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The conference speaker application, field by field · Speaker Hub
One thing worth repeating here: if the form gives you a character count, use most of it. A 40 word abstract in a 300 word box reads as an idea rather than a prepared session.
Format and length
They are assembling a day, and they need to know what shape you are.
Answer exactly what you can deliver. If you say you can do a 45 minute keynote or a 90 minute workshop, be prepared to do both, because they will pick one and it may not be the one you wanted.
If the form offers a choice and you have a preference, still name a second option. Flexibility is a genuine advantage when a chair is filling a grid, and it costs you nothing at this stage.
Audience level
The field that most often causes a mismatched rejection.
Be honest and be narrow. Saying your session suits everyone from beginners to experts is not flexibility, it is a claim nobody believes, and it tells a chair you have not thought about who is in the room.
If your material genuinely works at two levels, pick the one it works best at and say so.
Learning outcomes
Frequently three boxes, and frequently filled in badly.
The test is whether the outcome is observable. "Understand the importance of psychological safety" is not observable. "Identify the three most common reasons staff stop reporting incidents" is.
Start each one with a verb the audience does: identify, apply, run, calculate, write, diagnose. If you cannot write three like that, the session may be less concrete than you think, which is worth knowing before you deliver it.
Speaker bio
They usually want the short one, around 50 words. Have it written already so you are not composing under a deadline.
Lead with the thing that makes you credible on this specific topic, not with your job title. A reviewer is asking one question: why this person for this session. Answer it in the first sentence.
Three lengths of bio, kept somewhere you can paste from, is covered in your speaker bio.
Headshot
Two failure modes.
Too small, which is the common one. Forms often specify a minimum and people upload a cropped social profile picture that looks fine at 200px and terrible printed in a programme.
Too casual for the event, which is context dependent, so look at last year's speaker page and match the register.
It does not need to be professionally shot. It needs to be recent, high resolution, and to look like you will look on the day.
Video links
The field that decides shortlists, and the one most often left empty.
If you have footage of you speaking to a real audience, link it, even if it is not polished. A phone recording from the back of a room where the audience is visible does more than a studio reel with no audience.
If you have nothing, do not leave the box blank. Write what you do have: a recorded webinar, a podcast episode, a conference panel. A reviewer with no evidence at all has to assume the worst, and any evidence is better than that. Speaker demo reel covers building one from very little.
Have you delivered this before
Say yes if you have. Speakers hide this thinking conferences want exclusivity, and mostly they do not.
A session that has run twice is a lower risk than one that has never been tested. It means the timing works, the material lands, and you have already found the parts that do not.
The exception is a call that explicitly asks for new or first time content, and those say so plainly.
Travel and expenses
Answer honestly and early.
If you need travel covered, say so now. Discovering it after acceptance is a bad conversation and occasionally an undone booking. If you can self fund, saying so is a genuine advantage at events with tight budgets, and there is no shame in either answer.
What you should not do is stay silent hoping to negotiate later. Chairs have budgets set before the call opens. See how much speakers charge.
The links field
Many forms have one open box for a website. Give the URL of the page about your speaking, not your homepage and not your company site.
They will click it. What they see decides whether the shortlist becomes a booking, and a page that does not say what you speak about wastes the application. Nine speaker website mistakes is the checklist for that page.
After you submit
Two things, both boring, both worth doing.
Save a copy of everything you submitted. When they come back in five weeks asking a question, you want the abstract in front of you, and forms rarely email you a copy.
Note the decision date and let it pass without chasing. Chairs are volunteers running this alongside a job, and a follow up before the stated date is noticed for the wrong reason. After it, one polite email is fine.
Usually a session title, an abstract, a format, an audience level, learning outcomes, a speaker bio, a headshot, links to video, and a question about availability or travel. Many also ask whether you have spoken on the topic before and whether the session has been delivered elsewhere.
Should I say if I have given the talk before?
Yes, and it usually helps rather than hurts. A chair reading that a session has run twice knows it works and knows you can hold the room. The exception is a conference that explicitly wants new or exclusive content, and those say so in the call.
What if I have no video?
Submit anyway and say what you do have, whether that is a recorded webinar, a podcast appearance or a phone recording from an internal talk. Leaving the field blank with no explanation is worse than an imperfect link, because a reviewer with no evidence has to assume the worst.
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