Pick a Title

Why the title is important

Your title is twice as important as your abstract. CFP reviewers will look at both your title and your abstract, but conference attendees often just look at your title. Especially in multi-track conferences, most conferences only have room to print out your talk title, and this will often be the deciding factor between whether your talk has crickets or is standing-room-only (I know this from real experience).

Make it something you can live with

But no pressure: you can still tweak your title after getting accepted.

To the extent that your genre dictates your title, just go with that. (I’ve put all genre title examples above in the genre section)

If you can come up with a memorable name that encapsulates your core pitch, like Never Write Another HoC, do that. If your talk is good, its title will be quoted back to you with surprising frequency, so make it something you can live with.

Examples

Here are few examples:

• Never Write Another HoC
• The Hard Parts of Open Source
• What Is Success?
• Simple Made Easy
• Even Naming This Talk is Hard