# Talk title: What it must do in a programme of 400 contributions

Author: Marin Niehues, Stage Starter · Published: 2025-10-15
Topic: Call for Papers & Submissions (https://www.stage-starter.de/en/blog/topic/call-for-papers/)
Source: https://www.stage-starter.de/en/blog/talk-title-it-sa-forum/

A talk title decides, at a professional conference with hundreds of contributions, whether your talk is chosen at all, as it-sa Expo&Congress 2025 in Nuremberg shows. According to the [it-sa press release of 10 October 2025](https://www.itsa365.de/de-de/news-knowledge/2025/presseinformation/it-sa-expo-and-congress-setzt-2025-neue-massstaebe), 28,267 trade visitors came and more than 400 forum contributions ran on six open forums. Spread evenly across the three days of the fair from 7 to 9 October 2025, that makes around 22 titles per forum to choose from each day. For speakers, this means that the title must state topic, audience and benefit without any explanation, both in the programme list and in the call for papers.

**The key points**
- According to the press release of 10 October 2025, it-sa Expo&Congress 2025 in Nuremberg drew 28,267 trade visitors from 64 countries and 993 exhibiting companies.
- More than 400 forum contributions ran on six open forums, and Congress@it-sa added more than 70 sessions and workshops.
- Spread evenly across three days, that is around 22 forum contributions per forum and day, from which a visitor chooses.
- A talk title is the line under which your talk appears in the programme and the call for papers, and for many readers the only one.
- The next it-sa takes place in Nuremberg from 27 to 29 October 2026.

## it-sa Expo&Congress 2025: what the press release of 10 October 2025 reports

it-sa Expo&Congress in Nuremberg is a trade fair for IT security with an accompanying congress. As the [press release of 10 October 2025](https://www.itsa365.de/de-de/news-knowledge/2025/presseinformation/it-sa-expo-and-congress-setzt-2025-neue-massstaebe) reports, 28,267 trade visitors from 64 countries came in 2025, compared with 25,830 from 65 countries the year before. The number of exhibiting companies rose from 897 to 993, and international participation grew by more than 22 per cent. The programme included more than 70 sessions and workshops at Congress@it-sa and more than 400 forum contributions on six open forums.

According to the organiser, the forum programme included the “it-sa insights” with panels, for example on career opportunities for women in IT security, and the new format CIO Match, which brought C-level executives together with exhibitors. BSI president Claudia Plattner announced that the Federal Office for Information Security will become the notifying and market surveillance authority for the Cyber Resilience Act. Event director Thimo Holst describes the fair as a meeting place for the cybersecurity community. The next it-sa Expo&Congress takes place from 27 to 29 October 2026 at the Nuremberg exhibition centre, as the press release announces.

**it-sa Expo&Congress 2025 in numbers (press release of 10 October 2025)**
- 28,267 | trade visitors from 64 countries (2024: 25,830 from 65 countries)
- 993 | exhibiting companies (2024: 897)
- 400+ | forum contributions on six open forums
- 70+ | sessions and workshops at Congress@it-sa
- 22 | forum contributions per forum and day, our own calculation assuming an even spread over three days

## Talk title: what it does in the programme of a professional conference

A talk title is the heading under which a talk appears in the conference programme and in the call for papers, the public invitation with which an organiser collects talk proposals. In a programme with hundreds of contributions, a visitor reads the title first, before opening an abstract, and the title decides which room the visitor walks into. How an organiser curates a programme is described in our article [What is a professional conference?](/en/blog/what-is-a-professional-conference/).

At it-sa, part of the programme is spread across six open forums. A title competes there with every other contribution in the forums and with the conversations at the exhibitors, which a visitor also plans for. The press release says nothing about how visitors choose their contributions. In our assessment, a visitor in this situation has little more than the title to go on when judging whether a contribution fits their problem.

## What more than 400 forum contributions mean for the visitor’s choice

The calculation is simple. More than 400 forum contributions on six forums over three days come to around 133 contributions per day and around 22 per forum and day if spread evenly. This is an assumption, because the press release gives no distribution, and since 400 is a lower bound, there were probably more titles to choose from.

Suppose a visitor can hear five of a forum’s 22 contributions on one day, because conversations at stands take time. The visitor then decides against 17 contributions, which is about three out of four titles, and makes that choice in seconds. A title that explains only in the abstract what the talk is about gets skipped in this situation.

## Talk title in the call for papers: the first line the committee reads

In the call for papers, too, the title comes first. A programme committee reads many submissions one after another, and in our assessment the title shapes the first impression with which the committee approaches the abstract. A title with a clearly stated topic and benefit gives the abstract a frame that it can then fulfil.

At the same time, the title is what later appears in the programme and in the announcements once your proposal has been accepted. You therefore write it once for the committee and once for the audience, and both read it without you. How meetups and user groups work as a starting point is described in our article on [small stages as a first step](/en/blog/meetup-talk-small-stages-speaker-agency/), and on such stages a title can be tried out before you submit.

## Writing a talk title: three features by which visitors recognise it

A title that holds up in a long programme list names, in our assessment, three things: the topic in the word your audience uses, the target group or problem, and the benefit for the listener. The comparison below uses freely chosen examples from IT security and does not come from the it-sa programme.

**Talk titles compared (freely chosen examples)**
Feature | Weak title | Better title
Example | Security rethought | Cyber Resilience Act: What manufacturers need to clarify now
Topic | Unclear | Named in the title
Target group | Open | Manufacturers of products with digital elements
Benefit | Promises food for thought | Names what the listener can settle afterwards
Effect in the programme list | Gets overlooked | Shows the right visitor in one line why to come

## Five steps to a talk title that gets chosen in the programme

1. Fix the search word: Choose the word for your topic that your audience uses itself, and put it at the start of the title.
2. Name the audience: State in the title or in the first half-sentence who the talk is for.
3. Formulate the benefit: Describe what listeners will be able to do or decide after the talk.
4. Read it without the abstract: Read the title aloud and ask yourself whether a stranger knows what awaits them in the room.
5. Test the title: Try it before submitting on two colleagues or clients and at a meetup.

**Stage Starter and your talk titles**
Stage Starter is a speaker agency for entrepreneurs and freelancers. We develop your talk with you, write several versions of the abstract and title for every call for papers, research the conferences where your buyers sit, submit on your behalf and follow up with the organisers. Marin Niehues, the founder of Stage Starter, has received more than 100 invitations and has spoken at more than 50 conferences in 30 countries on six continents, and Sessionize named him Most Active Speaker in 2024 and 2025. In a [first conversation](/en/erstgespraech/) we discuss which topic and which title will get you onto the stages of your industry.

**it-sa Expo&Congress 2025, with more than 400 forum contributions on six forums, shows that in a large programme a talk title decides within seconds whether a visitor chooses your contribution. Anyone who writes topic, audience and benefit into the title helps the visitor with the choice and the programme committee with the assessment.**

## Frequently asked questions

### What makes a good talk title?

A good talk title names in one line the topic, using the word your audience uses, the target group and the benefit. It must be understandable without the abstract. Visitors and the programme committee read it first. Ask yourself with every draft whether a stranger can tell from it what awaits them in the room.

### How long should a talk title be?

There is no fixed length, and the organiser sometimes sets a character limit in the call for papers. As a guide, a single line that is not cut off in the programme list is enough. Check the limit in the submission rules before you write.

### How many forum contributions did it-sa have in 2025?

According to the it-sa press release of 10 October 2025, there were more than 400 forum contributions on six open forums, plus more than 70 sessions and workshops at Congress@it-sa. In total, 28,267 trade visitors from 64 countries came to Nuremberg.

### When is the next it-sa?

According to the organiser, the next it-sa Expo&Congress takes place at the Nuremberg exhibition centre from 27 to 29 October 2026. Anyone who wants to speak should ask the organiser about the process for submitting talk proposals.

### Can a talk title be a question?

A talk title can be a question if it hits the audience’s problem and also names the topic. A title without topic and benefit that only aims to spark curiosity is more easily skipped in a long programme list.