Let's wait one more minute, and then I will start. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Aina. Alright. Okay. Here we go.So you see those shiny speakers standing on the big stage at tech conferences or in the on the virtual stage here, and you wanna be like them. You know, speaking at a major tech event can be career changing, and you really wanna give it a go. Let's say, you've even crafted a brilliant idea for a tech talk, perhaps even already built the presentation around it. Yet despite all efforts, you keep getting that discouraging no from conference organizers year after year. Could it be that you're just approaching it the wrong way? What if I told you there are measurable, actionable steps you can take to get your brilliant idea out of your head and into the big stage?

Really, it can totally be you out there. So hi, and let me properly introduce myself now. I'm Mohan Weber. I'm the founder of Women on Stage, a public speaking trained platform for professional women in tech to take the stage, share their knowledge, and inspire others to grow. And I'm also the founder of two new tech products that are about to go live very soon, and they're currently in a private beta. And these products are meant to help and support speakers throughout their entire speaking journey. So I've been a speaker and events organizers, an event organizer and a speaker trainer for the past seven years or so. And before that, I was a software engineer for over a decade. In addition, I'm also a social psychologist.

And I'm here today to share with you my formula for writing the perfect conference submission or CFB as a slang after reviewing and editing hundreds of those as part of my work at Women on Stage. And this formula has previously helped dozens of speakers get accepted into major tech conferences worldwide. And before I start, I wanna share with you that I wasn't born a speaker at all. So I told you I was a software engineer for over a decade. And back then, not only I couldn't imagine myself going up on stage, I could barely open my mouth in daily mundane meetings at work because I was too afraid someone will catch me as a fraud. You know, that famous impostor syndrome before I even knew it's a thing. And here's proof for that. So this is one of the first time I went up on stage, and I remember I was so anxious and so afraid of the audience that I spent almost the entire talk with my back in in front of the of of the people sitting in the audience because I was just I was too scared to of looking at them in the eye.

So if anyone wants to see fifty minutes of my back, unfortunately, it's still available on YouTube. But first things first. So what is a CFP anyway? A CFP usually stands for, call for papers or call for proposals, for tech conferences, but many people often use the term as slang for their own submission to the conference. Meaning, would say, I just submitted my CFP to Women Tech Network conference. And in this session today, we're going to review my guidelines for writing a compelling compelling CFP that will actually help you get your foot in the door into major conferences worldwide. So okay. So the how this session is going to look like. Okay. First, we're going to discuss how do you do how do you choose a topic? Where do you find ideas?

Next, I'm going to share with you my formula for writing the the perfect CFP, how to write a a talk title, an abstract, and a bio. And lastly, I'm going to discuss where AI can really help you in this process and where you absolutely don't wanna use it. Let's talk about choosing a topic. So a lot of a lot of people and women in particular are saying, I don't have anything, interesting enough to say. I don't have anything original to say. Everything was already done before. So let me stop you right there and tell you right here, right now, that you already have your own unique perspective, your own unique experience, your own unique voice, and tons of stories you can share with the world. But it's really, really important that you choose something that makes you passionate and something that is interesting to you.

But the problem is that for many people, they have something which is a cognitive bias, which is called the curse of knowledge. Actually, all of us have it. It's where we have a lot of knowledge. We do something every day, and it's trivial to us. But then we think everyone else knows it too. K? So with everyone else, it's easy for them as well, and we think it's trivial. We think it's obvious. So many people are are talking a lot a lot of times about how we have a blind spot, that we don't know the things that we don't know. So I'm talking about how we don't always know what we do know. Okay? Having said that, when you choose a topic, you have to create actual value for your audience. You have to understand that it's about them. It's not about you.

And you need to know your audience, and you need to know which kind of audience you're targeting. What do they need? What do they want? What do they know? What do they what they don't know? What is their motivation? And you need to think what is your motivation to be giving this talk. Because if it's meant for selling something or to market something, then you you you really you can't be too blunt about it. So you must shift your focus from trying to sell something or trying to sell yourself to communicate, to teach some, something someone. To, to teach something to to just, sorry. To teach something new, to prove and you really want to provide value. So how do you come up with, with ideas? I wanna share with you, a little story about someone I know and I really love this story.

Her name is Michal Purag, and she used to be a junior developer, and she transitioned into tech from being an architect. So she wrote a blog post about the different types of programming, Something pretty ordinary, not mind blowing innovative. The difference between synchronous programming, async programming, and parallel programming. But what she did, and she is she did it in a very, very innovative way. She used her own background as an architect and as someone who loves to bake and drew really cute sketches of herself. It was before the AI revolution to to explain the difference between all of those. And her post her blog post went totally viral. You so and and really really famous people shared it all over.

So even what I'm trying to say is that even trivial day to day ideas can be super creative and super special if you bring your own unique self into the table. And now I wanna share with you a little a few ideas of how do you come up with ideas and how do you come up with with interesting ideas. First things first. It's really important that you use that you tell real life stories, real case studies, like how you solve something. People don't wanna know how everything was always perfect and and easy for you. They wanna learn about your challenges. Next, it can be a comparison between tools, between frameworks or methodologies, like mobile native or React native. That is the question. It can be an intro to someone from another domain. Okay? Like, intro to machine learning for web developers.

It can you you you can showcase a special project or a product that you were working on. Like, I I had someone in my classes once having to talk about using how she use she's using NLP to identify potential suicides. It was blunt mind blowing. Or you can explain how something works under the hood, like, how we React engine works under the hood. And something that also always works really well is busting myths about something, like busting myths about women in tech or learning to code, not what you thought. It can be and this is one of my favorites, actually. It can be a fusion between supposedly unrelated domains. And when you mix those together, then it becomes really interesting. Like, how I learned, what I learned from being a musician about clean code.

It can be the evolution of something or the future of, like, LMs, past, present, and future. Or you can use a known phrase or use a really a a movie that you like or a TV show that you like. I once had someone in my classes doing a talk about web vulnerabilities as Mean Girls characters. It was really it was hilarious. Or Disney princesses as programming languages. There are so many things that the the creative, the you can be really, really creative here. You can give tips for something or best practices, like three tips for interviewing, data scientists or how to design an API. You can you can share lessons learned from doing something repeatedly, like lessons learned of from reviewing 10 thousands lines of code.

I bet you don't even know that this is something that you do, but many people reviewed this amount of lines and they just don't know it yet. And it can be a list of do's and don'ts, like the seven deadly scenes of onboarding engineers. And here are really cool, cool examples from, from women on stage alumni. Stop infusing me with confusion matrices using visual tools to improve communication. Shadow, Shadow DOM is coming out of the shadows. How to party with third party APIs? The secret sauce of data preprocessing in machine learning. Why I stopped hating Python. All these but goodies were why classical machine learning still rocks. Think as a platform. Fun with trees. Get to the root of song classification. And lastly, build your own Lego model, connecting historical data to improve models accuracy. K?

So a lot of really cool word games, a lot of things that they just brought their own unique your their own unique selves. Now let us dive into the CFP. The call, once again, CFP is a call for papers or call for proposals, and it includes three main parts. Includes the title, the abstract, and your personal bio. Now let me tell you a little secret. Many people invest a lot of time perfecting their presentation without ever knowing if they have the proper stage to deliver it. So you don't need to invest that effort at all. First, create the abstract and the title. And only if you actually get accepted, then it's the time to panic and and start working on your presentation. Okay. Let us talk about the title.

Think about yourself when you walk into a conference. Let's or even when you're here. Okay? There are two or more than that, parallel tracks, and you don't know the speakers. You don't know who they are. How do you choose where to go? You choose by the most interesting titles, the one that really grabs your attention. And that's exactly the same way organizers are choosing talks. So they get hundreds of submissions, and if the title is not interesting enough, they they won't read the rest. So first impression is really, really crucial here. Let's see a little example of that. Another cognitive bias, this one is called the primacy effect. What, what do you think about someone who's intelligent, ambitious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious versus someone who's envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, ambitious, and intelligent.

We like the first one better, but it's the exact same person because the order doesn't really matter. Right? Okay. Let's see. Let's here are a few do's and don'ts about the title. The first one is I like to call it the the clickbait, but not in not in a cheap way. Okay? The the clickbait is meant to grab their attention, not not a cheap way. And here are nice examples for that. The first one is, is one of my previous talks. It's seven plus minus two reasons psychology will help you write better code. So the seven plus minus two is intriguing. It's a it's a you're curious about this number. Or daddy, where is my Arduino? Okay. That sounds interesting.

It has to be in addition, it has to be accurate and descriptive. So you can't really just use the clickbait without telling people what it's about. Like, slaying the dragon, how to rewrite a monolith into microservices and stay alive. I understand exactly what it's about. Or show me the their garbage, understanding garbage collection. And in addition, it can't be too vague. It can be something too open that you don't really understand what is about exactly. Like, someone once submitted to women on stage with lessons I have learned in my life. Okay. Where? How? What's the domain? Or everything you need to know about the cloud. That's a bit too big. I need to understand what is what is it really about. Or machine learning fundamentals. Wow. I can there we can build tens tens 10 courses of machine learning fundamentals. It has to be really, really explicit. Next, the abstract.

So the abstract is a short paragraph usually between, 120 to 200 words. It changes and it varies between conferences. And it's usually, it's usually comprised out of three main parts. The first one, once again, it's a very, very similar effect to the title one that you here as well, you need the primacy effect. Because if the first sentence if the, isn't interesting enough and it doesn't hook your audience or the organizers, they they won't read the rest. Okay? So the first sentence has to be very, interesting. It's like a hook. You have to make it appealing. You can something that always works is using a short quote or a short story. Next, I I will show you a, an example of all of that.

I'm just giving you the the over the overall structure. Next is the body the body of the abstract, where you drill down into the topic or the the problem, the the specific use cases you're presenting, and you you must, you you must tell them why is it why does it matter? Why it's important? Next and lastly, that's the final part, the the what's in it for me. What are you going to talk about exactly specifically? What are the key takeaways? Okay. I just got a pop up. Are do you still see me? Yeah. Anyone? Yes. Okay. Good. I got a I got, like, a pop up that the next session is coming up. I still have time, though. Okay. Thank you, everyone. Okay. So the the the last part is the what's in it for me.

This is where you you need to to specify what are the actual practical things that you're going to talk about. It usually looks like something like, in this talk, I will demonstrate, I will discuss, explain, blah blah blah blah, or by the end of my talk, you will be able to okay? So let's see an example of that. This one is the same, seven plus minus two reasons psychology will help you write better code. I showed you before the the title of it, and it starts like that. Remember, this is the hook part, the one that loops you into the, into the into the abstract. During the cold war, the CIA knew how to expose Russian spies disguised as American citizens with 100% certainty. They used only a piece of paper and a few questions.

How did they do that? Hacking your mind is easier than you think. I didn't even mention code. Okay? I talked about the the cold war, but it's interesting. I want to read more now. Next, I drill down into the topic and I connect that hook with what I'm going to discuss. Let's explore how these mental hacks affect the code we all read and write. We'll take a stroll through the world of cognitive psychology and shed some light on some of our industry's best and worst practices. Okay? So that's the connection. And lastly, the what's in it for me, the the practical side. We'll have a few interactive examples of our mind's limitation, examine how these limitations manifest themselves in real code samples and engineering practices and take away scientifically backed techniques on how to write better code.

Let's see another example. Remember the the second one, the the daddy wears my Arduino one? So this is a very very cool talk. Someone I know gave a few years ago and he did it with his 12 year old daughter. Okay? Two the two of them performed in front of more than a thousand people. It was amazing, and this is their abstract. They start with a story. That's their hook. It's almost midnight. Me and my daughter are looking for jumpers, matrices, and resistors. There's a bug in the game we're building, and it doesn't seem as if we're going to bed anytime soon. K? That's that's a story. It doesn't say, me and my daughter are building, are doing new projects together. He just he he he he loops us in in an interesting way.

Next, the drill down into the topic, the the the connection. Teaching team kids recursion and data structures didn't create the frill I thought it would, but building games does. My daughter, Ronnie, and I will talk about introducing kids to the world of programming, three d printing, scratch, Arduino, AliExpress orders, and hot glue. And lastly, the practical side, the what's in it for me, we'll cover the existing tools from which kids can learn how to code, at what age should they start, and which projects to choose, and why and why girls at school are anxious about coding. Is it a boys club already before high school? I really like that he finishes off with a with an open question. This is also something that that makes you intrigued and you wanna hear more. You wanna know what they're going to talk about. Okay. Next, the bio. So the bio also is a short paragraph. This one is about you specifically, and each also should include three main parts, but the order doesn't matter so much.

So but it but you do want to, but you do want to include all of these. The first one is who you are professionally, what do you do, your current, your past experience, your formal education, etcetera. Next, why are you the relevant person to give to be given this particular talk? Okay? So you can have your own, you could your own speaker bio as a template, but there's a sentence in the middle that changes by this by by the specific talk that you're going to be giving. Okay? It can change. It's okay. You don't have to to use the same one always. And lastly, and this is something a lot of people miss out, is that you wanna include also something personal, something fun, something funny about you.

And ironically, this is what people will usually remember the most. Okay? So if you're a cat person or something like that, write that. People love that and and it makes you pop out when you write things like that. It makes you unique. Let's see, example of that. And so this is my bio. Moran Weber is the CEO and founder of Women on Stage. She's formerly tech lead at Wix with ten years of experience in software development. In addition, she's a social she's a social psychologist holding a master's degree in social psychology along with a bachelor of science in computer science and psychology from Tau. K? So I'm I'm I'm starting with the, you know, with the formal education. Who am I? Who who who am I? What am I doing? Etcetera.

Next, why am I the relevant person to be given this talk? And let's say this bio is relevant when I speak about impostor syndrome, okay, or stage fright. In the past, Mohan suffered from stage fright and impostor syndrome. Her path of overcoming these anxieties included stepping up to as many stages as possible and becoming a renowned speaker and speaker trainer. And lastly, something personal, something interesting or different about me, her unique background as a software developer, social psychologist, and as a woman in tech drove her to embark on a mission to imply to amplify women's voices everywhere. And it is a little bit embarrassing for me to be sharing this bio with all of you, but I have to practice what I teach, what I teach. And exactly like, George Costanza is saying, it's not a lie if you believe it. It's not bragging if it's true. Okay?

It's really this is the place to be bragging about yourself because you wanna stand out, and it's okay. You're telling the truth. You're not inventing things that are not there. You're not lying. Now let us talk about AI. The last part. So you can use AI, but you have to do it wisely because, otherwise, we will see right through it. I I guarantee that I can spot from a distance an abstract, which was all filled and written by AI, even if it was a really good one. But if it's two AI, and two AI is, like, using words like, like, really big words and big emojis, like revolutionizing, demystifying, unleashing, innovating, changing the way, disruption, redefine. Everything is like, and, by the way, Delve, this is a really funny story.

Did you know that the word dev Delve, grew, in, like, hundreds of percentages after ChatGPT was introduced? Okay? So don't use DELF. We can we can see it right through. And this is actually how the organizers, will respond, and this is how they make them feel when the content is too AI generated. Even if it's a good if it's good content, they will just roll their eyes. It's too AI. They won't read through, and they will move on to the next candidate. Remember, AI can't write your story for you. It has to be your content, your voice, your ideas. You can brainstorm with AI about your ideas.

You can use it to help you, to help you get ideas about, alternative titles. You can use it as a grammar, as a grammar fix, but don't let it re write it for you. You write it yourself and then give it to AI to polish. Okay? What else? What else you need to keep in mind? Number one, every CFP, every call for papers, have has their own, thank you so much, Devina. Every CFP has their own guidelines. You and they they usually say it sounds trivial, but they usually explicitly state what they are looking for, what kind of sessions. Read that and feed it to AI to improve your to match your your content.

And sometimes it improves your chances if you submit, to the lightning track, like the the short lightning track because most people usually try the full length session. That's another tip. And number two, you can always browse, past year's conference sessions and see what kind of sessions do they like. Even if they it was something about it last year, it doesn't mean that they don't want it. Maybe they want it again. Maybe that that topic is interesting to them. You you can learn so much about what works for them, and it will really help you match your tone to that specific conference. And number three, it's really okay to recycle. You don't have to put all your eggs in one basket.

So if you've already put up a lot of effort in creating the submission, It's really okay to reuse it because, to be frank, you might not get accepted. They get hundreds of submissions. And it's not because you're bad because it's because the competition is really, really big. So it's totally valid to recycle. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Reuse your session. And finally, where can you find all of those open call for papers? And I'm really happy to introduce to you, Get On Stage IO. This is my new platform, the all in one speaker management platform for tech teams. It's currently in a private beta. And what we do is we curate hundreds of up open call for papers from all over the world, from all over the web, from multiple from multiple resources.

And you can easily find conferences. You can easily, create filters that match your specific experience and what you're looking for. You can filter out the ones that are relevant, that fill the ones that are not relevant, and you can create smart reminders, smart notifications when something new comes up. And on top of that, you can also track your submission, create a branded speaker report. Oh, I see the the the laptop is I can is it empty, or is it just a bug on I can see it differently on two on on two screens. It's empty. Okay. That's, yeah. That's probably a bug. Okay. But, no worries. So you will, you will get a chance to to play with it for for free, because we're currently on beta.

And what you can do, you can also track your submissions. You can create your own, branded speaker portfolio. You can, thank you, Luca, with your own, talk catalog. You can manage groups of speakers if you, if you have, like, a speaker program in your company. And please scan this QR code, and you're welcome to to join our private beta. We're really, really looking forward to to hearing your feedback. And all of you that are here today are very lucky, to get to get the the first priority in joining our new platform. Okay? Scan it, please. And if you want, someone can, please, can can someone scan it and then copy it, into the chat so I yeah. Oh, you already you already wrote the the the URL. Okay.

You can already use the the URL and you and but join our, fill out the form on, for for the beta. Thank you, everyone. And, really, I hope, we're almost done. So I really hope that, all of these, measurable actionable steps will help you to get your brilliant ideas out of your head and get your foot in the door into the stage. And I promise you I promise you that it can be you too up there, and I've seen so many of these incredible transitions. It can truly revolutionize your entire career. I'd love to stay in touch. You're all welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn. That's QR code for my LinkedIn, and join the the Women on Stage community. And please, please keep me posted about your success stories.

If someone gets accepted, please let me know. Thank you so much. Bye, everyone. Thank you, Maria. Thank you.