On Conference Proposal Rejections

Last week I received an email that my submitted conference talk proposal has not been accepted. This is always a disappointing moment, since of course everyone would rather be selected than rejected.

Important reminder: There is nothing wrong with getting a rejection email for a conference talk and it should not be the reasons to give up submitting your talk again. And again.

I have received many of these emails over the last few years and at some point you will get used to them and be a little less disappointed ;) What I really liked about this last email was that stye included a list of possible reasons on why my talks hasn’t been selected.

• it did not perfectly fit in We Love Speed’s orientation: feedback and Web Performance;
• it was only technical, and the jury also had the opportunity to involve a speaker with a feedback to back-up their recommendations;
• it was close to a topic already discussed last year or another proposal that the jury preferred;
• the jury had to make financial choices (especially regarding people from outside Europe);
• finally, it was also necessary to make timing arrangements in order to organise the interventions.

While this list isn’t personal feedback on a specific talk, it’s a good pointer to possible reasons. This way of providing feedback is manageable for organisers, since individual feedback can in some cases be impossible to provide and it is a much better read than receiving a rejection email without any further background.

Well done, We ♥️ Speed team!

It would be great to see more conferences do similar things. Yet, even providing feedback like this, still needs to be well thought through. Otherwise those reasons, might turn into the list of “default rejection reasons”. Simply copy and then paste. Unfortunately such a list wouldn’t be authentic, useful, honest and transparent after all.