How To Write A Good Proposal For DroidKaigi 2019

Published in

DroidKaigi

4 min readSep 21, 2018

(The original text for this article can be found here)

Hi, this is Yamazaki of the Session Team.

We have opened DroidKaigi 2019’s Call for Speakers (CfS) since September 21! The due date for submissions is 2018/10/21 23:59 JST (+09:00). We welcome your submissions.

In this article, we would like to provide some guidance on how to write a good proposal for those who are looking to submit proposals to the DroidKaigi CfS for the first time.

TL;DR

It is a good idea to include Android specific, Expertise and Innovative contents.
Explain the background of the subject and the motivation clearly
Intended Audience should be written clearly

Call for Speakers

Please read https://droidkaigi.jp/2019/en/requirements/ for the details.

Call for Speakers - DroidKaigi 2019

DroidKaigi2019 is currently accepting speaker applications.

droidkaigi.jp

What content is preferable?

Android specific
Involves an area of expertise (i.e. not about a subject widely known)
Innovative (i.e. about a topic that demonstrates something thought to be impossible or very hard to achieve)

NOTE: This doesn’t mean we will reject applications without these points. Your proposal does not need to satisfy all the points.

How to write a good proposal?

There are some points to consider in order to write a good proposal.

You should consider the readers of your proposal. They are not only reviewers at DroidKaigi but also the audience.

Although you can modify your proposal up until the due date, in principle, we do not allow you to change the session abstract, etc. after the CfS closes.

Therefore, it would be great if you mention points for reviewers and attendees clearly.

A good proposal for both reviewers and audiences often has the following items organized and written:

Expected target audiences
The subject of the proposal and the motivation
What the session will explain concretely
What audiences can learn and understand

Samples

For example, take the following proposal. Let’s look through how it works in the points above.

Session title:
Getting started Widget Development from Android Oreo
Description:
A Widget is like another small application that lives outside of your application. It allows users to access some of the application features and content via the Home launcher, and increase user engagement.

Up until Android Oreo, users could only add widgets via the Home launcher settings, which was often difficult for many users. However, widgets have been enhanced in Android Oreo and a new API to add widgets from with your application was introduced.
In this talk, I will explain the state-of-the-art widget implementation based on this new API. I’ll talk about the specific screen design of widgets, scheduled data sync, important internal API behavior which the official documents don’t mention, notes on development, etc.
Intended Audience:
People who
・Want know what we can do with widgets
・Want to develop widgets from now on
・Have developed widgets beforehand
・Are looking for new landing flows from outside of your application
・Want to dive into the internal implementation of Android Framework
Session format:
30 minutes
Language:
English
Category:
Android Framework and Jetpack(Support Library)
A Widget is like another small application that lives outside of your application. It allows users to access some of the application features and content via the Home launcher, and increase user engagement.

The subject is about Widgets. Widget is a Android-specific feature so this session has the Android specific theme.

Up until Android Oreo, users could only add widgets via the Home launcher settings, which was often difficult for many users. However, widgets have been enhanced in Android Oreo and a new API to add widgets from with your application was introduced.

These sentences explain the motivation, i.e. the reason why the author has decided to talk about Widgets. Also, this proposal picked up new API since Android Oreo. It’s kinda innovation.

NOTE: this proposal was submitted last year, so the information about Android Oreo’s APIs was fresh.

In this talk, I will explain the state-of-the-art widget implementation based on this new API. I’ll talk about the specific screen design of widgets, scheduled data sync, important internal API behavior which the official documents don’t mention, notes on development, etc.

The author organized what he/she will talk about concretely. Listing up the talk contents would help audiences to know what they can learn and understand from this talk.
In addition, internal API’s behavior which the official documents don’t mention implies that this speaker holds expertise in this field.

Intended Audience:
People who
・Want know what we can do with widgets
・Want to develop widgets from now on
・Have developed widgets beforehand
・Are looking for new landing flows from outside of your application
・Want to dive into the internal implementation of Android Framework

Finally, the target audiences are noted explicitly. Both reviewers and audiences can imagine who the author is expecting as audiences easier than just writing “beginners”.
Though this proposal is just an example, good proposals we at DroidKaigi have received tend to contain these points and well organized in fact.