It's Your Turn: Now Accepting Community Speaker Pitches for MozCon 2015

Yep, it's that time of year, friends. Time to submit your online marketing talk pitch for MozCon 2015. I'm super excited this year as we'll have 6 community speaker slots! That's right—you all are so amazing that we want to see more from you.

The basic details:

• To submit, just fill out the form below.
• Please only submit one talk! We want the one you're most excited about.
• Talks must be about online marketing and are only 15 minutes in length.
• Submissions close on Sunday, April 12 at 5pm PDT.
• Final decisions are final and will be made in late April.
• All presentations must adhere to the MozCon Code of Conduct.
• You must attend MozCon in person, July 13-15 in Seattle.

Submissions are now closed. Thank you so much to everyone who submitted a pitch! Best of luck!

If you are selected, you will get the following:

• 15 minutes on the MozCon stage to share with our audience, plus 5 minutes of Q&A.
• A free ticket to MozCon. (If you already purchased yours, we'll either refund or transfer the ticket to someone else.)
• Four nights of lodging covered by us at our partner hotel.
• A reimbursement for your travel (flight, train, car, etc.), up to $500 domestic and $750 international.
• A free ticket for you to give to anyone you would like and a code for $300 off another ticket.
• An invitation for you and your significant other to join us for the speakers' dinner.

We work with you!

Pitching for a community speaker slot can feel intimidating. A lot of times, our ideas feel like an old hat and done a million times before. (When I say "our" here, I mean "mine.")

At MozCon, we work with every single speaker to ensure your presentation is the best it can be. Myself and Matt Roney dedicate ourselves to helping you. Seriously, you get our personal cell phone numbers. Don't get me wrong—you do the heavy lifting and the incredible work. But we set up calls, review sessions, and even take you up on the stage pre-MozCon to ensure that you feel awesome about your talk.

We're happy to help, including:

• Calls to discuss and refine your topic.
• Assistance honing topic title and description.
• Reviews of outlines and drafts (as many as you want!).
• Best practices and guidance for slide decks, specifically for our stage.
• A comprehensive, step-by-step guide for show flow.
• Serving as an audience for practicing your talk.
• Reviewing your final deck.
• Sunday night pre-MozCon tour of the stage to meet our A/V crew, see your presentation on the screens, and test the clicker.
• A dedicated crew to make your A/V outstanding.
• Anything else we can do to make you successful.

Most of the above are required as part of the speaker process, so even those of you who don't always ask for help (again, talking about myself here), will be sure to get it. We want you to know that anyone, regardless of experience or level of knowledge, can submit and present a great talk at MozCon. One of our past community speakers Zeph Snapp wrote a great post about his experiences with our process and at the show.

For great proposals:

• Make sure to check out the confirmed MozCon 2015 topics from our other speakers so you don't overlap.
• Read about what makes a great pitch.
• For extra jazz, include links to videos of you doing public speaking and your slide deck work in the optional fields.
• Follow the guidelines. Yes, the word counts are limited on purpose. Do not submit links to Google Docs, etc. for more information. Tricky submissions will be disqualified.

While I can't give direct pitch coaching—it would be unfair to others—I'm happy to answer your questions in the comments.

Submissions are reviewed by a selection committee at Moz, so multiple people look at and give their opinions on each pitch. The first run-through looks at pitches without speaker information attached to them in order to give an unbiased look at topics. Around 50% of pitches are weeded out here. The second run-through includes speaker bio information in order to get a more holistic view of the speaker and what your talk might be like in front of 1,400 people.

Everyone who submits a community speaker pitch will be informed either way. If your submission doesn't make it and you're wondering why, we can talk further on email as there's always next year.

Finally, a big thank you to our wonderful community speakers from past MozCons including Stephanie Beadell, Mark Traphagen, Zeph Snapp, Justin Briggs, Darren Shaw, Dana Lookadoo, Fabio Ricotta, Jeff McRitchie, Sha Menz, Mike Arnesen, A. Litsa, and Kelsey Libert, who've all been so amazing.

Still need to confirm you'll join us?

Buy your ticket!