How to find speakers worth inviting, choose fairly among them, and look after them well enough that the talk is as good as it can be.

A call for papers (CFP) is a public invitation for people to submit a proposed talk. Run properly, it is the main tool for finding speakers outside your existing network, people with something to say who have never been asked before because nobody who knew them thought to ask.

What to ask for

Keep the submission short enough that someone busy will actually finish it. A proposal form that asks for more than a title, an abstract of 200 to 300 words, a proposed session format (talk, panel, workshop, lightning talk) and a one-line note on who the talk is for will lose people who are weighing up whether it is worth the effort.

• Title and abstract: what the talk covers and what someone walks away knowing
• Format and length: whether it is a 20-minute talk, a 45-minute session with questions, or a workshop
• Level: whether the talk assumes background knowledge or is introductory
• A short bio: kept separate from the abstract if the review is anonymised, so reviewers judge the proposal and not the name attached to it

Do not ask for prior speaking experience as a requirement. Asking for it as a field on the form, optional and clearly marked as not a factor in selection, tells first-time applicants they are still welcome.

Describing what you want without describing who you already know

A CFP that lists example topics drawn from last year's speakers will attract more of the same speakers. Describe the audience and the gap instead: who is coming, what they already know, and what question the programme has not yet answered. A line like "we want talks that argue for a position, not just describe a project" tells an applicant more than a list of buzzwords borrowed from a previous programme.

State plainly what is covered, whether that means a fee, travel and accommodation, or none of these, and link to the event's code of conduct in the call itself. People deciding whether to put time into a proposal are also deciding whether the event is one they want to be part of, and that decision is easier to make before they have written anything.

Where to put the call

Posting the CFP only where last year's speakers will see it produces last year's speakers. Mailing lists and forums for adjacent professional bodies, regional meetups in the same field, and communities one step removed from the usual circuit tend to surface people who would never think to apply to a conference they have not heard of. Ask existing speakers to share the call with people they would recommend.

Four to six weeks open is a common window: long enough for someone to hear about the call, think it over and write a proposal, short enough that the deadline still has weight. A call left open indefinitely stops being a deadline and starts being background noise.

For guidance on judging the proposals once they arrive, including anonymised review and what to do about conflicts of interest, see the review section of this guide. Prospective speakers deciding whether to submit may also want to read Speaking at a Conference: Getting Selected and Being Good, and a CFP template is available in the worked examples and templates section.

Anonymised review means stripping the submitter's name, employer and photograph from a proposal before anyone scores it, so panellists are judging the talk on the page. It works well for the criteria that can be judged from text alone, such as clarity of the abstract or relevance to the theme, but it breaks down where the proposal itself gives the person away: a niche research area with three practitioners in the country, or a case study that only one company could have run. Anonymise what you can and accept that some entries will still be identifiable.

Criteria that actually separate proposals

A scoring sheet with vague headings like "quality" produces vague disagreement. Give each panellist the same short list of specific questions, scored independently before the panel discusses anything, so early opinions don't anchor the rest of the group:

• Does the abstract say what the audience will be able to do or decide differently afterwards?
• Is the claim in the proposal something the audience couldn't get from a blog post or a five-minute video, meaning there's a reason to be in the room?
• Has the submitter given evidence they can deliver it: a past talk, a writing sample, or a specific account of the work?
• Does the proposed session format (talk, panel, workshop) fit what they're trying to do, or has a workshop been squeezed into a twenty-minute slot?

Score each question separately and only then discuss the totals as a panel. Discussing first and scoring second is how one confident voice ends up setting the outcome for everyone else.

Conflicts of interest

A conflict exists whenever a panellist has a personal or professional relationship with a submitter that could plausibly affect their score: a colleague, a former employer, a co-author, or someone they've hired as a supplier. The standard fix is declaration and recusal. The panellist says so before scoring, and either sits out that proposal entirely or has their score excluded and replaced by another reviewer's. Quietly adjusting your own score to compensate for a friendship is not the same thing and doesn't achieve the same result, because the bias is still shaping the number, just less visibly.

A safe programme against one that takes a risk

Committees under time pressure tend to favour proposals from speakers who've done it before, on topics the audience already recognises, because the downside of an empty room or a flat talk feels more costly than the upside of a genuinely new idea. That instinct is defensible for the anchor sessions of a programme, where a known quantity delivering reliably matters more than surprise. It's a poor instinct applied to the whole programme, because a full agenda of safe, familiar talks gives attendees nothing they couldn't have read in advance, and that's exactly the complaint that shows up in feedback forms afterwards. Many organisers deal with this by reserving a handful of slots specifically for first-time speakers or unfamiliar topics, scored on the strength of the idea.

How that trade-off is struck sits inside the wider decision covered in designing a conference programme, and the proposals themselves start with the call described in speaking at a conference: getting selected and being good.

Every speaker you invite is giving up a day, or more, to prepare and travel for you, and what you owe them for that is a separate question from what you can afford as a fee. Settle the first before you get to the second: reasonable travel, and where an overnight stay is unavoidable, accommodation, are owed to a speaker regardless of whether your budget stretches to paying them for the talk itself.

What covering costs actually means

Covering costs means reimbursing standard-class rail or the equivalent driving mileage, a hotel room booked and paid by the organiser, and reasonable meals on travel days. It does not mean a speaker choosing a flight because the timings suit them better and expecting the organiser to match it; agree the mode of travel and the budget for it before booking, not after the invoice arrives. Speakers with caring responsibilities, disabilities or health conditions may need adjustments to travel or accommodation that go beyond the standard offer, and the Equality Act 2010 duty to make reasonable adjustments applies here as much as it does to attendees.

What a fee buys

A fee is payment for a speaker's expertise and the preparation behind a good talk. Rates vary by how senior the speaker is, how much demand there is for their particular expertise, whether the talk is bespoke or one they give regularly, and whether you are asking for exclusivity in your sector or region. A panel contribution, a breakout session and a keynote are different asks and are priced differently for that reason: preparation time and platform size both scale with the format.

Why exposure is not payment

Some organisers, particularly for community or association events, ask speakers to appear for the profile and the audience, and frame that as a form of payment. It is not: exposure has no fixed value, cannot be spent, and the organiser is the only party guaranteed to benefit if it turns out to be worth nothing to the speaker in return. The position that holds up is narrower than always paying a fee: for a speaker early in their career and actively building a reputation, a well-run event with an audience that matches their field can be worth the time even without a fee, provided expenses are still covered in full and the speaker is choosing that trade-off knowingly rather than being told it is standard practice. For an established speaker whose rate reflects real demand for their time, asking them to work for exposure is asking for a pay cut you would not ask of anyone else on the programme, including the AV crew and the venue.

Building it into the budget

Decide the speaker budget before opening the call for papers, because it shapes who applies and what you can promise them. A programme with a small number of paid keynote slots and a larger number of expenses-only breakout slots is a common and defensible structure, provided that split is stated in the call itself. Where the budget will not stretch to fees at all, decide that early enough to say so plainly.

The Worked Examples and Templates page sets out a sample conference budget with the speaker cost line included, alongside the mechanics of matching that spend to ticket income in Ticket Pricing and Making the Numbers Work. If you are on the other side of this decision, weighing up whether an invitation with a fee or an expenses-only one is worth accepting, Speaking at a Conference: Getting Selected and Being Good covers that from the speaker's side.

What the briefing needs to cover

A speaker briefing is the document that tells someone what to expect: room layout, running order, timing, AV setup and who to contact if something goes wrong on the day. Send it at least two weeks out, because a speaker who knows the format can build a talk that fits it. State the exact slot length including Q&A, whether slides are required and by when, and whether the session is being recorded or livestreamed.

Name the format explicitly. A 20-minute solo talk needs different preparation from a 45-minute panel or a workshop with hands-on exercises, and a briefing that just says "conference talk" leaves the speaker guessing. Describe the audience too, roughly who they are and what to assume they already know, because pitching to specialists when the room is full of generalists, or the other way round, is the most common reason a talk falls flat.

Where accessibility questions belong

Ask speakers to submit slides in advance if captioning (CART, live captioning provided by a stenographer or software) is being offered, because captioners need the material beforehand to get names and terminology right. Ask them to describe images out loud, and not to rely on colour alone to make a point on a slide. These are small requests, but they only work if made in the briefing. The accessibility and codes of conduct guide covers what a reasonable adjustment looks like in more detail.

What the green room is for

The green room is a quiet space near the stage where speakers wait before their slot, sort out a microphone or lapel pack, and decompress afterwards without being stopped by delegates wanting a photo or a follow-up question. It needs water, somewhere to sit, a mirror if the talk is being filmed, and a member of staff who knows the running order well enough to say "you're on in eight minutes" without checking a spreadsheet. A speaker who cannot find anywhere quiet beforehand tends to arrive flustered, and it shows in the first two minutes on stage.

On the day

• AV check: run through slides, clicker, microphone and any video clips with the actual speaker, ideally the day before or first thing on the morning.
• Timing signals: agree a visible signal for five minutes remaining and for time's up. A stage manager waving from the wings works. A phone buzzing in a pocket does not.
• Introduction: write it with the speaker. Two sentences of context and why this talk, read by someone who has actually read it beforehand, does more than a list of job titles.
• Handler: assign one person to walk each speaker from green room to stage and back. It sounds unnecessary until the one time a speaker cannot find the room.

After the talk

Thank the speaker in person, and tell them something concrete that landed: a question that came up twice, a slide people were photographing. If the session was recorded, tell them when and where it will be published, and check whether they are comfortable with clips being used separately for promotion. A speaker who feels looked after on the day is the one who says yes again next year, and the one who tells a colleague to put themselves forward for the next call for papers.