Improve your CFP acceptance rate

Published at 2026-03-03 by Kaya Weers

The first step has been taken: you’ve decided you want to speak at a conference. Great! It takes a lot of courage to take that step. Now it’s time for the next phase: submitting your talk to a CFP. CFP is short for ‘Call for Papers’ and is usually the (only) way to get to speak at a conference. In this article, I will share do’s and don’ts based on my experience as both a speaker and a review committee member.

On the 31st of October 2019, I gave my first-ever talk at a conference. And not at just any conference; our beloved J-Fall! Since then, I’ve spoken at many conferences with four different sessions. But that’s just the end result. To get there, I had to submit many proposals to CFPs. After hitting the submit button, I’m always a bit nervous about the response. In the beginning, I was anxious whenever a new email came in. Now, I know it can take a while to receive an answer. Even though I knew the chances of getting accepted were quite low (often 10-20%), rejection was always difficult. I started doubting my topic and my skills as a speaker.

Until… I recently became a member of review committees. Being on the other side of the table gave me a completely different perspective. This year, I’m on the review committees for Voxxed Days Amsterdam and Devoxx UK. Although I wouldn’t advise combining two conference committees and a newborn, I’ve learned a lot from it. Looking at the proposals from a different point of view changed the way I evaluate my own submissions. It also made me more humble about getting accepted.

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet, but there are things you can do to maximise your chances of getting selected. I’ll share my tips on increasing the quality of your submission.

Elements of your proposal

Let’s first look at the different pieces of information you’ll need to provide. The fields and naming may vary, but conferences generally require similar information.

Session type

Conferences often offer multiple session types. Common ones are conference (around 50 minutes), byte size (around 15 minutes) and deep dive (ranging from one to several hours). You should select the session type that best fits your topic, content, and personal preference. That said, I think a byte size is a good session type to start with for new speakers. Usually, there is less competition, and organisers see it as a safe way to give the stage to less experienced speakers.

Track

Start by checking the conference website for the tracks and their descriptions. If you’re not sure which track best suits your talk, make your best guess. Mention in the notes that you’re doubting between tracks and specify which ones. Some tracks receive more proposals than others. But that doesn’t necessarily mean your chances of getting selected are lower, as popular tracks tend to get more slots at the conference. So don’t choose an incorrect track just because you think it will increase your chances (looking at you, submitters of AI talks!). Irritating the reviewers by deliberately choosing the wrong track won’t help you. ;)

Title

The title is the first thing both reviewers and attendees read. Attendees may even base their entire judgement of your talk on its title. So it definitely deserves extra attention. A good title is both attractive and informative; it makes people curious and tells them the topic of your talk. And ideally, not too long and complicated, so people don’t have to read it twice.

Abstract

Just like the title, the abstract should be both attractive and informative. It should make readers curious and excited about your talk. The abstract needs to convince the audience to attend. While you don’t want to spoil everything, avoid being too vague. People want to know what they’ll learn in your session, so make that clear. If your talk focuses on certain frameworks or tools, name them! If your talk contains live coding or other special presentation styles, mention that too. Having a clear image of the talk helps both the audience and the reviewers decide if it’s a good fit. But, of course, don’t overdo it. The abstract shouldn’t be a table of contents. Attendees want to quickly determine if they’re interested, and reviewers have many other proposals to read. However, don’t try to win the price for the shortest abstract, it should at least consist of a few sentences. And finally, your abstract should be easy to read. I’ve seen submissions where I had to look up tons of abbreviations or reread long, complex sentences multiple times.

Notes

This field, if present, is for reviewers only. You don’t have to use it, but I recommend doing so if you have additional information that doesn’t belong in the public abstract. For example: presentation style, more details about the content and whether it’s a new talk. Reviewers have enough to read already, so don’t repeat yourself and keep it to the point. There might be an ‘elevator pitch’ field, where some of the information mentioned above could fit better. Keep it short also applies to the pitch; it’s the elevator of a regular building, not of a skyscraper.

Attachments

Always add slides and a video if you have them, even though these are optional fields. They make your written proposal more tangible. First of all, make sure they’re accessible. It’s unfortunate when a reviewer gets an access denied message. Even if you haven’t given the talk yet, you might be able to provide some visual material. Maybe you already have a draft version of the slides, or a video from a previous talk. In both cases, clarify it in the notes.

Speaker profile

We’re done with the content of the talk; let’s continue with the information about you, the speaker. This usually includes a photo, bio, and experience. Choose a photo of your preference: casual, business-like or one taken while speaking. I would advise you to always upload a photo, it shows you put effort into completing the submission. Write the bio in your own style. I see a lot of different variants, and they’re all fine. If you want to see examples, you can check other speakers’ bios on conference websites. If you have work experience relevant to your topic, you can mention it. The experience field is for your public speaking experience, or anything related. List the talks you’ve given, including at which conference. Don’t forget this field! I’ve often found a speaker’s past talks on YouTube when they didn’t list them in their submission. But not every reviewer will do such a search. They have many proposals to review, so make it easy on them. No conference experience yet? Mention presentations at meetups or company meetings. While the experience field is for the reviewers only, the photo and bio will be published online when your talk is selected.

General quality

After filling in all the fields, do a final check. Ensure everything is complete and correct, and run a spell check. If English wasn’t your best subject at school, please ask someone (or a tool) to review your text. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but major spelling mistakes can make it seem like you didn’t put in enough effort. In general, it’s a good idea to ask someone to review your proposal. Tell them to be critical and ask what their impression of your talk is. It’s useful to understand how others perceive your proposal. Finally, be cautious with the use of AI. It can be helpful, but don’t let it take over. Some submissions are so clearly written by AI that they lose their uniqueness. Fancy words and buzzwords can make an abstract more vague and less attractive. We love authentic talks, so please don’t let AI take that away!

Think about the reviewer

Reviewers often must go through more than a hundred (sometimes multiple hundreds of) talks. Make sure you’re not adding extra work (e.g. wrong track, missing speaker experience, no link to recordings). Mistakes can happen, but an extra check to prevent them is highly appreciated. A reviewer has the nearly impossible task of choosing a couple of talks from the many they received. This difficult job is sometimes supported by video and/or slides, but often there’s just text. Based on this input, they have to feel confident that you will deliver a high-quality talk. Anything you can do to build that trust will help. The reviewer assumes that the quality of your proposal is an indication of the quality of your talk.

First-time speaker

But how do you convince the reviewers when you’re new to public speaking? You don’t have experience yet and therefore have no slides or video to share. First of all, every little bit helps. You can include a draft version of your slides, a short video of you presenting in English (just recorded at home), or describe any experience presenting at internal work meetings. You also don’t have to do it all by yourself, use the help of others. Maybe you know a more experienced speaker? They are probably more than happy to help you. Some conferences and JUGs offer their assistance to aspiring speakers. I myself participated in the NLJUG Speaker Academy, and I can highly recommend it.

There is no shame in being rejected

After hitting the ‘submit’ button, it’s out of your hands. You did your best and now it’s just a matter of waiting impatiently. There is a chance of receiving an email that says, “Unfortunately your session about [..] for our conference [..] is not accepted”. At first, you might feel sad and disappointed. Which totally makes sense, so just allow these feelings.

But afterwards, you should feel proud. You tried and it just didn’t work out this time. That doesn’t mean your submission wasn’t good, it says your submission wasn’t among the selected talks. There are simply too many good talks. Maybe there’s another talk selected with the same topic, or your topic didn’t fit the focus of the conference.

Even experienced, great speakers get rejected (a lot). It might look like they are always invited as you see them at many conferences. But you don’t see their rejected submissions. Starting as a speaker can be difficult, so try to take small steps in the right direction (e.g. speaking at a meetup or company meeting).

So, after a rejection, just try again. And again. And again. Reevaluate your proposal from time to time to see if you can improve it. You can also ask the conference for feedback if you’re unsure about the quality of your submission. Because of the high number of submissions, it’s impossible to provide specific feedback to everyone. But you can always ask the conference if they have some tips for your next CFP. Maybe there are things to improve, or maybe it was just no match this time.

Oh wait, I nearly forgot the good news email! Receiving an acceptance email triggers a weird combination of emotions; happiness and excitement, but also nervousness and anxiety. This email is of course the result you wanted, but it also means you actually have to deliver a talk on stage. I could write a whole article about creating a talk, but some tips for now: start preparing early, no slides full of text, and practice at local meetups. You can find many more tips online, including a great blog post from Gunnar Morling.

Just give it a try

Choose a conference and just submit, because what do you have to lose? If you need any more tips, feel free to send me a message on LinkedIn or Bluesky. I’m happy to help, we all started with that one first talk.