Pick a Topic

Let's explore how you can pick a topic and gauge your audience's interest.

Find a topic

Given you now know your target audience, there are two things to sort out before you even start writing your title or abstract.

First, you have to find a topic. This is, at its simplest, finding the intersection between the things you’re very interested in and the things that everyone else is interested in. The simple reason for this disparity in interest is that you’re gonna be spending a bunch more time on this topic than the audience is, but you still need an audience to show up (and, more to the point, for CFP reviewers to rate you highly).

This intersection might either seem daunting or too broad to be useful.

If you find it daunting

If you find it daunting, you don’t need to have a ton of production experience in the topic to give a talk on it. You don’t need to be the creator of the framework or library. You don’t need ...