When you run any event with friends, it becomes a melting pot of your collective values. Our first Front End North event in 2020 was no different - we wanted to run an accessible, inclusive, affordable conference that reflected the things we felt were important and the community we live in.
We made a number of decisions that, we believe, directly contributed to the success of the event:
- A low ticket price. If your boss wouldn't pay for a ticket for you, we wanted the ticket to be affordable enough that you could pay for it yourself.
- An inclusive atmosphere. We made sure we had an accessible venue, a dedicated quiet room, a social venue that caters to all food and drink preferences, and a code of conduct.
- Lastly, a call for proposals process to select a diverse range of speakers that gave some fresh faces a chance at speaking at a conference.
What is a CFP?
Programming a conference is a logistical challenge. We started organising speakers for Front End North 2020 by inviting four people that we’d seen speak before. This would give us a base to build our first event on and attract a bit of attention. However, not all the people we invited to speak were available, and as you make changes to the speakers and topics in your lineup, you might need to make changes to other speakers to make sure you have a diverse range of topics and people. There's also the problem that if you only select speakers you already know, you're more likely to select people from a narrow range of backgrounds and perspectives.
A CFP process solves these problems by asking people to send their talk proposals to you.
A typical CFP process asks speakers to pitch ideas for talks a few months before the conference is due to begin. When the deadline closes, the conference's organisers get together to review the proposals and select a lineup. Processes vary from conference to conference - here's how we ran ours.
Submissions
We opened talk submissions for Front End North in September 2019, ahead of our event in February 2020.
We used Google Forms to make our submission form, and submissions were collected in a Google Sheets spreadsheet. We asked our speakers for the following information:
Personal information
- First names
- Last names
- Pronouns
- Email address
- Photo URL
- Bio
- Role or job title
- Place of work
- Social media link
- Personal, or company website
This information allows us to communicate with speakers, and communicate to our audience who they are if selected. We offered a free text field for people to add their pronouns, with radio buttons for he / him, she / her, and they / them presets.
Talk information
- Title
- Subtitle / tagline
- Abstract
- Notes for the organisers
We use this information to decide whether a talk is a good fit for the upcoming event. The title is the hook for a talk - it sums it up for us - the organisers - and our audience. It should be short, snappy and memorable. We use the subtitle artistically on our website - we thought it looked nice typographically for talk titles that had subtitles that build context for the talk.
The abstract is an elevator pitch for a talk. We got 84 submissions for talks for Front End North 2020. We use the abstract to give talks an initial thumbs-up or thumbs-down in order to cut the number of potential talks down to a manageable shortlist. A good abstract is the best chance to hook organisers when they've only got a few minutes to judge each one.
The notes for the organisers field is seen only by the organisers. We don't put it on the website - it allows speakers to provide information in detail about the talk, which would ordinarily spoil the talk for its intended audience at the event itself. This information is often useful in a tie-break situation between two similar talks.
Diversity and accessibility
- Do you consider yourself to be from an underrepresented minority in tech? If so, which ones?
- Do you have any accessibility needs?
We use the first question to make sure we select a diverse range of speakers. We made it a free text field to allow speakers to tell us how they are underrepresented in the terms that they felt were most appropriate. In practice, speakers used this field to share information about their ethnicity, sexuality, gender and gender identity, and disability.
We used the question about accessibility needs to anticipate any reasonable adjustments that would allow speakers to attend the event. We had one speaker who told us about their visual disability, and we made arrangements for them to attend with a sighted guide.
The selection process
We left submissions open for two months. Submissions trickled in slowly, so we had to continuously promote our event to speakers on social media. Even so, we were amazed to receive 84 submissions on our first try. Not bad!
Stage one: Anonymised long-listing
Selection was a two-stage process. The first stage was anonymised. This was important to us, because we wanted to select the right talks for our conference, first and foremost. As organisers, we agreed that it was important to give speakers who were relative unknowns a fair shot at speaking.
While submissions were open, we asked Chad Gowler to hide information that could identify who a speaker was, or who they work for. We also asked them to give us up-to-date stats on the diversity of speakers just in case we needed to adjust the way we were promoting our event. Chad was a volunteer at our event, but was not involved as a full-time organiser.
Once submissions closed, the Google Sheets spreadsheet was duplicated, and personal and diversity information about speakers was removed. We gave each organiser their own copy of the spreadsheet, and asked them to give each talk a rating from one to five.
Stage two: De-anonymised selection
When each organiser had finished rating each talk, we gathered for the next stage - de-anonymised selection.
We descended on the home of organiser Amy Benson, armed with tea and snacks. With the help of her cats, Mick and Blixa, we revealed the details of the talks we had rated the highest. We spent the evening arranging various combinations of speakers, topics and talks. With speakers de-anonymised, we were able to re-balance our shortlist to make sure that we hadn't accidentally selected a monoculture of speakers. Thankfully, only minor adjustments were necessary.
In total, the following numbers of people declared they were underrepresented in the following ways:
- Age: 1
- Ethnicity: 14
- Gender: 26
- Gender identity: 2
- Sexuality: 11
We discussed most of the talks and assorted them into piles we felt good about, and talks we were less excited about. Narrowing the field down to a list of twelve talks took almost two hours. Selecting a final lineup of four talks and one backup talk took another hour. Negotiations were tense and exciting!
Finally, after a full evening of moving bits of paper around, we had our lineup!
Contacting speakers
One by one, we contacted our shortlisted speakers to give them the good news: we wanted to invite them to speak! It took about two weeks to contact each speaker and confirm they were still able to come to Front End North. Naturally, people who had sent in submissions were eager to find out whether they'd been successful, so we made sure to give people regular updates on social media. We tried to be as clear as possible when we would give people a firm yes or no, and to give speakers enough time to write their talk if they had not yet done so.
We asked a fifth speaker to be a backup speaker. Having backup speakers is important. Sometimes, life intervenes and speakers can no longer come. We offered our fifth speaker a free ticket if they were happy to step in if the worst were to happen.
Lessons learned
Always organise as many backup speakers as you can afford
In the run up to our event we were sadly told by two speakers that they could no longer attend our event. Thankfully, we'd already organised one backup speaker! We could never imagine that we would need two backup speakers. Eek! We asked an old friend, and a veteran speaker, if they would be happy to bail us out. To our immense relief, they said yes.
Always invite as many backup speakers as you can afford. Make sure they can get to your conference and have a talk ready. Give them as much notice as you can possibly afford.
Give speakers as much notice as you can
One of the speakers we had shortlisted lived outside the UK and told us they would need a visa to enter the country to speak. Despite giving them two months' notice that we wanted them to speak, sadly this was not nearly enough time for them to secure the permission they needed to enter the country. In the end, we had to amicably agree that it simply was not possible for them to speak with two weeks to go.
The more notice you can give your speakers, the better. Some speakers will speculatively send in submissions to a CFP and only write the talk when they are accepted. The more time you can give them, the easier the process will be for everyone involved.
Make a topic wishlist
When we opened our CFP, we naturally assumed that we would be overloaded with talks about JavaScript and JavaScript frameworks. We had anecdotally heard from organisers of other conferences that they had been overrun with such talks, and we had assumed that our CFP would be no different.
In practice we found that, although we did have lots of talks about JavaScript submitted, by far the strongest submissions we'd long-listed were about design, design systems, testing and accessibility.
If you have a good understanding of your audience, and have a mixture of invited keynote speakers and speakers who have applied by CFP, put a wishlist of topics on your website. Speakers are a creative bunch, and often surprise you. This is what we're doing for Front End North 2025, and we took inspiration from Remy Sharp who writes briefs for speakers at ffconf.
Conclusions
A call for proposals process is an excellent way to select talks for a conference. For Front End North in 2020, we “played it safe” and invited four speakers that we already knew, and invited the rest by a CFP system. We decided that the CFP system worked so well that we could expand the CFP process the next time we ran the conference.
Speaking personally now, I had a low appetite for risk returning after the pandemic and in a tech industry afflicted by layoffs and cuts. I wanted to play it safe again, deciding to invite four speakers and using a CFP process for the remaining four places. Of the six speakers that we’ve enquired with so far for the first four spaces, three have confirmed, we're waiting for a firm confirmation from one, and two have reluctantly turned us down. Inviting speakers by cold invitation can be a time-consuming process.
When I made my decision to join my fellow co-organisers in planning our first Front End North, a CFP process was at the top of my personal list of things I wanted to happen. As a speaker myself, I've benefited enormously from having talks accepted by CFP. With the hindsight of having organised one conference already, and being half way through organising another, I regret not putting more faith in selecting talks by CFP in 2025. Having a list of 80+ interesting talk ideas sent to you makes programming a speaker lineup much, much easier. Having such a choice of great talks is a privilege.
If you're organising a conference, I can highly recommend running a call for proposals process. I guarantee that you will be surprised by the volume and quality of talks to choose from.