Didn’t Get In Again At…

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The call has gone out. Your chance to apply to speak at the conference of your dreams is before you. All you have to do is create a catchy title, write a verb-riddled description, and invite the audience to partake in your current, fast-paced, up-to-the-minute presentation on… insert your passion subject here.

These days you will probably also have to create learning objectives to satisfy the continuing educators, throw in a bio, perhaps provide a headshot, and answer a few questions about previous speaking experience.

As easy as that.

Or is it?

The aim of this article is to discuss the whole conference speaking journey: the application, the topic, the selection process, the money and, ultimately, the acceptance — or the rejection, disappointment, and frustration that comes with that email telling you that, once again, you “didn’t get in at…”

I have spent a couple of decades speaking at EMS conferences and, increasingly, sitting on the other side of the table helping select speakers and content. Those two perspectives have taught me that there is much more going on behind a conference program than the person submitting an application might imagine. A rejection does not necessarily mean you are a poor speaker, or even that you submitted a poor proposal. Equally, having spoken at a conference for the past five years does not give you squatter’s rights to the podium for year six.

So, let’s discuss the route map to a potential conference speaking slot — and some of the speed bumps, congestion, and occasional road closures that may upset the journey.

Finding the Opportunity

Most conferences advertise the next conference in their series at the current year’s event, and many put out their calls for presentations six months or more in advance. That allows time for submissions, selection, contracting, continuing education approval, marketing, and publication of the final program.

Social media is also a great place to spot what’s coming up. Follow the organizations and conferences that interest you rather than waiting for somebody to tell you that a call for presentations has opened. By the time you see the completed conference program and think, “I could have spoken at that,” the selection process probably happened months ago.

There are now more EMS-based conferences than I can remember at any point in my career — local, state, regional, and national. There really is a conference for everyone and almost everything in our profession. The challenge isn’t simply finding one. It’s finding the one where your subject, experience, and audience fit.

The Application

Treat the application seriously. It’s not an administrative hurdle standing between you and the stage; in many cases it’s the only thing the people selecting the program have to judge you by.

Which brings me to one of my pet peeves: the applicant who submits a scatter gun of every topic conceivable to mankind in the hope that something sticks.

We can’t be experts at everything.

If you submit sessions on leadership, cardiac arrest, reimbursement, artificial intelligence, recruitment, clinical education, employee engagement, and fleet management, I’m probably going to wonder what your specialist subject actually is. There is nothing wrong with having range, but there is a difference between range and firing every weapon in the arsenal in the general direction of the conference committee.

Pick the things you know. Better still, pick the things you really know.

And be careful with the throwaway, hackneyed expressions in your description. “A quick walk through…” “An up-to-the-minute discussion…” “A fast-paced exploration…” They are fillers. They tell the selector very little about what I will actually get if I put you in a room with 100 attendees for an hour.

Tell me what you are going to teach them, why it matters, and what they will know or be able to do when they walk out that they did not know or could not do when they walked in.

Just get Chat or Claude to Write It…

Well, yes. You can.

But have you looked at some of the event posters currently popping up in your social media feed that were clearly developed by AI? They are beginning to look exactly the same.

The same problem is emerging with presentation submissions. Ask an AI system to create a catchy title, description and three learning objectives for a session on cardiac arrhythmias and it will certainly do it. The problem is that the next person proposing a session on cardiac arrhythmias may well have done exactly the same thing.

We assessors begin to see cloned topics with cloned descriptions and cloned learning objectives, all clearly AI and with very little to differentiate one from another.

Use the technology to challenge you, tidy your work, check your grammar, or help you think. But let the human provide the idea and the voice. This early in the AI age, we already know who the machine is.

What Happens Behind the Curtain?

This is perhaps the part applicants understand least.

In many conferences the initial judging process is blind, or largely blind. We are looking at the quality and relevance of what has been submitted, not sitting around a table deciding which of our friends gets to speak this year.

That means your write-up matters.

It also means there are some brutal numbers involved. For conferences operating an open call for speakers, a ratio of around four applicants for every available speaking slot isn’t unusual. That means disappointment isn’t an unfortunate side effect of the process — it’s mathematically guaranteed.

Three out of four proposals may not make it.

Some conferences also operate, formally or informally, on something approaching a thirds principle. One third of the program may be the absolute crowd pullers — the people with established national profiles who attract attendees. Another third may be proven returners who have spoken before and consistently deliver. The final third creates space for new prospects, emerging voices, and new ideas.

But to get that final third in, somebody else has to rotate out.

That’s an inevitability if a conference is serious about remaining fresh. Otherwise, we end up with the same people, standing in the same rooms, saying essentially the same things year after year. That makes a conference stale.

Conference Darwinism

In my own two decades of conference speaking, I have encountered people who feel they are now “on the circuit.” They have spoken at several conferences; therefore, they assume they are the natural pick for everything and can become personally offended when their name suddenly stops coming out of the hat.

To maintain currency, I believe you have to practice a little conference Darwinism: adapt to survive.

I certainly have.

I have morphed from the operational COO discussing frontline EMS delivery into the guy behind the curtain talking about politics, advocacy, associations, government, and that necessary evil — reimbursement.

I still support operational EMS systems in my day job. They do EMS every day. But I’m not the person who should now be standing on a national stage telling current operational leaders how to run tomorrow morning’s deployment.

My specialist subject has moved into the world I now inhabit: government, organizations, advocacy, and the elusive dollar.

That is an important self-check for all of us. Don’t be that expert unless you are expertly delivering, researching, or experiencing the subject in your professional life right now.

Currency matters.

“But I didn’t get in again…”

Rejection stings. I understand that.

You may have spent considerable time developing the proposal. You may genuinely believe it’s better than something you later see on the program. You may have spoken at the conference before. You may have excellent evaluations from previous appearances.

But venting your frustration on social media seems to have become the default method of dealing with disappointment, and publicly citing a failure of the selectors to recognize your obvious brilliance is probably not the wisest strategy.

There is a reasonable chance that your post will be read by the very selector you are criticizing.

Instead, ask a harder question.

If you are constantly rejected year after year and “didn’t get in at…” yet again, is it your topic choice? Is the subject still relevant? Has somebody else moved the conversation forward? Is the title weak? Does the description actually explain what the audience will gain? Are you applying to the wrong conference? Do you need to re-tool?

Throwing the same presentation proposal at the same conference every year and expecting a different result is the definition of presentational madness.

Sometimes the presentation needs to change. Sometimes you need to change.

Building Your Profile

Of course, there is a chicken-and-egg problem here. Conferences like established speakers, but how do you become an established speaker if nobody gives you your first opportunity?

Start smaller. Speak locally. Speak at state conferences. Present webinars. Write and publish. Become visible in your specialist area for the quality of what you contribute rather than simply for being visible.

Competitions such as the Stand and Deliver new-speaker competition at EMS World Expo are another excellent vehicle. They give developing speakers an opportunity to demonstrate that they can actually stand in front of an audience and deliver — which is ultimately more important than having a beautifully written biography.

Your reputation is built cumulatively. One article, webinar, podcast, committee presentation, or local conference appearance may not change much. Collectively, they establish that you have something worthwhile to say.

And Then There is the Money

Let’s talk about the honorarium.

Are you trying to make a profit from speaking? Break even? Or are you doing it for professional visibility, networking, and the opportunity to educate?

There is no universal right answer, but it is wholly appropriate to decide whether the juice of entering is worth the squeeze of the expense you may have to cover.

Not every speaker is travelling on the company dime. Some must take annual leave, buy their own airline ticket, and cover some or all their accommodation and expenses.

If you live in Maine and want to speak under the palm trees of California, you need to understand that all your costs may not be covered. You might have to eat some of that expense in return for your hour in front of a room full of people.

I can’t tell you whether that is right or wrong. It comes down to why you want to speak, what you can afford, and what value you place on the opportunity.

What I can say is that there is very little realistic prospect of making a living purely from speaking on the EMS conference circuit. There may be exceptions, particularly for professional keynote speakers, but for the overwhelming majority of subject-matter speakers, conference speaking is an extension of what we do professionally, not an alternative career.

Remember the Conference has Bills, Too

There is another side to the economics.

Most conferences exist for two broad reasons: to create and present education and to generate enough revenue to make the event — and usually the organization behind it — financially viable. The largest conferences may be private businesses, and their objective includes making money. We shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

Putting on a conference costs a LOT of money.

There are contractual agreements with venues, food-and-beverage minimums, room blocks and associated penalties for not filling them, audiovisual costs, staffing, marketing, continuing education, travel, and an extraordinary collection of expenses invisible to the attendee.

And then there is the dreaded cost per gallon of conference coffee, which is often the benchmark by which the overall insanity of hotel conference pricing can be measured.

Sponsorship can offset some of that expense, but in my experience, it rarely covers the entire cost of the meeting. Attendees therefore must pay their way in, too.

That economic reality inevitably affects decisions about speakers, honoraria, travel reimbursement, and complimentary registrations. A conference may desperately want your presentation and still not be able to fly you across the country, put you in a hotel for three nights, and hand you a large check.

Know the deal before you accept it.

Acceptance — and Silence

Eventually, notification day arrives.

Hopefully it’s the email you wanted. If so, celebrate briefly and then get to work. The great proposal merely got you through the door. You now have to deliver on everything you promised in it.

If the answer is no, take it professionally.

And conference organizers have responsibilities here too. If people have taken the time to submit proposals, they deserve an answer. Silence is not a rejection process. A simple notification that the program has been completed and the submission was unsuccessful costs very little and closes the loop professionally.

Applicants should accept rejection graciously. Conferences should deliver it respectfully.

At the end of the day, however, the conference organizer’s word is final.

As previously mentioned, there are more EMS conferences today than I have ever seen before. You will get in at some. You won't get in at others. Sometimes you will know why. Frequently you won’t.

The trick isn’t to regard every acceptance as validation of your brilliance or every rejection as evidence of somebody else’s failure.

Pick wisely. Apply carefully. Stay current. Be original. Adapt when you need to.

And if you “didn’t get in again at…”?

Maybe next year.

But perhaps not with the same presentation.