How To Craft A Talk For API Strategy & Practice Chicago

At API Strategy & Practice, we are pretty passionate about making the lineup of keynotes, sessions, panels, fireside chats, and workshops as valuable to the API community as we can. To help support this, we are militant about the talks we let in, and wanted to take a moment to help you understand what we are looking for when screening talk submissions.

No Pay For Play
#APIStrat is not a pay for play venue! This means that just because a company becomes a sponsor, it doesn't necessarily mean that they get a talk. While we strive to make our sponsors an integral part of the event, we still only accept the best talks from sponsors (or any company for that matter) to ensure that we can get the best content possible for the event! We encourage you to sponsor the event as an effort to gain exposure, but also support the overall API conversation and community.

Not About Your Product
When crafting a talk, focus on the solutions that your product provides for end users, NOT on your actual product. While mentioning your product or service in a talk is fine, you presentation should not be about the product or service exclusively. Rarely will attendees care about your product; instead they want to understand what is unique about your approach to solving the problems they face.

Spend Extra Time Crafting A Story
While it's true that most talks center around a slide deck, your talk should not be just about flipping through a deck of text and images—you need to craft a story. Tell a story of your approach, something you learned, a problem you solved, and work extra hard to make sure your talk tells a story from start to finish. Conference attendees want to be entertained, not watch product pitches or boring technical walk-throughs that do not captivate.

Add Value To Overall API Community
When putting together your talk, make sure to consider what the API community is looking to understand, based upon what is happening in the space. #APIStrat is about pushing forward the conversation in the API sector, especially with people who are new to the space, and also being forward-thinking enough to keep the most seasoned API architects engaged.

We want you to be part of the API conversation that is API Strategy & Practice, and we hope this advice helps you craft the best talk possible. If you make your talk the most compelling story possible, and share insight from your own strategy & practice around designing, deploying, managing or consuming APIs, we are confident your talk will be accepted and integrated into the wider API conversation.

Head over to the call for papers page on APIStrat to submit your talk now! There is only one week left until talk submissions close, and we want to hear from you!

Need some inspiration? Check out videos of our fantastic speakers from APIStrat Amsterdam and get a feel for the type of stories we want to hear from you.

Thanks and we look forward to seeing you in Chicago!