These tips aren’t meant to be exclusive to Open Source Bridge. We hope you will be able to apply some of them when you submit to speak elsewhere.

Have your own tips? Add them in the comments.

Read and understand our Call for Proposals

This falls under the general “know your audience” type of advice. Before you submit your talk, you should understand what type of content we’re soliciting.

Because we are trying to promote cross-pollination as well as provide space for in-depth discussions, our Call for Proposals is rather broad. We’re looking for:

• Useful recipes for software development, systems administration, and working with open source. (Cooking)
• Understanding how our systems work, in order to improve and extend. (Chemistry)
• Building open source businesses that thrive. (Business)
• Exploring how open source extends through technology into our communities. (Culture)
• Tinkering, experimenting and bending the rules to make hardware and software do what we want. (Hacks)

You can read more about our conference tracks here.

Look over previously accepted talks

You can get an idea of what we’re looking for by reviewing the proposals we accepted as sessions for previous years (2009 talks and 2010 talks).

Be specific, but also clear and concise

Let us know the question and give an idea of the answer. Make sure to give clear details about the content of your talk.

Write well and use standard English

Use proper spelling, capitalization, grammar, and punctuation. Use the active voice. Proposals without these things are difficult to read. Our content committee has a lot to read through; please don’t make this process more difficult.

Provide a good title

A title can make or break a talk. It should be concise, yet comprehensible. Clever, but not overly so. Sparking curiousity is good, but make sure people can tell what you’re going to be talking about. If your title accurately reflects both the subject matter and the tone of your talk, your ideal audience will find you.

Explain why you’d give a good talk

You don’t need to be an expert, but if you are, let us know. Don’t assume we’ll know who you are even if you’ve given a bunch of talks all over the world. Also don’t assume that we won’t pick you if you’ve never spoken. Have you given this talk at a user group with overwhelming success? Let us know in your proposal’s Note to organizers field.

Spread the word

Open Source Bridge allows public viewing and coments on all proposed submissions. Advertise that you’ve submitted a talk (we even have badges for this) so that people can comment and let our selection committee know they want to see your talk.

Ask questions

Not sure if your talk would be appropriate for OSBridge? Have other burning questions that are keeping you from submitting? The co-chairs and content commitee are available to answer your questions: content@opensourcebridge.org.

Practice makes perfect

One sure way to test a talk is to give it to a small audience first. These include your local user group, a brown bag session at your company, or even to a group of friends.

Hopefully these tips will help your chances in getting your talk proposal accepted. Don’t forget that the last day to submit proposals is Wednesday, March 16th.

And with the ease of sharing photos these days, there’s no better way of capturing the event than taking pictures of anything and everything happening at the show.

We’ll have local photographer (and WordPress guru) Aaron Hockley at the conference on Wednesday and Thursday. If you get a chance, try to get in front of his lens. We guarantee he’ll make you look good. And all of his images from the event will be released under Creative Commons for your use.

But many of us will be wandering around with our own rigs, trying to capture the best shots possible. So we thought it would be valuable to offer you some tips.

One of the best “how to”s on conference shots we’ve ever seen is Kris Krug’s photography tips from Gnomedex (not that Gnome), last year. Take a look. No doubt, you’ll gain some valuable insight into improving your shots.

But what about getting your photo taken? What if you’re speaking? No worries. Duncan Davidson has some great tips for how to come out looking your best—and how to leave a lasting impression on your audience.

Obviously, there is so much more that could be said. And much better formats than just a simple list of twits. But, for now, maybe this will help a few speakers better deliver their message. And, most of all you should remember that your audience wants you to succeed. They’re there to listen to you. Help ’em out a bit and everyone will be happier, including you.

Who knows? Maybe Duncan will even show up to snap a few shots of his own.

Finally, if you’re bringing your camera along to Open Source Bridge, please be sure to tag your uploads with “osbridge” or “osb09.” That way, we’ll be able to share all of your good work.

We’re looking forward to seeing you—and the images you capture—next week.

(Image courtesy soycamo. Used under Creative Commons.)