CFPs — Waiting

You submit your CFP, and then you wait. And wait. And wait some more. Sometimes for months.

If you’re like me and do a lot of talks, sometimes you wait so long you forget you even submitted, and then a rejection or acceptance turns up and you think, “Which one was that again?” These days I write everything down for exactly that reason, so I’d recommend making a note of each of your submissions.

So you’ll wait a long time, and that’s normal, don’t worry about it. The one thing I’d say about the waiting, mark the dates in your calendar in pencil, so you don’t accidentally book a holiday over them! And if you’re submitting to lots of conferences, keep an eye on the dates so you don’t book a pile of them, get accepted, and then have to start turning things down.

Some conferences wait months after the CFP closes before telling anyone. The reason is that a lot of organisers are volunteers with busy lives, and they get a lot of submissions, the big conferences get thousands, and plenty of others get hundreds. Reviewing all of that is a lot of work. So have a bit of patience. They’ll get round to you :)