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?
Ok... This time I'll be one of the speakers. Being between the "honorable mentions" is not the same :-)
It will be really helpful... Thanks Moz for this new innovation :)
Question:
I've already proposed an idea. I consider it a very good one, actionable and fitting well among the official speakers ones.
Said that... I may have also others ideas for a speech, so I am wondering if it is possible to present more ideas, as it happens in the case of SMX pitching.
We do ask that you only submit one pitch as we want the one you're most excited about. The committee does use topics to help make the final decision.
That said, I have calls with all selected speakers to discuss their topics, including tweaks and twists to their topics.
Submitted a pitch, I guess the video I have submitted from a recent conference, the suggested talk will be more advanced then this one! The description details I didn't want to go too in-depth so please watch the video =) Hopefully I can make it to MozCon so Jen & Cyrus can take me out to dinner at the steak place similar to the one I took them too in Sydney ;)
Haha! No way, if you make it out to Seattle I'll take you to one of our top vegetarian restaurants. ;)
*Has a long weekend, knows how I'm spending it.*
This is something I very much want to do. Not only would I finally get to meet all of you but I love talking about this thing we all do. *Racking brain*
Submitted. Either way I'll be there with bells on. :-)
just bought my mozcon ticket last week!
will be sending 4-6 people from my team, too! can't wait.
Sweet! Can't wait to see you and your team there, Larry. :)
Would be nice to scratch the "Speak at MozCon" off the bucket list.
Wouldn't be a bad gig would it?! Good to see that you get support from Moz in preparation - just pray for no curve ball questions that leave you stumped in front of 1,400 people....
I hear you on the Q&A thing! We're changing it up this year so no live questions from the audience. They'll submit them, our team will moderate and the emcee will ask the questions. Hopefully this helps with the random question in front of 1400 people we sometimes get. :D
The first time that I ever spoke at a search event, it was at SMX Advanced last year in Seattle. I was watching the CEO of my company do his presentation, and he ended about 20 minutes early for Q & A. Without having notified me or the others from our company watching prior to the event, he told the audience, "You know what? I've got a couple of real life link builders from our office in the audience right now. They'll answer your questions better than me."
And then called us in front of the audience, only ~200 people or so, but totally out of the blue! We proceeded to get asked pretty intense questions from the spectators. It ended up being a blast; we pulled up their sites on the projector, and just live consulted with the whole audience.
It didn't feel uncomfortable to say "Well, I don't know the answer to your question off the top of my head.. However, here's my thought process, these are the questions I would ask to get to the answer," etc.
Side tangent aside... I'm super stoked to put my hat in the ring this year. If chosen, you will be blown away by my propensity for dad jokes without ever having had any children. That and my ability to turn any Idahoan activity (camping, fishing, gold mining, growing potatoes) into an analogy for good marketing.
One of the best pieces of presenting advice I've ever received was from Rand: Be humble. Never spin a half-answer in order not to look ignorant -- the audience will respect you so much more if you simply tell the truth (exactly what you've outlined above).
Wise words. One of the best talks I saw was at BrightonSEO where the speaker (sadly I can't remember her name!) effectively said: "so, here's everything we did wrong [in this campaign]." I had so much respect for her and her agency for being so honest and transparent and for talking about the bad and the ugly as well as the good. We as marketers can learn so much more from people's mistakes than from their successes.
Is there any chance of live streaming? Meerkat app can be tested here :D
Hi there! Is it too late to submit this? I just go this shared with me over the weekend, and realized that the 12th was the date to submit. I'd really love the opportunity to pitch if there's still time.
Hi! Unfortunately, we cannot take late submissions for community speakers. It wouldn't be fair to the other 241 hopefuls who submitted. The good news is that this is something we do every year, so next April, pitches will be open for 2016.
241 in 10 days. Dang that moz community is growing.... Put that engagement metric in your pipe and smoke it.
Ouhh yeah!! Thanks for sharing!!
After attend 4 Mozcon I decide to send a pitch, feeling grateful not matter the result. I realize how much time I spend and enjoy Moz Community. See you at Mozcon!
FYI: I just noticed, the Stephanie Beadell anchor text at the bottom of the post is linked to Justin Briggs' blog.
I'll be submitting my pitch very soon. It's a fantastic opportunity, and somehow, you guys also seem to make MozCon better each year (I still don't know how you do that...). Very excited to be attending again.
Hi Dustin! Stephanie Beadell is actually a part of the Briggsby team. :) Scroll down that page a bit and you'll see both of them on the site!
Good luck with your pitch!
Me oh my! I missed that. She was at BuzzStream when she spoke last year (and Justin was at Getty)... This industry moves fast! :) Thanks Jen!
So... I've been thinking of applying but the thing that was putting me off was the travel/accommodation costs (what with me travelling from the UK n' all), but I had no idea that you included four nights' accommodation and paid towards travel. That's incredibly kind and generous of Moz - and it's a massive game-changer, as I'm now going to apply...! :-)
A quick question... You mention a word count, but I can find any mention of what that is and what it's in regard to. Is it for the topic pitch and bio fields? If so, how many words/characters do we have? Thanks!
Also: is the talk's uniqueness a factor? I was thinking of doing a variation of a talk that I'm about to do at a UK SEO conference, which is still fresh and relevant by our industry's standards - what I mean to say is that it's obviously not a topic that's years old and now obsolete! Or would it be off-putting if I gave a talk in the US based on a talk that I'm about to give in the UK...?
This is actually the first year we were able to offer travel and hotel for these speakers. I'm so happy we were able to since I know it's a barrier for many people. (In year's past, those funds have gone toward speakers like Avinash, who charge. But this year, all community, all the time. :)
Topic is 1200 characters. Bio is 600 characters. I based these on real topic pitches that we liked the best from past community speakers and medium-length bios.
We do ask that all speakers give fresh talks for our show. Speakers, of course, build on their topics, but MozCon goers can be pretty hip to what's happen all around our space, and we'd hate for anyone to want their money back because they felt they already saw all those talks.
Thanks Erica. That's a fair enough point actually... From my own experiences, I saw a speaker do a great talk at an event and then when I saw him speak at another event, he basically rehashed the entire talk, and all I could think of was: "I've seen/heard this all before..."
Right, back to the drawing board then (if I wanna apply this year) - I only wanted to submit this idea, but if it's not a goer then no worries. :-)
Submitted. I've never been to the US before. Exciting :)
Best of luck! :D
Will you consider more than 1 submission from the same person? I am sure you don't want to be inundated with too much of a good thing, eh?
Please only submit one pitch per person! We want the idea you're most excited about. As Dr. Pete says, put your best idea first. :)
Nice to see that Moz will accept community speakers! Has this been done before?
This will certainly provide MozCon with some innovative input!
This is the fourth year of our community speaker program! :D
Great to hear! Have a great MozCon!
Wow, that's a great job Erica Mc. It is really a good news for everyone who want to share their ideas and thoughts in a different way, and it would be a great opportunity for all of them who want to learn more about new strategies of SEO. Thank You Erica for updating us about to speak at MozCon. Best Of luck for All participants.
At here, since I'm thinking this idea will be flamed.
I love Moz but it suffers the same problem as almost all SEO communities in that is has everyone from those wanting to start through to those doing it for a hobby through to those traveling the world talking about it.
I'd love to create a spin-off Moz that's a little more private, SEO's who are not just doing it, but doing it well. I'm talking those driving revenues through organic search of 6 figures up. SEO's a competitive business, and sharing more openly is something that just doesn't seem to happen (I'm not talking about people who are speakers at every conference under the sun, yet have never ranked on a competitive keyword in their lives)
So flame away Moz, how stupid is my idea? I just want to meet more peers and share a little more openly than can be done in an open community.
Hey Sam, it's not a bad idea at all, and there are actually a number of those that already exist. This is completely off-topic though for this post, so let's stick to community pitches for MozCon. :)
:)
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