Post

Phew! Having reviewed 163 CFP submissions for @localfirstconf.com over the last week, I have some thoughts Here's some tips for an effective talk proposal!

1. Pitch me, get me excited Make your proposal a short, exciting teaser for your talk. Keep backstory minimal. Highlight problems that speak to your audience and the unique insights you've gained through hard-won expertise.

❌ Bad "In this talk I will discuss Project Giraffe, which is a prototype I made some years ago but never released. Maybe I will publish the source code before I give the talk. I had some different ideas about data migrations. I will try to do a demo if I can get it running again."

✅ Good "Migrations in distributed systems can be a nail-biting adventure in avoiding data corruption. I led the team which handles this at BigScaleCo, where we found that standard transactional migrations break down. Instead ...

... we use rolling migrations with a library we built for the purpose (now open source), data lenses for realtime data, and a live regression monitor to catch corruption before it multiplies. Plus: why we've counterintuitively found that Friday afternoon is the best time to run migrations!"

3. Show proof you are good at presenting Link to a recording of a past talk you've given. If that's not available, a five-minute Loom/CleanShotX "talk to the camera" screen recording demo or presentation of your project is fine.

I prefer presenters that can speaks clearly and energetically, offer a high density of information, and incorporate some light humor or general charisma to keep the audience engaged.

4. Make sure you have real expertise on the subject We sometimes get submissions for unreleased prototypes or quick weekend side projects. These are rarely compelling. Instead we want to see that you have hard-won expertise and deep insights to share with the audience.