Submitting a talk or workshop for Interaction Week 2020

Note: This post collects input from many of the organizers of the Interaction Week 2020 conference. For that reason, I’m going to use the pronoun we — instead of I. Not a case of Royal We ;)

Submitting an idea for a talk or a workshop might feel like a daunting exercise, even if you have written a few already. We’ve been there a few times; we have also watched as friends and colleagues break a sweat in the days approaching a deadline, hammering out a proposal.

We feel you — we honestly do. With a little less than 3 weeks to the Call for Proposals deadline (originally on 8 September 2019, now extended to 15 September 2019), we thought we’d try and lend a helping hand. Here are some tips to reduce your stress levels, and increase the quality of your proposal.

Write your proposal in advance

The proposal submission form has multiple fields. For many of these, you’ll be asked to write a paragraph or two. We advise drafting your proposal in a file or document beforehand and then copy-pasting it in each of the relevant fields of the online form. Do not rely solely on the submission form to write your application will make it easier to review and tweak the content of your proposal. For your convenience, we’ve listed out the fields you will be asked to complete:

For talks:

• You: first name, last name, email address, current professional situation, online presence, and a short bio.
• Your experience as a speaker — link a video demonstrating your speaker skills. If you don’t have an available online presentation, prepare a 1 min video where you introduce yourself and pitch your idea, then upload it (Youtube, Vimeo, etc) and share the link.
• Your submission: give your talk a title, a Twitter-friendly teaser, a longer description, name its target audience, some of its key takeaways, describe your experience on the topic and how it’s relevant. You can also attach an image or illustration that might help us understand the talk.
• How will you engage with your audience? Can you give any detail on how your talk might have unique features that might get the audience to react in a manner slightly out of the ordinary? We promise we won’t give it away.
• Do you have any special requirements that would improve the quality of your talk? For example, specific accessibility needs, live translation, speaker coaching, slide deck review, …

For workshops:

• You: same as above. First name, last name, email address, current professional situation, online presence, a short bio… you know the drill.
• Your experience as a speaker or workshop facilitator. As above, link a video showing how you’re like in front of a public — in this case especially, perhaps in the act of conducting a workshop itself. If you don’t have this option, then do a 1 min video equivalent where you introduce yourself and tell us more about what you would go through in your workshop. Feel free to be creative and provoke us a little — we won’t mind as long as it’s a clear idea!
• Your submission: name your workshop, give it a Twitter-friendly teaser, write a detailed version of its description, outline the activities you’ll be doing (perhaps some details on how hands-on it’s going to be), your target audience, your experience on the topic and its relevance. As always, you are also welcome to attach an image or illustration that might help us understand the talk.
• What prior knowledge is needed by participants before attending this workshop? Who will extract the most benefits out of it? Are they going to be your typical designers, or are they going to include some non-designers?

Make sure your point of view is relevant and differentiating

We have defined a theme for this year — A New Dawn — to give you a bit of guidance.

We have also defined three tracks that will shape the days of the conference. Have a look at these and make sure you can frame what you want to talk about as part of one of these tracks. Work on creating a point of view that takes inspiration from these.

For your reference, here’s an extract from our website explaining the theme and its tracks:

“Our theme this year, A New Dawn, will explore the meaning and evolution of our practice and approaches, now that we have begun to design almost anything for anywhere. We play with new technologies, as we face unprecedented organizational, societal, and industrial challenges. What brought us here will not be enough to help us design the future. We need fresh perspectives. We invite submissions from both design and other disciplines, all of which are contributing to the evolution of the interaction design practice.

We think there are three facets to this new dawn. Your talk proposal should fit one of these tracks, designed to guide our discussion around impact areas and timeframes:

• Ch-Ch-Changes — explore the practices (and the theories) that help us be more effective, be change agents, have a bigger impact with our work — commercial or otherwise.
• Traversing the Unknown — help us define uncharted territories, venturing into experimental and radically new knowledge, methods and practices.
• Wicked Solutions — present engaging approaches to some of the big societal and individual problems of our times — from climate change to work/life balance, from filter bubbles to inequality.”

The other element to consider is how differentiating your point of view is. Our work — and the interest of our community — is in constant evolution. Make sure what you have to say will bring something novel, or at least different. We know, this can be difficult to predict: there’s no sure way to foresee whether another dozen applicants will be submitting something similar to you. BUT! If your point of view comes from recent challenges you experienced — and had the chance to reflect on — you might have an advantage.

Diversity of points of views matters

Interaction Week is one of those global conferences where we actively seek out diverse points of view. Do you have something to say about the culture or the context of your topic? Do tell us about it, and make it clear in your submission.

Remember the takeaways

Your talk — or your workshop — is going to be an experience for your audience. Focus on what they will be walking away with. Tell us what would remain of your talk in the hearts and minds of those who come to your session. Keep in mind that most of the participants are going to be designers with at least some experience in practicing design under their belt, so do consider takeaways for people with varying levels of expertise. Only focusing on the basics of design might not bring value to a good proportion of the participants.

Be convincing on why you are in a good position to talk about the topic

If you can describe accurately what makes YOU a good narrator of your point of view, your chances increase even further. Maybe you worked on a complex and relevant project last year? Or you spent the last year exploring the nuances of a specific subject? Tell us about that!

Don’t write the talk (or the workshop). Write ABOUT it

We are not asking you to submit the actual talk, so there’s no need for you to get to your final conclusions and the finer details of your thought process. At the same time, use the proposal to sell us the idea of your talk or workshop: be detailed and concrete; be clear, be interesting. For better or worse, this is your only chance to explain what you would like to talk about. We are not going to reach out and ask for any additional material. No calls, emails, or follow-up conversations. Make it count. And: since proposals will be reviewed blindly, you might want to make sure that personal information stays in the part of the form dedicated to it.

Take the leap. Especially if you are new to this.

The only way to gain experience as a speaker is to BE a speaker.
If you are uncertain about jumping onstage, we offer coaching and support for first-time presenters that have something to say.

What happens after you submit?

We keep your submission(s) for talks or workshop cozy and untouched until 8 September, the day when submissions close. In case you want to make changes before the submission deadline, you can contact us.

What happens afterwards goes approximately like this:

• After the deadline, the committee reviews all the proposals blindly;
• The blind review creates a shortlist of potential talks and workshops;
• The shortlist is then curated, looking at who has been on stage: if you’ve presented at Interaction Week and Interaction Latin America in the last year, we will be looking for new voices, so don’t be disappointed if you don’t get accepted two years in a row;

Based on previous years’ experience, roughly 15% of submissions are accepted at any one cycle. That means there’s a lot of great thinking — and potentially awesome talks — that unfortunately won’t find space on stage. However, we do want to be able to share your proposal with our Local Groups if we think it’s great. In that case, we will reach out to ask you if you’d be willing to give your talk on a different IxDA stage.

There are other voices and examples you might also want to read. Among the others, some of our favourites are:

• Russ Unger — Conference Proposals that Don’t Suck: https://alistapart.com/article/conference-proposals-that-dont-suck/
• UX Australia — How to Write a Kick-ass Conference Proposal: http://www.uxaustralia.com.au/news/how-to-write-a-kick-ass-conference-proposal
• Women Talk Design — Breaking down a CFP: https://medium.com/women-talk-design/breaking-down-a-cfp-443d0fdf75da

Ready to submit your proposal to Interaction Week 2020?

Submissions are open through 15 September 2019 at 11:59pm PST (we have just extended the deadline — which was originally on 8 September 2019).
http://interaction20.ixda.org/callforproposals.html