Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
I’m delighted to announce I published the Conference Proposal book! I collated all the conference proposal posts into a book. And, I added more content only available in the book. The book is through copyediting. You can buy it on Leanpub now in all electronic forms. Yes, I will upload the book to all the …
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You might wonder why I don’t start writing a proposal with a title. In my experience, a great title is something I need to ponder and experiment with. I do often start with a placeholder title. When I developed this multitasking talk, I used this title: Stop the madness. End the multitasking. That was a …
Your bio establishes your expertise, authority, and credibility in your field. If your conference proposal has a speaking experience field, use that field to explain your expertise, authority, and credibility. I like to think of the bio and speaking experience fields as ways to connect with and invite the right people to your session: These …
You know who your audience is because you framed the proposal. You started with outcomes, and you refined those outcomes when you wrote the abstract. Now it’s time to complete the rest of the proposal, excluding your bio and the title. Bios and titles are different from the rest of the proposal. (Those will be …
You decided who your session is for: the people with the problems. You’ve got the outcomes. Now, it’s time to write the abstract. Conference proposals always have a short abstract. Some conferences, such as the Agile 20xx conferences, also have “Information for the Program Team.” You might think of that as the outline or more …
Now that you’ve framed your proposal, start with what you want people to take away from the talk, the outcomes. Why? Because too many descriptions are a promise for an outcome or what people will learn. If you’re coy about the outcomes, people can’t select themselves in or out for your presentation. Speakers who say, …
You want to present a talk, workshop, experience report at a conference. (Or, a lightning talk, Pecha Kucha, or more.) You have something important to share. How can you create a proposal that the program committee will accept? I’m writing this series to explain how to do just that. The series parts are: Understand who …
I’m a shepherd for the XP2019 and Agile2019 conferences. I read the proposals, offer feedback, and then shepherd the papers through to completion once we accept the proposals. I love reading experiences. I’m a total sucker for them. Why? Because they’re short stories that reflect the Satir Change Model, the image here. If you’re trying …
I will be at Agile 2014 next week. So will about 1800 other people. I bet some of you are looking for new jobs. Would you like an Open Jam session about looking for a new job? I can conduct a timeboxed, up to one-hour session about Manage Your Job Search. If you only want …
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I saw this post yesterday, A Simple Suggestion to Help Phase Out All-Male Panels at Tech Conferences. And, I wondered what I would do, if I was male. Let me provide a little more context. I had a conference call with some of the Prag editors just a couple of weeks ago. The Prags publish …
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