Each year, we’re asked ‘how do I get my submission accepted for Agile On The Beach?’ Our Call for Proposals report 2023 showed a total of 35 reviewers, ~270 submissions, ~5800 reviews, and 42 selected sessions. With a 17% chance of acceptance, it’s all about quality!
Whether you’re thinking of sending us an experience report, or a workshop, here are some tips from Andy Nesling, a multi-year speaker in our Product Design & Management track:
“Talk about what you’ve experienced, not what you’ve read… don’t talk about generic techniques without bringing some personal experience.”
“Make your submission stand out, assume more submissions exist for your topic.”
“Don’t link out to other content, if you can’t make your submission exciting on one page then more pages won’t do it.” (links are actually scrubbed for blind review)
“Make the submission content exciting, don’t just say how exciting it’ll be on the day.”
And here’s some field-by-field advice. Thanks Andy!
Title
“This is half of your sales job, think about it carefully, will it catch the interest of attendees, is it engaging and relevant?”
Description
“Set out your stall, describe the story you want to lead attendees through, what problems did you encounter, what were your successes and failures?”
Takeaways
“What are the 3-5 things you want attendees to do differently, or know more about, once they have left the room?”
Outline
“Tell reviewers how it’ll all work behind the scenes, give them confidence you’ve thought about how to stitch together different ideas.”
And finally, here are some top secret guidelines our speaker committee – Steve Smith, Gwen Diagram, and Chris O’Dell – share with our reviewer panel:
Steve has his Title Takeaways Outline Rule – ‘tell us the attendee benefits’. A good submission links a title/takeaways/outline showing what and how attendees will learn.
Gwen has her Interactive Workshop Rule – ‘tell us how the group will collaborate’. A good workshop submission says how people will work together to learn something.
Chris has her O’Dell Rule – ‘tell us what your list of things actually is’. A good submission that mentions a list actually says what the list will be.
We hope this helps you. See you on the beach!