Olle Pridiuksson

If your abstract is *one sentence long* (seriously!) then I'm pretty sure you are not that interested in actually speaking at the conference and are just paying the process lip-service.

If you work for a vendor, particularly in a niche, you had better have a damn-fine story to tell, and not just a product pitch. Product pitch *yawn* product pitch about esoteric stuff that ppl have never heard of *double yawn*

and yes I work for a vendor and yes I submit abstracts…but I do my absolute best to have something interesting to share with the audience in which the raison d'être for the talk is not the product itself but the outcomes that you can create using it

Want to level-up your abstract beyond the basics we've already covered? Go and check the programme from previous editions of the conference. If your talk is remotely on a trending-topic (e.g. k8s) make sure you've not missed the boat.

That's not to say don't submit on trendy topics, but if last year was all about "Kafka on Kubernetes" (which it was) then this year consider what *new* things you've got to share on this.

War stories are useful, HOWTO are useful, but people go to conferences to learn things and if you don't have much to add to what someone could learn by watching the online talks from last year then you lessen your chances of being accepted.

So find a new angle on it, or think of something different to talk about.

Do you know what conferences don't get enough of? 101 talks - the basics. Everyone assumes that they have to come up with the smartest, most cutting-edge talk. Turns out a significant number of people go to conferences to learn about something they don't really know much about.