We really do love new speakers, so here are a few things I'd love for you to keep in mind before you decide not to submit a talk:
You'll never feel like you can submit a talk. As of right now, I've submitted 44 proposals since 2016, less than 50% were accepted, and I feel iffy at best about submitting a proposal every single time. Even if I've spoken at the conference before. I think engineers suffer from impostor syndrome because we're all smart and know what we don't know
Following up on that, you're better than you think. Especially if you're a new Gopher, new to writing proposals / speaking, or both
If you want help brainstorming or getting edits on your proposal(s), there are a few channels in the Gophers Slack that can help. #writing is my favorite one. Twitter's also a great place to ask for help. Tag with #gophercon and #gopherconorbust to get the word out. I've personally helped folks in past years and I know a lot of other folks in the community who do it too
Just to repeat what I said in the post: even if you don't get accepted, it's a great exercise and you can use it to submit to other conferences as well. I do this all the time, and it's mostly a numbers game. For example, I've been rejected before because I chose a topic that the conference had too many proposals for. I've also been rejected before because the conference reviewers just didn't want to have any talks about the very thing I submitted on. Those times, my proposals were totally at the wrong place at the right time. No harm in submitting to another conference
I've also submitted crap proposals :P
If you get accepted, the conference can cover travel and accommodation if you need it
If we accept your proposal, you'll get a mentor who will help you prepare your talk, practice your talk, and so on
🤔 Hmmm. "How I used blogging about Golang on Dev.to to land room and board at Gophercon". Has a nice ring to it but probably isn't exciting enough. ;) Maybe I'll pop by #writing though...
We really do love new speakers, so here are a few things I'd love for you to keep in mind before you decide not to submit a talk:
#writingis my favorite one. Twitter's also a great place to ask for help. Tag with#gopherconand#gopherconorbustto get the word out. I've personally helped folks in past years and I know a lot of other folks in the community who do it too🤔 Hmmm. "How I used blogging about Golang on Dev.to to land room and board at Gophercon". Has a nice ring to it but probably isn't exciting enough. ;) Maybe I'll pop by #writing though...
rad :)