Increasing diversity in Conference Talk Proposals

In an effort to attract talk proposals from a more diverse group of people, ScotlandJS and ScotlandCSS decided to host Diversity CFP workshops around the UK and Germany leading up to their conference in June 2016. codebar was happy to get involved and help run the London event. Workshops were also organised in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin and Berlin.

The set up was simple. During the workshop people got the opportunity to work on their talk proposals, with advice from fellow mentors and other attendees. There were video talks from experienced speakers who have been through similar review processes, as well as speakers who have been part of talk proposal review committee.

The London Workshop

On January 30th we met at FutureLearn where the workshop took place. We kicked off the day with an intro of the mentors, followed by a small presentation on ScotlandJS’s CFP process. Next, we watched an inspirational video from Raquel Vélez and Sarah Mei.

Both Raquel and Sarah shared insights from their experience as conference speakers. They offered tips and advice on topics ranging from how to choose a talk topic, to what to do if your proposal gets accepted. Some of the highlights were:

• choose a topic that’s comfortable for you
• don’t worry if it’s a common topic. It’s your personal perspective on it that matters most
• put out a few blog posts and see which one people most respond to
• choose a topic that you are actually interested in; you will, after all, have to write a talk about it
• the title and the abstract is your chance to convince your audience to attend or vote for the talk, so make it a good one
• the more specific you can get in your abstract about what you are going to talk about the better. But also leave some things to the imagination
• explore one topic per proposal
• create a story with your proposal, think more sales pitch than scientific research paper
• make sure your enthusiasm comes across in the proposal

And, don’t forget:

• you have something interesting to say no matter where you are in your career
• this is supposed to be fun. Don’t beat yourself up over a rejection or the process, try to enjoy it!

We continued the day by splitting up into small groups. There, the mentors offered help and advice, whilst the participants worked on their proposals. At the end of the day we gathered once again to share learnings and do a short retrospective.

Part of the day’s feedback? Everyone felt a confidence boost in preparing for a conference talk proposal. Some attendees were inspired to do more writing and be more active in the tech community. Even mentors said they felt inspired and got some new ideas for talks. All in all, we had an excellent time!

A big thank you to FutureLearn for hosting, to the mentors for their time and energy, and to Peter Aitken and ScotlandJS for taking active initiative to increase diversity in conference talk proposals — we hope that other conferences will follow their lead.