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![Fitting the CFP
✤ Does my existing idea fit the CFP? Let’s see:
✤ Automating the PHP release process - yes!
✤ How we scaled [company] to one billion users with PHP - yes!
✤ Writing games with PHP - probably not, given the enterprise focus
✤ Why Rails is still better than Symfony - maybe, hard to say
✤ Convincing your boss to use PHP - probably not](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/talkproposalgetaccepted-130322102641-phpapp02/85/Talk-proposal-get_accepted-23-320.jpg)
Talk proposal get_accepted
- 1.
- 2. Overview ✤ Coming up with a talk topic ✤ Different types of talks ✤ Submission process ✤ Writing successful proposals ✤ What talk selectors look for ✤ Transforming your proposal into a successful talk!
- 3. What should Italk about? Brainstorm ideas: ✤ What technologies are you familiar with? ✤ What interesting problems have you solved? ✤ What is something you know about that others may not? ✤ What are you passionate about? ✤ The ideal topic is something you could talk about to a friend for 20 minutes without slides.
- 4. Where should Isubmit my talk? ✤ It’s not quite as simple as topic -> submit ✤ Sometimes it’s see a CFP -> come up with a topic-> submit ✤ Sometimes it’s get asked to speak: fill in at a UG, talk about a project you’ve been working on, etc ✤ Choose a venue that you feel comfortable with. If you’re nervous, start small and work your way up. You can start higher up if confident.
- 5. Talk venues ✤ Workplace brown-bag ✤ User group: these *always* need speakers ✤ Local conference: often on a single topic, may be attended by locals only ✤ National/international conference: attracts people from all over ✤ “Big” conference: some are harder to get in to than others (OSCON, PyCon are examples) ✤ Keynotes, TED, etc: invitation only
- 6. Submission and reviewprocess Typical conference process: ✤ CFP posted ✤ Submissions must be in by a deadline ✤ Somebody reviews submissions ✤ Clear acceptances and rejections sent ✤ Second round acceptances and rejections sent
- 7. Types of talks Whatto talk about and where
- 8. Technology teaching ✤ Examples: ✤ Aura for PHP ✤ Node.js in 45 minutes ✤ Focused is better than broad ✤ Who should give this talk and where? ✤ Someone who knows the topic well, at a tech-appropriate venue
- 9. Broader technology skills ✤ Examples: ✤ Test driven development ✤ Continuous deployment ✤ Writing secure code ✤ Typically cover a range of techniques, and can be various lengths ✤ Who should give this type of talk and where? ✤ Someone who knows the topic well, in virtually any conference
- 10. Vendor talks ✤ Examples: ✤ Acme Platform for App development ✤ Be careful where you submit this type of talk ✤ Many FOSS conferences do not look favorably on these submissions ✤ Some conferences have a vendor track or speaking slots for sponsors ✤ Some conferences are all vendor, all the time
- 11. Case studies andWar Stories ✤ Examples ✤ Migrating your big data from A to B ✤ How our data center survived an earthquake ✤ Rewriting famous.com in Ruby ✤ Needs to have broad appeal: Why is it interesting? Well known? Popular site or library? Innovative architecture or solution? Big #s? ✤ This is the perfect talk when you’ve just done something and want to talk about it
- 12. Your FOSS project ✤ Examples ✤ Flask for beginners ✤ How to get started contributing to Drupal ✤ Writing documentation for the Mozilla Developer Network ✤ Who should give this and where: ✤ People who are passionate and knowledgable about a project which has either lots of users or lots of interest, at a tech- appropriate conference
- 13. State of theX ✤ Examples: ✤ State of the Onion ✤ State of PHP in 2013 ✤ All those “New Features in PHP 5.4” type talks ✤ Who should give this type of talk and where? ✤ Ideally, project leads or core developers. (For smaller conferences or user groups, could be someone else.)
- 14. Random stuff fromleft field ✤ Examples: ✤ Teaching git using toys ✤ How to build a laser ✤ A history of software failure ✤ These talks, if good, will leave people talking for weeks ✤ You have to be able to pull this off (and be able to convince reviewers you will) - probably not a great entree into conference speaking
- 15. Aside: Tutorials andWorkshops ✤ Talk for somewhere from 2-8 hours. ✤ Usually hands-on with exercises, coding, etc ✤ Take a lot of work to prepare! ✤ Often more incentive for the speaker in terms of travel costs, honorariums, etc ✤ Fun! But maybe not a good thing to do first time around.
- 16. Aside: Panels ✤ Can seem an easy way to get started, because you don’t need slides ✤ BUT - be prepared, make notes, plan what you’re going to say ✤ Make sure you have a moderator who knows what they are doing ✤ Be clear of your role and the agenda and ideally the questions being asked ✤ Avoid tokenism: “Can you be the PHP dev among Java devs?” etc
- 17. Aside: Lightning Talksand Ignite ✤ Pro: you only have to talk for five minutes! ✤ Cons: depending on the venue, these can be very competitive. Also, it’s hard to say something interesting and valuable in five minutes. These can be harder than you might expect.
- 18. Calls for Papers Whatthey want, and how to deliver it
- 19. Call for Papers ✤ Types of talks ✤ Length of talks ✤ Theme of conference ✤ Desired topics ✤ Submission process
- 20. Interpreting the CFP ✤ The CFP will tell you about the target audience, conference theme, and desired topics ✤ Best tip: look at previous year’s schedules and abstracts to see what types of talks are accepted. Study the titles, descriptions and abstracts. ✤ Some conferences will even show how attendees rated the talks. You might see, for example, that all framework related talks were rated 1/5. This will decrease the chance of such talks being accepted in future.
- 21. Example- php|tek ✤ PHP Community specific conference ✤ Taken from http://tek.phparch.com/call-for-papers/ ✤ Currently closed (but you can start planning for next year!)
- 22. What the organizerswant “...we’re looking for talks that address the grown-up needs of a grown-up enterprise language, such as: ✤ TDD, Continuous Integration, DevOps or other “process”-oriented subjects ✤ New modern language constructs in PHP such as closures, traits, late static binding, etc. ✤ APIs and integration with other technologies ✤ Performance and scaling ✤ Mobile development …and the usual plethora of PHP adjacent technologies, such as HTML5, JavaScript, Capistrano, etc., that are required to meet the needs of serious modern sites.”
- 23. Fitting the CFP ✤ Does my existing idea fit the CFP? Let’s see: ✤ Automating the PHP release process - yes! ✤ How we scaled [company] to one billion users with PHP - yes! ✤ Writing games with PHP - probably not, given the enterprise focus ✤ Why Rails is still better than Symfony - maybe, hard to say ✤ Convincing your boss to use PHP - probably not
- 24. Example - MySQLConnect ✤ (Currently OPEN) ✤ Taken from http://www.oracle.com/mysqlconnect/call-for-papers/information/ind
- 25. Key point -vendor conference ✤ “Oracle OpenWorld is organized by Products and Services tracks, and by Solutions tracks. When submitting a proposal, at least one product or service must be chosen from the pulldown list.” ✤ This is a (set of) conference(s) run by a vendor. Topics are related to their products and services.
- 26. Aside: Tracks atconferences ✤ Small conferences are single or double track; larger ones have more ✤ Sometimes you will be asked to nominate which track your talk falls into, and sometimes the organizers will do this for you, or generate the track list organically ✤ In this conference CFP, the tracks are described in detail, for example: “Architecture and Application Development: How should you architect and develop your MySQL-based applications? What are the latest trends and best practices? Get answers to those questions and more by attending this track’s presentations.”
- 27. Key points -Specific guidelines Some are generally good advice: ✤ “Do explicitly mention what is being discussed during the session rather than making a blatant marketing or strategy pitch. For example, include mention of product demonstration, case study, customer/partner participation, quantitative facts, etc.” Some are specific to this conference: ✤ “Use present tense in session descriptions.”...”Do not use first person” ✤ “You must use the full Oracle product name at all times.”
- 28. Example: OSCON ✤ Currently closed for 2013 (but not announced schedule) ✤ Taken from http://www.oscon.com/oscon2013/public/cfp/251
- 29. Topics vs Tracks “Someof the topics we’re eager to see on the 2013 conference program are: ✤ How expanding one’s skills beyond a core competency makes for a better technologist ✤ Best practices for building a business around open source ✤ Innovations in user experience such as interfaces, design, and usability ✤ Cultural changes due to ubiquitous networks and computing devices ✤ Cloud computing, and openness in distributed services ✤ Geek lifestyle—hacking, productivity tips, maker culture ✤ Open web, open standards, and open data” ✤Leadership in the changing open source culture
- 30. Tracks (excerpt) ✤ Community ✤ Data ✤ Geek Lifestyle ✤ Java & JVM ✤ Javascript ✤ Ops ✤ Perl ✤ PHP
- 31. How do Iinterpret this? ✤ This conference takes technology specific talks, more general tech talks, and a bunch of other stuff ✤ (That actually makes it a lot harder to know what the committee is looking for) ✤ Again, looking at previous years’ programs is the best guideline as to what is wanted
- 32. Writing your proposal Answerthe call!
- 33. What you need ✤ A title ✤ An abstract (sometimes) ✤ A description ✤ Your bio ✤ Sample talk (sometimes)
- 34. Titles ✤ Seriously, a good title will help you. ✤ The straightforward kind: “Object Oriented PHP” ✤ The obscure kind: “What I did on my summer vacation” ✤ The funny kind: “How not to release software” ✤ Title + subtitle can be a way to win at both funny and straightforward. ✤ You need to tell people what the talk is about, and deliver that, otherwise they will be unhappy
- 35. Abstracts, Descriptions ✤ Sometimes there is only one field for this, sometimes two ✤ If there are two, DO NOT USE THE SAME CONTENT FOR BOTH ✤ Try to give a brief outline of the talk. What will be the main sections you will cover? I have seen extremely detailed outlines (down to the minute).
- 36. Abstract - Examples PracticingDeployment: ✤ “Web developers dream of continuous deployment: new code in production without a hitch. In this talk I'll cover the full story from building deployable code through working out a build and release process through continuous integration, automation, and continuous deployment. We'll also look at deployment velocity and why CD might not be for you.” How not to release software: ✤ “You've seen a million best practice talks. This is quite the opposite: I'll instruct you in the ways I've failed over twenty years of software development, and advise you how not to make the same mistakes.”
- 37. Description - Example “Deploymentcan be a real bugbear for many web developers. From building something easy to deploy and manage; to coming up with a repeatable, consistent process; to continuous deployment…deployment can keep you up at night for months on end. In this talk I’ll cover the following topics: ✤ How to build a deployable application, from technology choice to instrumentation ✤ Deployment velocity: Why your process matters more than how often you deploy ✤ Deployment tools and processes: How to automate your troubles away ✤ CI/Automated testing: Know you’re deploying something good, or at least how worried you should be about it ✤ Automated testing vs monitoring: How they converge ✤ When are you ready to deploy continuously? How do you make the jump?”
- 38. Description - Example “Asyour team grows and your projects become more complex, you’re going to need a certain amount of process. In this talk I’ll explain how to add enough engineering management to be effective without driving engineers crazy. I’ll discuss: ✤ Basics of chaordic systems (or: how open source projects succeed without project management) ✤ Building trust and preserving autonomy ✤ Effective communication practices for IRC, email, and bugs ✤ The meetings you have to have, and the ones you should avoid ✤ Architecture design and problem solving in a less-structured environment .... Attendees should leave the session with a plan to optimize their teams for developer happiness and shipping great code.”
- 39. Key point: enoughinformation ✤ You need to provide enough information for somebody evaluating the talk to make a decision as to whether it’s a good talk, and whether it’s a better talk than the other one on the same topic. ✤ Many one sentence abstracts for perfectly good talks have been rejected. ✤ You also need to show you have enough knowledge in the area to give a talk on the topic.
- 40. Your bio ✤ Take this seriously. ✤ Unless you are a language author or similar luminary, you should establish your credentials and why you are qualified to give this talk.
- 41. Example “Laura Thomson isan Engineering Manager at Mozilla, after spending much of the previous decade as a consultant and trainer on various Open Source technologies. Laura is the co-author of “PHP and MySQL Web Development” and “MySQL Tutorial”. She is a veteran speaker at Open Source conferences world wide.” (This can be a lot longer, too.)
- 42. Sample talks ✤ Some conferences now ask for a video of you talking. ✤ If this is not your first rodeo, easy! ✤ If it is, need to figure out a plan. Don’t Panic! ✤ Give a lightning talk to camera - get a friend to help you. Practice! ✤ Talk at user group/brownbag and get someone to record it. ✤ Quality of video is less important than you being a confident and clear presenter.
- 43. What selectors lookfor (and why you might get rejected even if you do everything right)
- 44. Who’s reviewing mytalk? ✤ Sometimes a single person, sometimes a committee, sometimes crowd sourced. You can often find out who the reviewers are, and play to their biases. ✤ In a multi-technology conference, they might not know why your topic is interesting: establish this in your description ✤ Sometimes topic matter experts, and sometimes not. Cater to both in your description.
- 45. It’s really simple ✤ Something the audience of our conference will like ✤ On an appropriate topic ✤ From a speaker with authority ✤ Where the submission has enough detail for us to judge that it’s good ✤ (That’s it. Really.)
- 46. Reasons to reject Whydon’t they like me?
- 47. You broke therules ✤ You didn’t give enough detail to establish a good talk ✤ You didn’t give enough bio to establish creds ✤ Completely off topic (“Why you should switch to Ruby” at a PHP conference) ✤ Vendor talk at an open source conference ✤ Offensive content, etc
- 48. Not bad, but... ✤ Doesn’t match the conference audience (too novice/advanced) ✤ Doesn’t match this year’s theme ✤ We had something like this last year and it was poorly attended ✤ “This type of talk is always unpopular” ✤ This has been done a bunch of times (especially intro talks) ✤ Nothing new here (typically well established technologies)
- 49. Multiple talks onthe same topic ✤ We get two (or five, or twelve) talks on the same or similar topics ✤ For some reason we didn’t pick yours ✤ (Did you write a great bio and abstract?)
- 50. Sometimes you getRasmused ✤ “The State of PHP in 2013” - Jane Smith ✤ “The State of PHP in 2013” - Rasmus Lerdorf ✤ This happens more often than you would expect!
- 51. Other reasons ✤ You behaved badly at a previous conference ✤ You were rude to the conference organizers or committee ✤ There is enmity between your project/company and the conference organizer’s project/company ✤ Life advice: try to avoid getting into these situations in the first place.
- 52. Yay! I gotaccepted Now what?
- 53. Turning your proposalinto a talk ✤ Remember that detailed outline...? ✤ Each dot point/section is a section in your talk. Outline, and then fill it out. It’s how I wrote this talk. Easy! ✤ Next talk today will cover this in infinite detail!
- 54. A final notefor the unwary ✤ Presentation-driven development should be avoided at all costs
- 55. Questions? If you thinkof one later: ✤ laura@laurathomson.com ✤ @lxt