CFP Rejection

Sometimes you’ll do all that work and get rejected. This happens. It happens to literally everyone. Ask anyone who’s done a lot of talks whether they’ve been rejected and they’ll tell you all about it. I’ve been rejected many, many times.

It’s not a problem, and it’s not a reflection on your submission. It usually just means the conference was busy, didn’t think your talk fit quite as well, or had too many submissions on that topic and had to make choices. It’s a reflection of the conference deciding yours wasn’t the best fit for them, that year nothing more.

And it’s not just the big conferences. You might think an experienced speaker rarely gets rejected, absolutely not. I get rejected all over the place, and I know many other speakers who do to :)

Here’s what you can do, especially if this is your first talk, or the first time you’ve submitted a specific talk ask for feedback. Something like, “Sorry I couldn’t make it this time — hope the conference goes great. Could you give me any feedback on my submission that might help next time?” They won’t always be able to (busy people again), but a lot of conferences do, and I’ve had really useful feedback this way. They might say it wasn’t clear what you were driving at, or that they didn’t think the topic was quite right for their audience and suggest trying something else. You get useful information back, and it helps.

Then pick the next event. There’s always another one, there are lots and lots of conferences these days.