Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected

#111

Post by baby » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 11:55 PM UTC

jazzyk wrote: post #84

baby wrote: post #58

Seems like a lot of people don't understand the noob part. Let me explain: Imagine you pay a lot of money to attend a conference. And I'm not even talking about flight+food+hotel as some conferences' cover are pretty high (blackhat). Now you go in a talk and discover that the speaker is just horrible. The topic might be interesting but you get nothing out of it because the speaker is just bad. Now this is a problem b…

Many attendees don't care, the trip is paid for by the company. It is a nice trip to an attractive location (sunny Florida in winter, etc). At most conferences I attended, there were scores of presenters who, frankly, sucked, or the supposedly "technical" topic turned out to be unabashed product/service pitch.

> Many attendees don't care, the trip is paid for by the company

And many still care even though their company pays for them.

> the supposedly "technical" topic turned out to be unabashed product/service pitch.

That's another issue though, bad content.

Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected

#112

Post by sakopov » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 12:06 AM UTC

If you're very new to public speaking but dying to give it a shot try submitting an entry to KCDC. It's one of the biggest dev conferences in the Midwest and they do accept rookies with very little to no experience from all over the globe. A good friend of mine had his first talk at KCDC a couple of years ago. No blog. No github account. Just a very good topic and a willingness to push limits and share his passion. It's also opened up a ton of other opportunities for him.

Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected

#113

Post by BigJono » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 12:09 AM UTC

GarrisonPrime wrote: post #70

edthrowaway wrote: post #51

There's a possible ugly 5th heartbreaker: "we love your topic and experience but you look too old and unhip for our hip frontend conference". I've been rejected for conferences where every speaker that was accepted looked well under 30. At the least, no one had grey hair. It's frustrating to me because the very same conferences are highly vocal about seeking diversity, and do usually end up with some gender diversity…

Marketing is key, in any industry. People are run by emotion, including social cues, much more than they'd like to admit. People want to feel like the thing they are discussing is relevant to themselves, so they prefer insular groups that confirm their fantasy. A greying middle-aged guy in a suit doesn't stroke the ego of the exuberant youth. At the end of the day, people want a movie that reaffirms their personal vi…

Which is strange, really. I can't speak for every mid-20s guy, but I'd personally be much more interested in seeing a relatively unknown industry veteran get up to talk about something interesting than see hip funny JS talk #38292 from some guy in a humorous T-shirt.

Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected

#114

Post by gnarbarian » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 12:57 AM UTC

samstokes wrote: post #109

Kalium wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A warm, diverse, welcoming, and accepting technical conference that contains no interesting technical content is less a technical conference and more a purely social gathering. There's really nothing wrong with that, but at that point it's no longer meaningfully a technical conference. Perhaps there's a desirable balance to be struck here.

That was the point I attempted to convey with my last paragraph: this isn't an argument for accepting any old talk so long as it fills some demographic quota. It would be a strange conference that replaced quality of ideas with demographic diversity in their talk selection criteria. Rather, it just means conferences have more than one criterion to optimise for. Multi-objective optimisation is complicated and involves…

I think we mostly agree. The difference is I believe what makes people comfortable at a technology conference isnt superficial hangups about race and gender, it's the ability to talk shop about that technology and have meaningful discussions surrounding that topic.

The jist of my opinion is this: The subject technology should always be the highest priority at a technology conference.

Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected

#115

Post by rhizome » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 1:26 AM UTC

gnarbarian wrote: post #102

rhizome wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally couldn't care less about demographic checkboxes when listening to a talk about technology. Is it safe to say you're a member of a demographic who has never had those checkboxes applied to them negatively?

>Is it safe to say you're a member of a demographic who has never had those checkboxes applied to them negatively? It sure sounds like you're trying to do that right now. Can you explain to me why using race/demographics as a means to sideline and devalue my opinion isn't the highest form of hypocrisy in this context? In other words... Isn't your question a perfect example of you "applying those checkboxes" to me neg…

You don't have to be defensive, it was just a yes or no question.

Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected

#116

Post by interloafer » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 1:36 AM UTC

ergo14 wrote: post #99

repler wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you weren't replying to me but I've never seen it. I also would never condone that kind of behavior, or even be associated with people who did that. Someone actually flagged my comment, which to me is pretty jaw dropping. This isn't a topic we can discuss? Okay.

Only diversity in looks and skin color is endorsed. Not the diversity of ideas (at least when it comes to online discussions on the subject) or backgrounds or experiences ;-) Which seems to be the opposite of what the original goal was i think.

Ain't that the truth. If you tuck your wiener between your legs and dye your hair green people will be clamoring to have you speak at conferences even if the only thing you've ever done is use a twitter brigade to bully projects into adopting a code of conduct.

Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected

#117

Post by arthurdenture » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 1:54 AM UTC

gnarbarian wrote: post #114

samstokes wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the point I attempted to convey with my last paragraph: this isn't an argument for accepting any old talk so long as it fills some demographic quota. It would be a strange conference that replaced quality of ideas with demographic diversity in their talk selection criteria. Rather, it just means conferences have more than one criterion to optimise for. Multi-objective optimisation is complicated and involves…

I think we mostly agree. The difference is I believe what makes people comfortable at a technology conference isnt superficial hangups about race and gender, it's the ability to talk shop about that technology and have meaningful discussions surrounding that topic. The jist of my opinion is this: The subject technology should always be the highest priority at a technology conference.

> The difference is I believe what makes people comfortable at a technology conference isnt superficial hangups about race and gender

If you consider the feeling of being, say, the only person of color at a conference to be a "superficial hangup", then perhaps your beliefs about what makes people comfortable have not been closely examined. It sounds like a statement about what makes you comfortable.

Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected

#118

Post by badminton1 » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 2:13 AM UTC

Try to improve your talk by presenting it first in a meetup, get some feedback, and most importantly find the right levels of detail for each part of the presentation.

The topics need to also be aligned consistently around a larger theme, that is closed by a concrete conclusion that people can ideally apply in their life.

Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected

#119

Post by dahart » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 2:40 AM UTC

I've never been to a conference that didn't have a high percentage of first time speakers. In many ways that is what provides the value of a good conference. One of the largest ACM conferences is SIGGRAPH, in which graduate students generally present.

As long as there's content, and the speakers receive some communication about being prepared, practicing, and ensuring they will meet the time limit, how is there so much worry that it's preferable to reject good abstracts than take the risk??

On top of that, it seems like risky presenters with good abstracts could easily be given the opportunity to send in a video of them speaking or have a phone call with a conference organizer.

Given these things, it's seems sad to trivially reject based on inexperience, it hurts the conference more than the applicants, and of course gives the impression the conference cares more about style than substance. I realize that's a rash decision making wild generalizations based on a small amount of text... OTOH that is probably how some of those less experienced applicants feel.

Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected

#120

Post by kbenson » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 4:44 AM UTC

btilly wrote: post #87

ohjeez wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Submit to smaller, more focused or more local conferences. You can't expect to be accepted at huge popular conferences speaking in front of hundreds of people on your first try. Submitting to more focused conferences gives you a better chance of being accepted. And also it lets you make a fool of yourself with a smaller audience. Very few people are good at something the first time they try it. Why do you imagine y…

As with anything else, make your mistakes in small domains. And you would be amazed at the kinds of mistakes that you can make! A few years back I did a 3 hour tutorial at OSCON. I put a lot of effort into making sure that I had 3 hours of material I planned on presenting, with some extra I could slip in. I "presented" to an empty room and was sure of my timing. Turns out that I speak quite a bit faster in front of a…

Many of us talk a bit quicker when nervous. I've only presented twice, both to a very small audience (6-10 people) for a local user group nearly a decade ago. The first time I was very nervous and self conscious. The second time, I was still somewhat nervous, but the first time is always the worst. I felt like I did rather well, with a more conversational style, the second time. Unfortunately, there's no video.

Then again, it's probably doubly cringeworthy if I did see it. Once for the mistakes I would see, and once again for the difference in how well I felt I did to what I imagine would be apparent once I could review it.