Speaker Application Tips & Expectations

We’re grateful for your interest in helping us put on a top-notch event for the WordPress Community in Greater Phoenix!

As much as we greatly value what speakers bring to the table, WordCamps cannot cover cost of travel, lodging or compensate speakers for their time. We will have a small token of our gratitude for speakers, gladly promote your talk and throw a small networking dinner before the event.

We have a few tips and expectations (do’s and don’t’s) for speakers we’d like to share with you to help you craft your submission.

Please do…

  • Submit on a topic you’re passionate about! You need not be an expert, but we hope you have a compelling story to tell!
  • Check spelling and grammar in your application, particularly brand names like WordPress, WordCamp, etc.
  • Craft your Talk Title & Description to be publishing-ready! Unless we reach out to you to discuss, your submission will be published and printed as-is.
  • Whitelist our email phxwordcamp [ at ] gmail [dot] com in your email provider where acceptance and other correspondence will come from.
  • If selected to speak, you will join the Slack channel immediately upon invitation. This is where all key communication happens prior to the event.
  • Speakers are expected to attend the full event and be available to speak on both days. If you have a special circumstance that requires you to speak on a certain day, please send an email to our speaker wrangler at phxwordcamp+speakers [ at ] gmail [dot] com .

Please don’t…

  • Include profanity or potty-talk in your submission.
  • Play into ugly stereotypes like “so easy, a junior developer/grandma can use it!”
  • Bad mouth code languages, companies, products or people. There are all kinds of needs and solutions in this world.
  • In general, while it’s fine to submit a professional-focused talk like “10 Things to Learn from Political Websites” or “Common Issues Helping Religious Organizations Get Online,” please avoid using political/religious arcs, imagery, comments, etc. that stray from professional boundaries into specific theology or ideology.
  • Feel bad if your talk isn’t selected! Building the schedule is incredibly difficult because we typically have many high-quality submissions.

General Tips

  • Your chances are improved if you submit more than one proposal — sometimes we get a lot of submissions on one topic, so if you submit a variety of talks, it’s easier to include you.
  • Consider reviewing past WordCamp Phoenix schedules to see the style and format of titles, descriptions and topics we’ve picked.
  • Please aim for a prompt reply if we reach out. Our acceptance emails will be sent during the busy end-of-year rush and holiday time. We understand it’s not an ideal time for many folks, so we offer a 72-hour response window to get back to us. After that, we may need to offer your slot to someone else.

Our Process

Now that we’ve outlined our expectations for you, here’s what you can expect from us:

  • We carefully review each and every submission, research our speakers online (professional presence, social media, interviews, search results and more), review previously submitted talks to WordCamp Phoenix and other publicly-available talks.
  • In year’s past, we’ve set up a Community Review Panel of local, trusted volunteers that review redacted versions of talks without identifying information. This year, we’ll either have a CRP or a partial blind review by some of our organizers before viewing un-redacted versions.
  • During blind/unblind review, we privately rate submissions and add comments. Unblind reviewers first review a submission, then look at the blind rating and comments as a gut-check before adding their own rating and comments. None of these ratings and comments are ever shared outside our committee and won’t be shared with applicants.
  • Our organizers meet, review talks that scored well, discuss trends and common themes and begin to build a schedule.
  • With a few dozen session slots and submissions from roughly 100 or more people, our acceptance rate is typically 15-40%. We factor in a variety of metrics in selecting speakers.
  • We’ll reach out to speakers we select, asking for a response within 72 hours. If we don’t receive a response within that window, we’ll move on to backup talks.
  • We wish we could accept everyone, but we’ll email everyone we unfortunately won’t be able to accept after speakers are confirmed. Please don’t assume you’re not our first choice or not selected just because someone else you know heard back already — we contact speakers in waves.
  • You may be asked to be a backup speaker in the event another speaker has travel issues or personal emergencies.