>submissions were uniformly good
>you would have been picked if not for this not good quality]>
please.
What are the chances this submission was brigaded to the top^ spot?
Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected
81–90 of 125 posts
Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected
#82There'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…
People are also pretty enamored lately with the idea of the perfect "Code of Conduct" for their conferences. (Completely ignoring that local, state, and federal laws all already exist to handle all of it.)
> (Completely ignoring that local, state, and federal laws all already exist to handle all of it.)
Except that they don't. If I walk around a conference saying that all the women at this event are filthy whores who should go back to the kitchen, what law am I breaking? Do you really think that's acceptable behavior at a conference?
Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worth noting that many prestigious genuine conferences do not reimburse speakers and charge them for a full price ticket as well. For example, all the ACM conferences. I actually like this - everyone contributes to the costs, and speakers are just attendees like everyone else. I've seen people get extremely irate when they see this, saying it's a scam, but at many conferences speakers are just normal attendees l…
Can't comment on the ACM conferences. But for most conferences, interesting speakers provide the whole value of the conference - it is what attracts attendees. Therefore, organizers make decent money off of speakers, so no, they are not like regular attendees.
I think the organiser of the conference is providing the value to the speaker, not the other way around. They're providing a platform for the speaker to talk about their project.
Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected
#84Seems 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.
Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worth noting that many prestigious genuine conferences do not reimburse speakers and charge them for a full price ticket as well. For example, all the ACM conferences. I actually like this - everyone contributes to the costs, and speakers are just attendees like everyone else. I've seen people get extremely irate when they see this, saying it's a scam, but at many conferences speakers are just normal attendees l…
Can't comment on the ACM conferences. But for most conferences, interesting speakers provide the whole value of the conference - it is what attracts attendees. Therefore, organizers make decent money off of speakers, so no, they are not like regular attendees.
Really? My mental model is that the value of the conference lies entirely in network effects. That is, it's valuable for people deep in topic X to go to a conference for X because they expect many other people who are also deep in topic X to go to that conference. The speakers are just a means to an end, to get the initial core group interested and start the quadratic snowball going.
Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are also pretty enamored lately with the idea of the perfect "Code of Conduct" for their conferences. (Completely ignoring that local, state, and federal laws all already exist to handle all of it.)
> (Completely ignoring that local, state, and federal laws all already exist to handle all of it.) Except that they don't. If I walk around a conference saying that all the women at this event are filthy whores who should go back to the kitchen, what law am I breaking? Do you really think that's acceptable behavior at a conference?
Did you ever actually see anything like that? Because I've been attending to many of IT conferences and never ever seen something even remotely close.
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassmen... - here is a very reasonable CoC that mostly deal with behavior that is actually law breaking.
Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected
#87A lot of the comments here are complaining about the last point in the article (the n00b), asking how on earth you get started if you have to have presented before in order to present. The article is telling you exactly how to do that: - Speak at local user group meetings. Most of my local meet ups are constantly calling for speakers, and it's an excellent way to get practice at presenting in a lower stress environme…
> 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 real audience. I was done in 2.5 hours, including what I planned on leaving out...
Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally agree. I've noticed something else similarly disturbing. The people who advocate the loudest for demographic diversity aren't really interested in diversity of ideas. They want to see men and women of all shapes and colors saying similar things. If you want thought provoking talks, diversity of ideas is far more important than having a group of speakers that looks like captain planet and the planeteers. I wan…
I don't see these two goals as being mutually exclusive. Even if they are, it'd be good to aim for a balance, rather than just choosing one entirely over the other. They're both good goals for a conference.
Many people don't agree with me and that's OK. I literally couldn't care less about demographic checkboxes when listening to a talk about technology. The number one priority should be having thought provoking, relevant, and high impact talks about technology at a technology conference. Seeing these talks and engaging in conversations about the technology should be the number one priority for attendees.
Ideas are what matter to hackers and engineers. If someone doesn't want to go to a conference on concurrency and distributed algorithms because a demographic de-jour isn't speaking then that person isn't passionate about the subject of the conference and the conference is better off without them there.
That may seem harsh but I'm just throwing my opinion out there for the sake of diversity of ideas ;)
Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected
#89Earlier 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…
If you are interested in public speaking, but don't have too much practice in speaking, I highly recommend checking out a local open mic and trying out some stand up. Easier to look a fool telling jokes than look a fool making a valid point. edit: or Toastmasters
will try toastmasters, thanks for the info
Re: Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are also pretty enamored lately with the idea of the perfect "Code of Conduct" for their conferences. (Completely ignoring that local, state, and federal laws all already exist to handle all of it.)
> (Completely ignoring that local, state, and federal laws all already exist to handle all of it.) Except that they don't. If I walk around a conference saying that all the women at this event are filthy whores who should go back to the kitchen, what law am I breaking? Do you really think that's acceptable behavior at a conference?
I've said it elsewhere: management sets the tone, not the code of conduct. If there is a random arsehole behaving badly, they get ejected, with or without code of conduct. But is a person of power behaves like an arsehole, then it's up to management to decide if proper behaviour is mandatory or optional.
My feeling is that codes of conduct mainly serve the salesmen and workshop providers. The thankfully defunct Ada Initiative was the worst actor, but others have stepped in.