Robin Moffatt  🍻 🏃 🥓

It would be great to think that reviewers can telepathically discern your intent in an abstract by spending 20 minutes poring over the words, right? In practice, you're lucky to get 20 seconds. Layout, grammar, spelling, verbosity - all these matter!

Verbosity is an interesting one. Too verbose and you get marked down for being too unfocused, the concern being that if you can't pinpoint the purpose of your talk concisely in an abstract are you just going to waffle in your actual talk?

Not verbose enough and you get marked down for evidently not having much of an idea to talk about (possibly figuring out that you'll wing if it accepted - plot twist: you won't get accepted if your abstract doesn't tell a compelling story to interest the audience).

There are shades of difference in how successful speakers approach abstract writing, but the key principles remain the same.

If you don't follow them, you can have the *best*, most *exciting* thing to talk about, but you'll get overlooked for someone with a more boring talk but who can write an abstract. It's not fair really, is it? but it's the game you have to play.

and since I'm at it with procrastinating on abstract reviews… ;-) Use @Grammarly! (other brands may exist; I have not checked). English as a first, second, tenth language—if it's an English-language conference that you're submitting for you *need* to make sure you've done this

What else? Here's one I didn't realise until today that I'd need to advise - don't curse in your abstract! *I* have a foul mouth for sure, but you can be pretty sure that amongst your potential audience there's going to be someone who will not appreciate it - so just don't.

Dialling up the snark just a tad: if you're submitting for a conference that's focussed on a specific technology, at least make sure that your session is *about that technology*!

You're going to actively lose marks if not because (a) it's not about the freakin tech, and (b) you evidently don't actually care that much to even try to make your abstract relevant, so I'm pretty sure I don't want your lack of interest present at the conf!

I don't care how cool your science fair project is - the audience is who matter here, and if *you* don't have a talk that's going to be *interesting* to *them* then there's no point

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.

I would love to sit through a really good primer on a technology than some in-the-weeds nonsense about some super-advanced thing that two people in the whole world care about (and are both on stage presenting to a sleeping audience)

(See, I told you the snark was rising)

If your intro para is about you, your company, or your product, I am already losing the will to live. Tell me about the problem! Make me empathise with you, and yearn to know more!

So back to product pitches. I get that speaking at confs is a good way to raise awareness of your product. Like I say, that's part of what my job as an is. But if you're going to do it, bear in mind that people are out there looking for solutions to their problems…

…and not interested in a talk with a title that includes your product. So instead of "<talk about [ACME CO WIDGET GENERATOR]>" how about "All about Widgets" and then in the abstract mention that your talk will happen to use ACME CO WIDGET GENERATOR for the examples shown.

Educate, don't sell. Even if your talk gets accepted, the audience scanning through a conf programme to choose a talk to accept are going to have their spidey-sense tingling away as soon as they see $PRODUCT in the title/opening para of the abstract.

If you want to talk to devs, think as a dev. If you want to sound like a sponsored shill, pitch away like one.