Thread by @kosamari

Things I recommend for submitting talk idea:

0️⃣You should tell people that you are "interested in speaking about [fill in your interest] " this can be friends, coworkers, person who sit next to at meetup etc. Can not stress how many opportunity came up because I stated interest

1️⃣(w/ people who are in your field, like JavaScript or WebDev) bounce ideas like... "I was thinking of doing X"

Those conversation usually yield to "would be cool if you can~" or "I wanted to know~" now you have more things to address in proposal other than "I really like X"

2️⃣Now you found a topic that seems other people would be interested in. Often scope is larger than what can fit in 30min talk, think about which one you want to spend more time.

Then write proposal. Check what info they ask you & if there is word limit on submission form.

3️⃣Edit your draft. Shorter sentences are easier to parse when reviewer is reading your proposal (few min at most).
Look for connecting words like `and`, `which`, `thus`, `because` and see if you can break it down. It's not academic paper or novel, concise sentence is good thing.

4️⃣Assumption/bias check: have someone who is not in your field read your proposal, take note of everything they ask like "What is CRDT?" or "didn't know every one in web use React".
Usually those are "Things you think common knowledge but actually not". so make an edit.

4️⃣ continued...
You need to decide if it is really a widely used term. You might not need to explain "HTML" in your proposal, so make your call :)

In my case, this is done by my partner who is in tech but not in web dev, I just ask him "point me things that doesn't make sense"

5️⃣Now your proposal is somewhat clear & less biased.

Send your proposal to friends (ideally those who would attend the kind of conference you are submitting) or send it to conference itself if they offer proposal review.

Edit more based on their feedback.

6️⃣Forgot to mention and this should really happen before 2️⃣. Study the conf, what topics they are looking for, what they had in past, what kind of audience etc. Use those info to adjust your proposal.

My browser talk proposal would be different writing for JS conf vs Design conf

7️⃣Grammar / typo check. You can ask native speaker to review, or use checker services.

(I put mine into google translate and see if Japanese they spit out somewhat make sense + use tool like Grammarly)

Hit SUBMIT then you are done! Yay🎉

ℹ️(just cause I get this asked a lot)
My approach to talk proposal is never "Which topic would most likely be chosen at [conference]?"

It's rather "I really like to talk about this, maybe if I focus on this bit, that'd be interesting to [conference attendee]"

Example:

"I really like to talk about my knitting project, if I focus on [A], would be interesting to [B]"

- A: Canvas app I made / B: FrontEnd conference
- A: JS hardware I made / B: Node conference
- A: History research / B: general computing conference