event, a local meetup, your hobby group, it's now time to actually get a talk accepted. What a lot of people struggle with here is they might have a a wonderful talk in their mind. They've got the ideas.
Rob:They've got the structure. They've got the flow. They've got a what they think is a great talk, but that's the second hurdle. The first hurdle is actually getting that talk accepted at a conference, and that's what we're gonna focus on today. Now I've already done a newsletter and a little free guide on coming up with conference ideas, so we're not gonna talk about that.
Rob:The assumption here is that you've got a great idea. You're just looking to submit this to a conference. This is actually a chapter from zero to Keynote book that is available in a beautiful printed edition, which is available in The UK only at the moment. But, of course, there's an online digital version, which is available globally. Find that at creativesoulprojects.com.
Rob:So throughout my career, I've done loads and loads of conferences speaking at them, but I've also been a chair and on the review boards of many, many conferences. And one of the thing that is epidemic within this industry of, particularly conferences, is the really poor quality of submissions from people who wanna speak. Now they may have a wonderful talk. They may be the world's best presenter in some respects, and they've got this idea that they wanna share or this story to tell, but they just don't seem to be able to put that same effort, that same rigor, that same sort of structure into the conference proposal itself. I would say that only about 20 to 25% of conference submissions that I've seen are actually decent conference submissions.
Rob:The rest is, like, one liners or accept my talk because I'm awesome, and this topic, everybody needs to hear it. And so it's really important that you put that effort into that talk proposal because that's the first hurdle. No matter how good your talk is, if it's not accepted at a conference, you have not succeeded in delivering that talk. So today, we're gonna cover some key areas such as finding conferences, understanding conference themes, understanding the call for papers, which is the essentially, the thing you've gotta fill in in order to get the submission into the review process, and also some ideas about how to actually do a step by step process of writing that standout proposal. So let's jump in.
Rob:Now the first part of this is finding the right conference. Now I have a little story in the Zero to Keynote book where I tell the story about a a wonderful presenter. It was a great talk. It was it was lovely. It was really well delivered.
Rob:Really nice smooth through line through the talk. All the elements of a good talk were in it. The problem was this presenter was at the wrong conference. It wasn't the right audience for that talk, and she received really negative feedback from 90% of the audience. I gave really positive because, you know, I work in bits of HR, and this talk was about HR at a technology conference.
Rob:But the audience just weren't there. They didn't wanna you know, it wasn't a topic that resonated with them. So they gave really negative feedback, and she was a bit devastated by that. And, I caught up with her a couple of weeks later, and I said, look. It's a great talk.
Rob:Don't change the talk. You're just speaking at the wrong conference. Now you could argue that the conference organizers themselves were to blame here for putting on a talk that wasn't really suitable or relevant for the audience, but also the presenter themselves submitted to that conference, and it just wasn't the right audience. Now, yes, she could have changed that talk, but the topic itself just didn't resonate with that audience. So the first thing about speaking at conferences is finding the right conferences to speak at.
Rob:So here are some practical tips that you can implement. So first off, industry specific sources such as things like journals or news sites or meetups or user groups or your own industry sort of forums and websites and all sorts of stuff. You'll find conferences on there or you'll know somebody that's been speaking at a conference or attended a conference that has the right audience that is in your industry, the one that you're wanting to present about. Of course, there's online channels as well such as, like, you know, X, formerly known as Twitter. You got Facebook.
Rob:You got Instagram. You got all of these places. I often see adverts or I see follow the hashtag, like, conference hashtag, and you can find conferences, probably ones you maybe never heard of. And, obviously, they might be in the right location for you, and you've obviously gotta check out whether you're gonna get paid for this talk or whether the travel expenses are covered and all that kind of stuff that you've gotta you've gotta understand before you submit that conference paper. But social media and online channels are wonderful source to find really cool conferences.
Rob:Now, of course, the other option is networking. Finding those peers, that word-of-mouth, those network events where you are gonna find people who are running conferences or speaking at a conference or know of a conference that would love to have your talk and hear your story. So there are a few ideas about how you wanna go about finding conferences. Now, obviously, for me, the best conferences to speak at are the ones that you've actually been to as an attendee, and you've got a sense for the vibe and the community and the people and the organizers. And it feels like a conference that you can just sort of see yourself on the stage presenting at.
Rob:A wonderful, wonderful way to find a great conference is to actually go to conferences and find the ones that resonate most deeply with you. Now once you found those conferences, there's usually a window somewhere between six to twelve months, sometimes a little bit longer, of what's called a call for papers. Now a CFP or a call for papers is essentially where the organizers put out a submission process. And what they'll do there is outline the theme, which we'll come to in a minute, and the sort of process that you need to go through to speak at that conference. On there as well will be things like remuneration, travel, all that kind of stuff.
Rob:There's sort of prerequisites that you would need to know in order to see whether this is a conference that you wanna speak at. Now this call for papers process is open generally for a significant number of months, usually for most conferences. And certainly ones that are advertised in a year before the conference, you might find that that call for papers window is about three to six months giving them enough time to review those submissions to come up with the schedule of, you know, the acceptance of those talks that are really gonna be good for their conference, and then communicating and doing all the logistics. So it's really important you find that course papers and you locate it, save it, bookmark it, do what you need to do so that you know where to go to submit your conference talk. So as mentioned briefly, most conferences have a theme.
Rob:Now that theme is a way of the conference organizers sort of grouping together a collection of subtopics within that industry, to give it a sort of relevant look and feel so that the talks are broadly on that same theme. It's also a way of standing out from the competition, which is pretty intense in most conference industries. And but also as well, it's usually a reflection of the person who's maybe the guest chair of the conference or maybe the organizers themselves. It's usually a reflection of what they're thinking. Usually, it's aligned to things like industry trends, and it's, you know, things that are popular or things that people are doing or things that are new.
Rob:The key with the theme is to understand the theme. Some of them are gonna be very broad. Some are gonna be very narrow. A broad one might be, for example, how we can communicate more effectively at work. Super broad.
Rob:I mean, you could put almost any talk into that. Then there are ones that are very narrow, such as how we use this technology in this industry. That might be a little bit more of a narrow theme for a conference. Key, though, is there's always wiggle room. No matter what idea you've come up with or you maybe you've not got the idea yet, and you're gonna go through the idea generation process.
Rob:Free guide on creative soul projects, by the way, for how to do that and in the zero to keynote book. But, essentially, there's always a ton of wiggle room within this this theme. You can always find some way to connect any idea pretty much to this theme. I've never ever experienced a theme where I've looked at it and thought, you know what? My talk can't be somehow interconnected and weaved into that theme.
Rob:But it is important that you do try and stick to the theme. If you submit a conference proposal and it's completely off the theme, the chances are they'll reject you straight away. So try and find some connection point into the theme. Now in the call for papers, there'll also be details about things such as whether or not they do keynote slots, whether or not they do what we call track sessions, which are the smaller sessions in between the keynotes usually, whether or not it's workshops and tutorials. And by the way, my new book, Workshop Mastery, is out on how to run award winning workshops, So worth checking that out.
Rob:Again, creativesoulprojects.com. But it's really important that you consider the kind of talk that you wanna submit. Are you submitting a keynote? And maybe this is your first talk. I wouldn't suggest you go ahead and do that.
Rob:The track sessions are usually the place to play, at least in the initial stages of your conference speaking journey. They generally tend to have a smaller audience, particularly if it's a multi track event where, for example, the keynote might have a thousand people in it, and then those thousand people choose one of maybe four tracks to go and join in between the other keynote. So you might get, if it's an even distribution, 250 people in the audience, you might get five because somebody else has got 700 plus, etcetera. So it's worth considering what it is that you're submitting to because that's super important when you do the the core papers. So the key takeaway here is your ability to pivot your idea to the theme itself and to be super crystal clear in your own mind about what type of talk you're going to present and make sure that aligns to the conference itself.
Rob:So now we're gonna jump into, basically, very quickly, a 10 step proposal master class. Let's call it what it is. This has been a a post that I put out about ten years ago, which has been really, really well, viewed. People have, cited it. People reference it as their go to source for how to get a conference talk submitted, and it does generally work.
Rob:Now, obviously, there's no guarantees it will work, but this is the 10 step proposal straight from the Zero to Keynote book, and it is the same process I still use today when I'm submitting conference talks. Now the 10 steps we're gonna go through are designed to give you the best chance possible to get in front of a reviewer and get them to accept your talk. Now this is not the talk itself, and a lot of people make that mistake by including too much information, the full structure of the talk, and all of the other stuff. The point of the call for papers is to have the review person or board of people look at your submission and go, I wanna hear that talk. It's an advert for your presentation, and it has to be compelling and interesting and exciting so that you grab people and they go, yes.
Rob:I want this person to speak at our conference. So the first and most obvious thing to do is to grab that core of papers from the conference itself and truly deeply digest it, really thoroughly understand what it is that you have to do to get your conference talk submitted. So my advice here is to create a little checklist on a notepad or in your to do list or whatever of things such as the deadline for the submission, of course. Word count, so make sure you read that really well and keep an eye on that because I have had, submissions in the past where people have confused word count with character count and either sent way too much or way not enough in terms of that. So get clear.
Rob:It's usually word count, but some places do character counts as well. Are they expecting a photo of you? So if you don't have a bio photo shot, then I suggest you go and get that done. It doesn't have to be professional, and we'll come on to a little bit more about that in a minute. But essentially, all of the required assets that you're gonna need to submit, make sure you've got a checklist so you can go through and get those done by the deadline of the call for papers.
Rob:There is literally no harm at all in submitting at any point during that call for papers. A good conference will make sure every single conference submission gets the same quality of review. So it doesn't matter whether you submit day one of the call for papers or the last day before the submission. Just don't be late with it. Step number two out of this 10 step master class is to give yourself some quiet time.
Rob:Rushing the submission and it being fuzzy and hazy is gonna be fuzzy and hazy in the reviewer's mind, and that's gonna be the case if you're gonna rush it. So give yourself plenty of time and literally not just one big block. You're gonna wanna come back to this submission before you submit it. You're gonna wanna review it, fine tune it, tweak it, etcetera. So give yourself a few blocks of time.
Rob:For myself, because I've been doing this for so long, I give myself maybe a couple of hours now. But back in the early days when I first started out, there were sort of two or three, three hour slots to make sure you get this right. Pulling together the bio, the photos, all that kind of stuff. We'll come on to some hints and tips about that in a minute. But essentially, give yourself some space and some time to do the submission.
Rob:Step number three is probably the most important of all 10, really, assuming that you meet the deadline. And this is something called purpose, audience, and context. Now I run a online communications workshop and a communications workshop in person, and this is one of the foundational fundamental elements of effective communication. It's called purpose, audience, and context. Now what you need to do for your talk is to take your idea and flesh it out a little bit.
Rob:You don't need to do all the middle stuff. We'll come to that in a minute. But what you do need to be super clear on is the purpose of the talk, the audience for the talk, and the context in which it will take place. We're also gonna apply this purpose, audience, and context to the actual submission itself, but I'll come on to that in a second. But, essentially, your talk has a purpose.
Rob:What is your purpose for the talk? Is it to inspire? Is it educate, inform, motivate, persuade? You know, what is the purpose of your talk? Getting that crystal clear in your own mind is gonna lead to a much better submission because you'll know why you're doing the talk.
Rob:Now, of course, the purpose might be to push your own comfort boundaries, to get out your comfort zone, to do something that you've never done before. But that's a great purpose, but that's for you. You need to be thinking about this purpose from the audience's perspective, and that's the second piece, the audience. Who are they? Are you speaking at the right conference?
Rob:We've covered that. But, essentially, what do you want the audience to to feel, to know, to come away with from the end of the talk? And that's really important that you double down on this. In some respects, you might wanna create a persona or an avatar of one individual person that you could imagine in the audience of your talk, and then write the talk for them when you get to that piece. But for now, think about what it is, your purpose of the talk, who is it for, and why will they care about listening to you.
Rob:Again, the more crystal clear you can get about the audience of your talk, the better chance you have of putting a really solid strong submission in because you're crystal clear. You know what your purpose is, and you know who that is for. Now, of course, we've talked a little bit about context because right now at this point, the context of your talk is about whether it's gonna be a keynote where you've got a thousand people that you're trying to energize and motivate or get them to feel and think something. Is it a track session where you might be doing the same sort of energizing, but it's on a much smaller scale? Is it gonna be a tutorial?
Rob:Is it gonna be a workshop? You know, this is the context in which you find yourself presenting. So a submission for a keynote, I would expect to be a lot more compelling, interesting, and exciting than maybe some of the track sessions, which may be a little bit more practical. So you've gotta think about what it is that you're trying to do. What's your purpose?
Rob:Who's your audience? And what context will you deliver that presentation in? So now in a kind of meta kind of way, we're gonna apply that same purpose, audience, and context to the actual submission itself. You're crystal clear now hopefully on who your talk is for and what the purpose of it is. Now you need to think about, well, this isn't your talk you're submitting.
Rob:You're submitting a call for papers. You're responding to that with a submission. Now the purpose of that submission is get the reviewers. These may or may not be the audience for your final presentation. It could be a very much different audience indeed.
Rob:You're trying to get them to accept your talk. So your purpose with the submission is to get them to go, yes. That's the purpose. It's an advert for your talk. It's an advert for you.
Rob:It's a marketing piece for you. It's not the talk itself. Now when we think about the audience of these reviewers, try and put yourself into their shoes. They may or may not be industry knowledgeable. So they may know the subject that you're submitting about, but they might not.
Rob:And so we can't always assume that they're gonna really understand necessarily the topic that we're talking about. In which case, you need to think about the language you're gonna use. You need to think about explaining complicated concepts or jargon or anything else in the submission itself. It's also worth considering that these people are unlikely to get paid. So most of the sort of reviewers are usually volunteers.
Rob:They're given up their own time to review papers to help put on a really good conference. You need to bear in mind that some of these people may be reviewing fifty, hundred, 200, 300 submissions in their own time. So you've really gotta have a little bit of empathy, I guess, for them and say, right. How can I make my submission short, sharp, succinct, compelling, interesting so that I don't have to get them to work any harder than they already are reviewing all these hundreds of papers, by the way, most of which aren't brilliant? They're bored.
Rob:They've looked through some awful submissions, and they just want something to stand out, and that's what you've gotta try and create, something that is compelling, interesting, exciting, and it grabs them, and they just go immediately, that is a brilliant talk. I wanna hear that. And then also consider the context. We've kinda covered that in a sense that they, you know, they're reviewing hundreds of these things, the audience. But the context also includes the fact that your name and details may be stripped from the submission when the reviewers review it.
Rob:So if you're well known in the industry, you might not be able to rely on your name alone to get a speaking gig, and that's, I would say, a good thing. So you have to think about the structure and the details and answering all of those questions correctly so that you give them no reason at all from the submission itself to reject your talk from some of the basics like the deadline, the character counts, all that kind of stuff that we've covered. Now before you submit, it's worth mapping out at a high level your entire presentation if you can, going from idea to, I guess, the closing of that presentation. Now what this enables you to do is to gain clarity and see the thread and the journey through the entire talk. If all you've got is an idea, at this point, you don't quite know how that story is gonna evolve.
Rob:You don't know the thread and the sort of flow of that presentation. So I always suggest that you try mapping the entire presentation out from beginning to end. Now I have two techniques I use depending on the particular idea. I'll give you these two, and, obviously, there's many, many other ways to do this. Number one is to use a mind map.
Rob:So idea in the center lines out to various different circles, and each of these sorta spider circles on the outside could actually be a slide in the presentation if you're gonna use slides. It could be a section. It could be a topic. Now the power of a mind map has been able to see all of these things together. Now if you use a digital tool, you have the ability to sort of drag and drop stuff around.
Rob:But, of course, on paper, you can scribble and draw lines and move things. What it allows you to do is to work out the flow of the presentation itself, your story, your argument, your content. And by doing that, you can start to see what the audience are gonna get from this presentation and how you're gonna structure and what it is that you wanna talk about. Now the chances are you're gonna have too much in there. That usually happens.
Rob:So you gotta start trimming a little bit. Don't get too carried away here with trimming the stuff. This isn't your talk. It's just the outline, and you're only doing the submission. But it helps to have that thread, that flow, that narrative, the journey that goes through your presentation.
Rob:It will help you be a little bit clearer in your submission. Now the second way that I do this is to use index cards. Grab a whole pack of index cards and I generally blue tack these to the wall and it's the same thing as the spider diagram as the mind map. In a sense, each index card is a section, a slide, a topic, whatever. And I usually start at the top of a wall and work my way down the wall putting these cards in the order of the topics or slides or whatever that I wanna present.
Rob:So again, you get to see the narrative, the flow, the journey. Now the beauty of the index cards is it's very visible. It's very physical. You can hold them. You can touch them.
Rob:You can move them around to give you what you think is a good talk. Now, of course, there's probably gonna be too many things there again. Maybe don't spend too long editing it. All we're looking for here is the flow. How do we go from a to zed of our talk?
Rob:What that journey looks like? And that will help you be much clearer in your submission. Now step number five of this 10 step master class, don't worry, we're coming to the end, is to write out a powerful problem statement. I believe almost every talk should be about a problem and a resolution. It's a classic storytelling arc.
Rob:We pose a problem, we explain why it's a problem, and then we give a solution or an outcome or a resolution to that problem. Almost every famous story has the same thing. There's a problem. Somebody takes it on. They overcome the problem.
Rob:They generally grow because of it, and that's a wonderful story arc. And it will help you get really crystal clear again. All we're trying to do here is all of these techniques are really trying to get you to be crystal clear in your submission about what the talk is about, what people will learn from it, and, really getting those reviewers to say, yes. Put this talk on the conference schedule. By writing out a powerful problem statement, you essentially put yourselves into the shoes of the audience.
Rob:Are the audience members, are people at the conference going to have the same problem that I've expressed here? And if so, they're gonna wanna know how to resolve it, or they're gonna wanna learn how we've resolved it. And so in some respects, almost every talk that people go and see is about a problem and a resolution. I don't know how to do this. Somebody's worked hard to do it.
Rob:I'm gonna go and find out what they've done. Or I've got this challenge at work, and somebody's got a very similar one. They've overcome it. I'm keen to learn about it. Equally, good talks are actually sometimes I've got a problem.
Rob:I tried to solve it. I couldn't solve it, but I learned this. K? So people gravitate to things and problems that are in their lives as well. So by writing out that powerful problem statement and the resolution again, you're giving yourself more information that you can use to be crystal clear in your submission.
Rob:So we got our problem statement. We've got our outline of the talk. Now what I wouldn't do here, and and it's not really an advice, but it is number six, is don't worry about writing the presentation. Don't you don't need to have the presentation written for the course papers. Now if you already have a presentation, then the course papers is probably gonna be a little bit easier because you may have done talk before and you can learn and you, you know, you just resubmit the same one again if that kinda makes sense.
Rob:But if you haven't written the presentation yet, you do not need to write the presentation in order to do the call for papers. The chances are if you write your presentation that far in advance, you'll wanna change it, and also you just don't need it. The call for papers generally, 99.9% of the time, does not ask for the presentation to be delivered with it. There's also the chance that you don't get accepted, and maybe that talk doesn't get accepted anywhere, and there's a chance to go back and think about how to do a better call for papers or maybe come up with a different idea. So there's no point investing the time in building the actual presentation if you haven't got a commitment to deliver that yet.
Rob:Step number seven, many, many call for papers will ask for up to about three to five key takeaways. Now these are the kind of things that the audience are gonna leave the talk with. There might be more knowledge about a particular tool. It might be an approach they can use to be more effective communicator at work. There's all sorts of things you can think about here.
Rob:Now what the organizers are trying to do here is to get you to think about the stuff that we've already covered. What's the purpose audience? What's the problem statement? You know, all of that kind of stuff is to get you to think about the audience. And is it gonna be worth them coming to see your talk?
Rob:So here, have a think about that flow that you've got. Have a think about the problem statement. I mean, the resolution to the problem statement is is really the the key to this is that's where to spend the most time thinking about this. What are they gonna learn? What are they gonna take away?
Rob:What benefit is that talk gonna have to the audience? Now what I try to do here is to provide tangible and intangible takeaways. So a tangible takeaway might be they're gonna get given a free guide at the end or, you know, there's gonna be some sort of resource that they can use online afterwards or handed out in the conference that they can use. That's a very tangible takeaway. I generally try to have one of those.
Rob:So with my website, I might have a free ebook that people can then go and download after the talk or might be a web page that explains a little bit more, maybe even a podcast, whatever. There's something tangible that people can have after the talk. Now that's only one of the three. Usually, the other two are those intangible ones. They're gonna know more about this subject.
Rob:They're gonna feel inspired to go back to work and make a change. You know, you don't have to get to the fine detail of this, but you do need to make it compelling, something that makes the audience go, wow. That was a great talk. And, actually, I feel empowered or more knowledgeable or more inspired to go and do something. Spend a fair bit of time thinking about these because these are often in the review process.
Rob:There's a scoring mechanism. Often, these key takeaways are where a lot of the scoring can really, make or break your presentation submission. Now master class item number eight is all about simplify, simplify, simplify. Now what I mean here is now's the time to write that conference submission. Now what I will say, and we'll come to this a little bit later, but don't write it directly into the web page, which is usually a web page, a form to fill in or something.
Rob:Instead, this in, I don't know, Word, Google Docs, whatever, your favorite writing tool. Write it long hand on a sheet of paper, that's an awesome way of doing it, but you've still gotta obviously get it digital at some point. Now here what we wanna do is we wanna write that submission. We wanna include the bio, the takeaways, the bulk of the submission, you know, what's your talk about, that problem statement, always thinking about that purpose, audience, and context. And, of course, always sticking to the word count for each of those relevant sections.
Rob:So here we wanna write it, and bear in mind that writing and editing are two different activities. So don't get obsessed with editing. The best thing to do usually is just to write it. You know, what do you wanna say? What's your talk gonna be about?
Rob:Write that down. Always thinking at this point, again, remember about the audience of the talk, but also the audience of the submission itself. Now once you've written it, the chances are it's gonna be too many words. It's gonna be full of filler words. You're gonna have used complicated sentences, etcetera.
Rob:So the goal here then is to edit it. Now one of the best ways to edit something like this is to print it out and read it. Does it sound like you? Are you writing like you speak, which is what you probably should do? Now, of course, you might be submitting to an academic conference, in which case maybe you need a little bit more formal academic language, but the chances are you want it to sound like you do.
Rob:And one of the best ways to make that happen, and actually, this is in the Zero to Keynote book about the guidance on actually rehearsing the talk, is to read it out aloud. So when we read out aloud what we've written, we often find words that we would never use in speech or sentence structures that are just too complicated or really difficult to read. And that's just the nature of most people is that we don't write like we speak. We write for the corporate world or what other people expect. But here, I think you need to be writing like you speak.
Rob:So print it out, read it around, go over it with a pen, you know, edit the bits, then get back into the Word document or wherever you've got the digital copy, and then edit it. And then keep repeating that process, maybe not necessarily printing it out every single time, but you wanna read it, and then you wanna edit it. You can get stuck in this procrastination, this perfection routine where until it's absolutely perfect, you're not gonna submit it. So there's a balance here. Write it, read it out, edit it, and then refine that process until you're happy with the submission.
Rob:So number nine is is not to do the writing and the editing and then submission all in one go. You wanna give yourself some space and some time in between that. So maybe you write it, you print it, you read it out, you edit it, and then you give yourself some space, maybe twenty four hours, to allow your subconscious brain to work its magic and to ponder it through whilst you're busy off, you know, cooking tea, going for a run, whatever it is that you do to chill out. And then you'll get those nuggets of wisdom that pop up usually when you're in the shower, when you don't have a notebook, but there you go. And these are the kind of things where you just wanna give it a bit of space so you can come back to it fresh, look at it again and go, yeah.
Rob:I need to change that. That doesn't sound like me, or I've used a word here that I would never use in, when I'm speaking. And then do that writing and editing process again, avoiding the trap of falling into that perfectionism where it has to be perfect. Now is the time to actually submit. Now what I always say here is submit and keep a copy.
Rob:Always keep a copy. I once submitted, to a conference. I didn't keep a copy of the submission. The submission form didn't store them like they might do nowadays. And the organizers came back and said, well done.
Rob:Your talk has been accepted. And I had to email them back and say, I'm really sorry, but what was the talk? Because I'd submitted to three or four different conferences. So always keep a copy of it. If you've got that Word document that you've been using or that Google Drive doc or whatever, you've got a copy there.
Rob:So keep a copy of the exact submission. So if you modify it when you're in the submission form, modify it back in your original master copy. What I will also say is that these web pages that you're filling in the submission may time out, so don't fill it directly into the form itself and then start, you know, going off and doing other stuff and coming back because you might find that you lose your submission and therefore, you know, you've gotta start again. So make sure it's all ready to go and then it's a copy and paste job into the submission form, then you you could you're set to go. Now in the Xero to Keynote book, actually explained the sort of folder structure that I do use for submissions that also store the presentation, the collateral, the material, all that stuff as well.
Rob:I go into detail in the book. I'm not gonna cover that here on this podcast. The chances are you're gonna be asked for a biography, a little mini bio of you. So spend a bit of time thinking about that, and then save that and keep it because you can reuse that. I've reused the same bio for the last seven or eight years.
Rob:It probably do a refresh to be fair, but, you know, it still kinda works, so I'm kinda happy with that. Now, of course, you're gonna need a photo as well, so make sure this is a decent headshot. Again, read the Corf papers. Some conferences only allow color photos, for example. Some will articulate and specify the exact nature of the photo.
Rob:It needs to be shoulders up and no body in there essentially with, a black background. So, again, read that call for papers. With modern cameras and and and camera phones and what have you, you don't need to worry about getting a professional headshot done. But if you are gonna try and make a career of this and this is something that you're really into, then it might be worth paying a professional photographer to do some headshots. Just be sure with the photo that there's you know, it's not a beach photo.
Rob:You don't have a flashy car in the background. Make sure it's just you. I see loads of people submitting bio photos with two or three people in them, and you're like, well, which one are you? So it's really important because the chances are they're gonna use the bio. They're gonna use the takeaways, the blurb that you submit, and the photo on their website.
Rob:So make sure it's a good representation of yourself. And then you're ready to submit. That's it. You submit, and then you move into speaker's remorse when it gets accepted. And I cover that in the book.
Rob:It's a very real thing. You know? You get that email saying, yay. You've been accepted. Wow.
Rob:Okay. Now I've actually gotta write this presentation. Now I've gotta deliver it. And I call it speaker's remorse because a load of people often go, oh, no. I wish I hadn't done that.
Rob:Why me? Why did they have to choose this? You know? No one's gonna care what I've gotta say. It's gonna be nerve inducing, etcetera, etcetera.
Rob:Another way to look at that is, well, you got plenty of time to do this still. You know, you submitted for a reason. What is that reason? Let's go back to it. It'll be fun.
Rob:It is fun. Maybe not in the five or ten minutes before you take the stage, but certainly afterwards, for most speakers, it's a very joyful experience. And there you go. In the book, obviously, I talk a lot more detail about all the aspects of doing a a keynote, doing a talk as well. But the key thing is whatever you've put in that submission needs to be in your presentation when you deliver it.
Rob:So those key takeaways, they need to be in the presentation. What you can't do is set expectations in the audience's mind and then not deliver on that in the talk. I mean, you can do, but it's not good practice. Let's put it that way. So with that, that's the 10 step master class and a few of the pieces in between.
Rob:And I just wanna draw your attention to the three books that have completed now, finally, my trilogy of advice for, I guess, effective communication. We have the Zero to Keynote book, which is all about conferences and public speaking. I've now just released the workshop mastery, which is about running really effective workshops and tutorials. And, of course, I have the long standing communication workshop, which is available online. And these three things together should give you everything that you need to be an effective communicator at work, at conferences, and teaching other people.
Rob:So with that, I'm gonna go and enjoy this, wonderful sunshine. And don't forget, you can all the resources as well as this post and the podcast at creativesoulprojects.com. So please do check it out, creativesoulprojects.com, and I look forward to speaking to you in the next podcast. You take care of yourselves. Bye bye.
