31 March 2010
The following three factors are crucial to a successful submission for the Agile Alliance Agile Conference:
- Structuring your Submission
- First Impressions are Critical
- Timing is Everything
Structuring your Submission
Too often I see submissions that lack the basic elements of what the author is trying to communicate. This has everything to do with timing (see below). Your submission should follow the following guidelines:
- Have a good title. Yes, we can rework the title later but, remember, this is your first opportunity to make a good impression. If it grabs the reviewer, it'll grab the attendees.
- Have a well thought out introductory paragraph that tells attendees why they should come to your session over others. Consider having a short call to action in this section and a problem statement.
- The process and mechanics should tell the review team, as well as the attendees, how you plan on spending your time. Can it change? Sure it can. Should it at least be complete? You bet. This section should include the timings of your session and how you will use the time. Don’t skimp on this part; it should be the meat of what it is you want to do. Additional items to include in this section are
- Audience. Understanding who your primary audience is, and communicating it, is key to a good submission. People need to understand why they should come to your session and why it adds value. Sure, you are listing if it is introductory or expert as a checkbox, but I look for additional details here, like, "this session is targeted at senior managers inside the company who want to introduce XP and Scrum but are not sure how to get started."
- Presentation Format. Yes, there is a dropdown that allows you to check tutorial, talk, workshop, etc, but you should still consider weaving a description of your format into this section of the submission. For example, a piece of text from a tutorial session that was accepted says "I’ll start with an introduction and purpose of the game, then explain the rules and show an example of how to play. They’ll have one hour to complete the game." This tells me a lot and I can see how the game will roughly play out.
- Presentation Delivered Before. This is one of the things I consider a best practice. I think it's pretty straight forward - have you done it before or is it new? If you have done it before, provide a link to a video or some piece of detail where the review team can read about it. If it's new, call it out. I like new things.
- References to Your Speaking Ability. I know how this sounds, but remember, this is a volunteer effort. These volunteers vary from year to year, so even if you’ve submitted something before, not every reviewer will be familiar with your speaking style. Having a couple names that people can follow up on is beneficial. Having references might be the difference between one submission being accepted and another being rejected.
- Learning Outcomes. Good learning outcomes list what people will take away - e.g. "Learn that effective and efficient meetings are focused strategically, tactically or daily - not all mixed up." Bad ones say things like "get an understanding of agile" or "learn new coding techniques." Reviewers and attendees cannot make a determination on so vague a description.
- Your takeaway: Have a clear vision of what you want to present, lay out the benefits to attendees of coming to your session over others, highlight why your session is valuable (through data or other means) and tell us, if you have presented it before, what you have learned and what you will do to improve upon it.
First Impressions are Critical
I cannot stress enough how important it is that your submission looks well thought out and organized at first glance. If your submission exhibits any of the following characteristics, you're in a hole before any of us have even read the first word:
- An overall submission that is less than 10 sentences
- A process/mechanics session is five or fewer sentences.
- An intro that is five or fewer sentences
- An introductory paragraph is bland and does not relate to the conference.
- Learning outcomes that are light or non existent
How can the review team understand what the structure of a 60 or 90 minute talk will be when the submission says, "I will be giving a 60 minute talk with time for questions. We will do one exercise." Compare that to a submission that illustrates, clearly, the vision, the goal, and how the session will flow. Which one do you think we will choose?
Your takeaway: You are guaranteed that the review team will look at your submission once. Make that first glance outstanding.
Timing is Everything
In real estate, it’s location, location, location. In conference submissions, it’s timing, timing, timing! The submission system for Agile 2010 was open for 52 days. Nevertheless, 80% of the submissions were added in the last 14 days. What does this mean to you? Everything!
If you submit early, you are all but guaranteed (at least on my stage) to get one actionable feedback loop with the review team. Simply put, if you get it in early in the process, we have time to review it and are very likely to give you feedback via comments. Because you submitted early, you may be able to revise your submission based on our feedback and resubmit, thereby increasing the likelihood of your talk being accepted.
On the other hand, if you wait until the last minute to submit, your submission is more likely to get lost in the noise. Due to the sheer volume of submissions we receive during the last few weeks, reviewers only have time to give each submission a quick read and form an impression as to whether it’s worth a second. If it’s too short or too vague, the reviewer will likely write "not enough information" and move on. That's it. Even if you are able resubmit or provide more information before the final deadline, first reads will get priority over revisions, so the team may not get back to yours before the system closes.
And don’t send us your submission at the last minute with placeholder text where the details should be. We will not be impressed by notes that tell us you will update your submission on a specific date via comments. In fact, when we come across such submissions late in the process, my stage team throws them out. Comments exist so that you can clarify what is already in the submission. They are not a replacement for the submission itself.
Your takeaway: Get a complete submission in early if you want to increase your chances of it being accepted.
I’ve shared with you several ways to increase your odds of getting a session accepted at the Agile Alliance Agile Conference. My next blog post gives you a behind-the-scenes look at how conference stage reviews work.
Comments
In doing so, it really helped open my eyes to the perspectives of other reviewers.
Granted we had less proposals than other stages, but I felt that set expectations well.
Right, I wasn't very clear. My point is that we really need to do due diligence on sessions, at the very minimum, two reviews, and if there are no comments at all, I think we need more reviews. Lots of viewpoints, lots of questions to the submitter.
Yves - I think Lisa's point is the presenter may not paint an honest picture.
I have no clue what that session is about. My first reaction is does it matter much if it worked on a team or not? I have a few presentations that are based on bad experiences. (And sometimes preparing a presentation makes me realizing what I did wrong at a certain moment in my life.
Quite right. I firmly believe it's OK to be compensated (at least a bit) for having something meaningful to share and being willing to put the effort in to do so effectively.
Of course those two groups aren't necessarily mutually exclusive...
* Last year, a reviewer actually spoke to me about my proposal. That helped him understand some of the mechanics of the session, which we couldn't have explained through emails. I haven't seen that happen this year and I suspect my 3rd session could be a reject because of this.
* That brings me to my 2nd point. I haven't yet heard about my 3rd session's acceptance/ rejection. I need to make a case for travel from India & it helps to have a definite date by which I can get acceptance/ rejection notices.
* My 3rd point may be a bit controversial - one of my rejected topics was very similar and more focussed than another accepted topic by a more established speaker. I was asked a question about the 'link to agile' which you could ask of the other speaker as well. It smacks of a bit of 'partiality' though I'm happy to convince myself that it was oversight.
The only suggestion I have is to somehow better set expectations for the submitters on just how hard it is to get accepted.
For example, my Agile Interview proposal had a great deal of positive feedback in the comments section (both reviewers & non-reviewers). The reviews however only had one, but it was also positive.
In the end, it was rejected without any negative feedback via the submission process.
Even though it may be common sense that good proposals (not great ones) get overlooked, perhaps we can be more forthcoming with that to mitigate of the high expectations of receiving good feedback and getting rejected.
Yes, that would work for me. :)
There were a few things that I value which I wanted to call out so that they don't get lost.
- The call for submissions came in plenty of time for me to submit and get feedback. This really helped shape them up.
- The open site meant that I was getting feedback from lots of people, not just reviewers. I know that feedback I left also helped people shape their sessions too.
- Free reg lets me come from the other side of the world. We pay extra anyway for hotel nights to get over jet lag, flights, etc. I am glad that I don't have to also pay to speak.
- If next year I don't get to go because my session isn't selected, it's OK. (I may also swear about it on Twitter, but I'll live.)
Agile 20XX has always been high-quality, and I am very much looking forward to it being so again.
Big thanks.
I don't know if my submission has been accepted or rejected. I do know that the organizers and reviewers have been responsive to my comments and questions.
Responsiveness to proposals and questions is something that is absent from many conferences. Preserve that quality next year.
Keep your chin up. From what I can see, you've done an excellent job. Best regards, Steve
True enough. Our collaborative session was accepted while my 'private' session wasn't. End result: speaking and paying for all expenses... I'm glad to be able to depend on a fair split of the benefits, otherwise... no Agile2010 for me.
Collaboration increases the quality, can we think of better ways to encourage it?
But I am thankful I got one proposal accepted. Otherwise, I really could not afford to attend.
I haven't heard officially of my other two proposals being rejected. I suggest that the agile stage producers notify people of acceptance/rejection at the same time. That way we'd know.
I also remain disappointed with the review/comment process. There is so much potential for interaction. But it isn't clear how much we can interact via a chain of comments...so while it seems like a good idea to have that ongoing dialog...not sure it works that well.
I suggest that next year agile has a new speaker stage (and I'd offer to chair it). Seriously. We need both old hands and new speakers.
I'm bothered by the claim that being a "name" hurt people. The coaching stage where two of JB's proposals were placed has sessions by Rachel Davies, Lyssa Adkins, Robin Dymond, Johanna Rothmann, ...
Sadly with only 10 slots some sessions had to lose, so JB, Mike Hill, Chris Avery and Linda Rising were not accepted.
I think the stage has a good mix of well known speakers and new(er) people.
I'm sorry that this meant JB was shut out of the conference but don't think he or anyone was discriminated against because they're established.
As Lisa pointed out, this could expose a number of unexpected consequences. It may also make people work harder (as Michele mentioned) if they get rejected.
I'm just looking for a process which doesn't discriminate against anyone and name recognition seems to be our larger discriminating factor right now. On the other hand I do recognize that someone has to buy tickets so you have to have a mix of big names in there for the name recognition.
Why not have both? As a submitter, I could choose to submit my proposal to the "Established Good Speakers" bucket, or to the "Blind Submissions" bucket.
I say this in jest, but it would be interesting to see how we'd all self-select. ;)
exactly, i've gone to talks i thought i'd hate because of arlo was speaking and loved them. This is what I mean. I think you might be confusing "Big Name" with "Good Speaker".
I can see both approaches. Making the sub anonymous has benefits like having it stand up on its own regardless of who's giving it. On the other hand, I'm like you - I often go to presentations just to hear someone speak. I think there needs to be a balance between the big names, the up and comers and the rest of us. I went and saw Arlo Belshee do a session in 2005 that changed the way we did our work - it was incredible. I only went because Ward Cunningham suggested it. I'll need to digest this more - both approaches have merit. Thoughts anyone?
1) is the speaker good
2) is the title/subject good
to this effect anonymous speaker information is counter-productive. and if the speaker is good enough I don't even care about the title. I would go see Jared Spool if he gave a talk entitled "How to make monkey soup in Cobalt"
But there is actually very little in the process to help identify this.
I think the submition should look like:
1: link to you speaking
2: link to this talk
3: title
4: abstract
5: ratings (if previous speaker)
This would favor talks that have already been given, but honestly, I don't think large conferences should host 1st time talks, you should be breaking them in at your local groups first.
This happened to me last year! I submitted 4 proposals, all were rejected. It was humbling, but looking back, it was fair. They were old presentations and I didn't put much effort into them. (and I went anyway and thoroughly enjoyed myself - and I hope you do too, Tobias!)
Which is why I like Bob's idea (#23) of hiding submitter names. I like the idea of being accepted on my merits and not my name.
And I agree with Tobias -- the limit of 3 forced me to focus this year. And I worked harder on my submission after being rejected last year. I was pleased to see it was accepted.
Personally, I welcomed the 3-proposal limit, as it helped focus my thinking. It helped me prioritize, and it kept my hopes of acceptance realistically low.
It was a different experience to be rejected, and actually, quite a refreshing one. It means I can attend the conference unfettered by self-obsession
As one of the people rejected for insufficient process/mechanics I wish that these expectations had been communicated up front rather than after the fact in the review comments.
Jtf
Last year, we did our first pass at reviews by exporting all the proposals and removing the submitter names. Some results were surprising. A couple "big names" didn't bother to flesh out their proposal much, so when we didn't have the name, we weren't impressed with the proposal. However, it IS important WHO is doing the session. Do they have the expertise; if they presented before, how were the evals? etc.
While this is a clever idea I think you will find a lot of reviewers will recognize the presenter pretty quickly. Joseph Pelrine, Mike Hill, Linda Rising and even myself all have pretty distinctive styles and subject areas.
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