Speaking and presenting at conferences can be a great way to boost your reputation, further your career, meet new people, and gain more experience in public speaking. I’ve been fortunate to have many opportunities to present at national and international conferences on a range of topics, and it’s an experience I recommend everyone to try.

When I was thinking about applying to speak at my first ever conference, I didn’t know where to start! I had so many questions: ‘What should I speak about?’, ‘Which conference(s) should I apply to?’, ‘What happens after I apply?’. If you’re thinking about applying to speak at a conference, maybe you’ve also asked yourself the same things!

So today I want to share with my 3 top tips for anyone who is thinking of applying to speak at any conference.

Prioritise Quality over Quantity

There are so many conferences out there that you can apply to speak at – literally hundreds if not thousands. There are conferences available for every subject matter in almost every country almost every single day of the year. Many of these conference also provide speakers with the option to attend either in-person or remotely. Because of this, it can be overwhelming to work out which ones you should apply to.

As a first time speaker looking to boost your profile, it can also be tempting to take a scatter-gun approach and apply to speak at as any conferences as possible to improve your chances of getting accepted. This brings me onto my first top tip: Quality is better than quantity.

When applying to speak, do not overcommit yourself. Treat every application as if it will be successful and you will be asked to speak at every conference you submit to. Then ask yourself ‘Is that workload manageable?’ and ‘Can I devote the required energy and time to all of these events?’. Be especially careful in avoiding applying to multiple conferences that are happening on the same day. Being double booked and having to withdraw from a conference can be seen as unprofessional, and potentially mean conference hosts will not accept your talks for their future events.

It’s also important to know your worth and know your limits. Not every conference is worth applying to. Look for conferences that align with your values and interests: do they have a diverse speaker line up? Is the conference theme something you are passionate about? It’s also worth considering remuneration – are the event organisers happy to pay you for your time, or at least cover any travel and accommodation expenses? At the very least, you should never be out of pocket when speaking at a conference. You could end up spending many hours of your spare time preparing your slides and rehearsing for the day, and you deserve to be compensated for that in some way.

Finally, remember that you can always recycle content. Have you delivered a talk before that you loved and want to present again? It doesn’t have to be a talk you’ve given at another conference – you can recycle content from internal company presentations or talks you’ve given for outreach. As long as you make the relevant tweaks to suit the conference, feel free to reuse your slides and words as you see fit. If you’ve already invested a lot of time in making quality content, reuse it!

Find the Right Message

Now that you’ve identified the right conference(s) that you want to apply to speak at, your next thought will likely be ‘Well what am I going to speak about?!’.

Your first port of call should be to look at the conference’s website. On there, you should find information about the theme, audience and about previous talks and speakers. Some conferences will only accept technical talks on subjects like research, tooling and technical skills. Others will accept a range of talk topics such as technical, soft-skills, or speaking about your career journey. By looking at the conference website, you can find out what kind of content the organisers are looking for and therefore what is more likely to be accepted.

Once you’ve worked out what type of talk you’re going to give, it’s now time to think a bit about content. You don’t need to have your full talk prepared before you apply to speak, but you will need to have an abstract/talk summary and a title. This is often the most difficult part of applying to speak.

When thinking about content, remember to be true to you and your passions. Don’t try and force yourself to talk about something that doesn’t interest you – this would be inauthentic and can lead to you delivering a bad talk. Another danger of trying to fit the mould of what you think you should speak about is that your talk may become too generic and not stand out from other applications. You are unique, and your talk should be too in order to stand the best chance of getting selected. If your talk doesn’t get selected, don’t lose heart. It doesn’t mean your proposed topic was bad, it just wasn’t for them. There will be a different conference out there for you!

A useful tip for planning your content is to work backwards. Start with the key takeaways you want your audience to have. I’d recommend 3-5 takeaways for a talk. These should be questions or actions you want your audience to remember after the conference, and they should represent the impact you want your talk to have. Once you have your takeaways, use this to shape your abstract! Summarising the key takeaways of your talk can form a great short summary of why people should come and listen to it. Try to not make your abstract overly specific either. This will provide you with some flexibility when you come to writing the talk itself, in-case you want to go in a slightly different direction.

When you have your abstract sorted, then and only then should you think about a title. Titles are tricky to come up with, and once you’ve submitted a title (and an abstract) you are unlikely to be able to change it. If you’re lost for inspiration, use tools like ChatGPT to give you some ideas for talk titles, and then tweak them to suit your audience and personality. Talk titles should be short and directly relate to the content or purpose of your talk.

Be Ready to Promote

Every conference has a slightly different application process. Some just want the title and abstract, but others will also ask for other items to help them with promoting your talk and their event. There are a few things that all speakers should have ready when applying for conferences.

The first is an up-to-date biography. A biography should be 1-2 paragraphs long and provide a summary of your career, key achievements and interests. A biography provides you with credibility and can help sell your talk to an audience that doesn’t know you yet. Once you’ve written this, update it regularly – it can be very embarrassing to have an out-of-date biography on a conference website!

Secondly, have a recent professional headshot. Getting a headshot professionally taken can be a great investment in your career. If you have one taken with a professional camera, great! If not, you can absolutely take a headshot using a phone camera. The key things to remember are:

• Don’t have any company names in the photo (in case you change jobs).
• Smile!
• Get good, clear lighting and a well-focussed image.
• Use a plain background.
• Make sure your photo is at least from the shoulders up. I’d recommend getting a photo from the waist up as it can always be cropped.

Finally, get your social media ready. Some conferences will ask you for a link to your LinkedIn profile, Twitter account, Instagram account and your website. If you don’t have social media, I’d recommend you consider getting a LinkedIn account. You can use this to store information about your career and speaking credentials, which can improve your odds of being selected to speak. Make sure any social media accounts you send to conference hosts are up-to-date and that they look professional.