Sessionize, Papercall and Co.: Submission Platforms for Speakers Explained

The main submission platforms for speakers are Sessionize and Papercall as well as pretalx, with EasyChair and ConfTool added for academic congresses. A submission platform is the web portal a conference uses to collect and review talk proposals. You create a profile there, store your talks and submit them to every conference that runs its call on the same platform. This article explains how the systems work, what belongs in a Sessionize profile and why a platform on its own does not get you on stage.

What is a submission platform for speakers?

A submission platform for speakers is software that organisers use to run their call for papers, the public invitation a conference issues to collect talk proposals. In business settings the same process is often called a call for speakers or a call for proposals. On the platform, the organiser defines the topics it wants and when submissions close. The programme committee, the group of experts who put the programme together, rates the proposals in the same system, and the schedule is often built there too.

For you as a speaker, a submission has two parts. The first is the profile with photo and short biography, which applies to every submission on that platform. The second is the session, the individual talk proposal with title and abstract. An abstract is the short description of the planned talk, usually 150 to 400 words long, and it is the text a committee decides on. Each form also asks about format and length, plus whatever extra questions the organiser adds.

The value of the platforms lies in reuse. Once you have a profile and a session, you can submit to the next conference on the same platform in a few clicks and see in one place which proposals are still pending. How a call for papers runs from announcement to acceptance is covered in the call for papers guide.

Which submission platforms for speakers exist?

Submission platforms for speakers fall into three groups: platforms for business and technology conferences, systems from academia, plus the organisers' own forms. The group a conference uses tells you a lot about its audience and the way it selects.

Sessionize

Sessionize is one of the most widely used platforms for business and technology conferences, run by a software company based in Zagreb. By its own account, several hundred thousand speakers have submitted proposals there. The account is free for speakers, and the provider promises it will stay free. Organisers pay: free community events such as meetups use the platform at no cost, while commercial conferences pay a fee per edition. For reviewing, Sessionize offers an anonymous mode in which reviewers see no names and a comparison mode in which they rank three sessions at a time, from which the system calculates an overall ranking.

Papercall

Papercall comes from the developer scene and is used mainly by technology conferences for their open calls. Organisers can set up a call at no cost, speakers submit with their profile to any conference on the platform, and anonymous submission is available as an option.

pretalx

pretalx is open-source software for calls for papers and scheduling, which an organiser can run on its own servers or use as a hosted service. It is common among conferences from the open-source community. Because each organiser runs its own instance, you often need a separate account per conference, and the forms frequently include extra questions from the organiser.

Academic systems

EasyChair, ConfTool and Oxford Abstracts come from academia. ConfTool is a German system with a long history, and EasyChair is widespread in computer science and engineering. Congresses of professional societies work with these systems, and their review follows peer review, the assessment by several independent experts against fixed criteria. For consultants and business owners they matter where practice meets research, for example at congresses with a practitioner track.

Own forms and email

Many industry and association conferences use no submission platform at all. These organisers collect proposals through a form on their own website or by email to the programme team. Many fill their slots with no public call at all, through invitations and personal approaches.

How do I create a Sessionize profile, and what goes into it?

A Sessionize profile comes with a free speaker account, and it has an internal part that organisers see with your submissions and a public part that you can switch on. The internal part holds your photo and a tagline, a single line on your role and topic, as well as your biography, which you can store in several languages, and links to your website and social profiles. The public part gets its own address with your name and also shows your areas of expertise, the topics of your talks and your location.

The public part decides whether organisers can find you. Public profiles appear in the platform's speaker directory, which organisers search by topic and location. The "Discover events" feature, which shows open calls matching your profile, requires a completed public profile. It only lists conferences whose organisers have made their call discoverable, so you only see part of the calls that fit you.

You create your sessions in the account as separate entries. Active sessions appear on your public profile and can be reused for every new submission without filling in the whole form again. A profile only works when bio and sessions tell the same story: someone who presents as an expert in manufacturing logistics and offers sessions on team culture looks undecided to a committee. What belongs in a bio is described in what a speaker bio needs to do, and why keeping profiles current across many platforms becomes an ongoing task is covered in having your speaker profiles maintained.

What the platform speeds up and what it leaves open

A platform speeds up the part of the work that consists of forms and leaves the decisions before and after untouched. Which conference fills its rooms with your ideal clients is not listed on any platform. It lists calls by topic and location, and a well-attended developer conference does little for a procurement consultant, even when its call is open.

The second open part is volume. A committee awards few slots, and acceptance is the less likely outcome at any single conference. At the volume of submissions a predictable operation needs, the market acceptance rate is 5 per cent at most per conference, while our own submissions for clients reach up to 19 per cent per conference. If you submit to twenty conferences at 5 per cent, your chance of at least one acceptance is around 64 per cent, and at 19 per cent it is around 98 per cent. In our experience, an operation that produces acceptances predictably involves at least a hundred submissions to around twenty conferences in the first month and at least fifty a month after that, and only the platforms make this volume possible.

The third open part is the conferences outside the platforms. Software and technology, with their active culture of open calls, can be reached in large numbers through platforms. Industry and mid-sized companies fill their programmes more often through invitations and direct requests, as does the association world, and there the route is an email to the programme team with an opening tailored to the conference. How such a request is built is shown in contacting organisers directly.

For an overview of open calls, the developer scene has volunteer-maintained lists such as confs.tech or developers.events. They cover technology conferences and largely leave out industry events. Anyone who wants to track deadlines across several platforms needs a calendar of their own, because each platform only knows its own calls.

Who submits on the platforms for you?

An agency can submit on the platforms in your name, and that is common practice: the account belongs to the person who will speak and is maintained by whoever runs the operation.

Stage Starter takes this work off your hands: we find the right calls, write the submission and submit it. Before that, we develop your talk and abstracts with you, set up your profiles on the platforms your conferences use and keep them current. We approach conferences without a platform by email, follow up with organisers after every round, and after an acceptance we support you all the way to the stage. No agency can guarantee an acceptance, because every programme committee decides for itself. How submission through an agency works in detail is described in having your call for papers submitted.

Working with Stage Starter starts at 990 euros net a month. If you want a written roadmap first, you start with the Speaker Audit from 2,000 euros net, which is credited when you book the agency.