And increasing your chances of making it onto the agenda
We always get more abstracts than we can put on the agenda (and we are very grateful for that, without those there would be no conference).
The process of selecting them takes a lot of time and the team works very dedicated for several days to read through them, compile shortlists, voting and selecting. Every year, we receive abstracts for sessions we discard immediately because they do not match the criteria for a complete abstract. On some occasions we reach out to the speaker to have it corrected or improved, but not always. So to improve your chances by checking out our list of tips below.
- Use a short, catchy title. Something that makes people go and read the actual abstract as most people scroll over the agenda reading the session titles, and only read abstracts on the ones that trigger their interest. Keep it short and to the point. Too long titles will be shortened by us to fit the agenda/schedule layout.
- Make sure your abstract explains what the session is about, do not keep it vague, the better written it is, the more confident it will come across.
- Set expectations in your abstract, tell the crowd what to expect. List the things you will speak about. What will they have learned after your session.
- Make sure it does not smell of marketing, those sessions are not very popular amongst the attendees, and there is a low chance for getting it selected.
- Check your spelling! Use a spelling tool if needed.
- Put in some enthusiasm about the topic you are talking about, just make sure you keep it on a good level. We have people from different origins and cultures at the conference and not everyone responds to things in the same way.
- Make sure your topic is not too broad, pin it down to a specific subtopic, you only have 15, 30 or 60 minutes, there is only so much you can cover.
- Think about what you would like to go and listen to at a conference, think about what Let’sConnect is about, have a look at last years agenda (link on the website). For example, don’t submit a session about a topic that is too far away from our core. Not either about a different software, then it is very unlikely to get chosen.
So now we encourage you! Go for it, don’t be afraid, if you are not selected, try again next year! We try to be fair in our selection process, making sure we have a balanced agenda covering all topics and tracks.
This post was inspired by a post from Gabriella Davis