Dear people,
Are you enjoying writing your EuroSTAR submission? Or are you struggling?
I can very much imagine you may be struggling, especially if this is one of your first proposals. I remember my own struggles when I started trying to enter the world of conferences. What would the audience like? What would the committee like? Will my story be catchy enough, or innovative enough? And more of these doubts may cross your mind.
I encourage you to don’t let these doubts get in your way, just start writing. Use the below hints and tips to guide you. And for more tricks you may want to watch the recording of my recent webinar or browse through the slides of that same webinar (you’ll find the links HERE).
Start off with your own practical experience. Why, you may wonder, well your personal experience in your practice is always true, nobody can debate your experience. And your fellow-conference-people always enjoy hearing what others did, what worked well, what didn’t work well and (especially) what you have learned from all of this.
Make sure there is a simple but clear structure in your text. Use the simple “head-middle-tail” structure, an introduction, the story, and a conclusion or call to action. Keep it easy to read. (imagine that if the committee members need to work hard to understand your text they may give up)
Try to have a catchy title (such as “My three tricks to mobile app testing”) but avoid overdoing it, keep in mind that people will use your title to select which track to go and see at the conference.
And last but not least: take notice of the conference theme. If you find a way to nicely align with it, the committee will definitely appreciate it. If however you don’t find a bridge from your story to the theme, then just ignore it. The committee much more appreciates a good story that doesn’t use the theme, then a proposal that obviously just uses a buzzword to try to please the committee.
Good luck on writing your proposal (and needless to tell experienced testers, I hope): don’t forget to have someone else review your text, you are blind for your own typos and thinking-errors).
See you in Antwerp in November!
Rik Marselis
Submit to Speak Here
