Tips For Submitting Proposals To Sex Positive Conferences
Reid: Hello everybody, it’s Reid Mihalko from https://reidaboutsex.com/ creator of Sex Geek Summer Camp and I am here with guest star today in the early morning.
Cathy: Beautiful morning.
Reid: Beautiful morning here in Portland, Oregon right outside of Portland and Cathy Vartuli of http://theintimacydojo.com/ what’s your advice for sex educators, workshop facilitators you know anybody who goes to conferences but for sex educators specifically like submitting proposals so that you can speak at a sex positive conference? And as Cathy answers that question, say Hi from wherever you are today. And look at, look at the sunbeams behind us
Cathy: That’s beautiful
Reid: This is amazing
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: This is good
Cathy: And birds all over, it’s gorgeous.
Reid: Hard to believe that, it’s all fake.
Cathy: It’s not
Reid: We’re in a studio somewhere in Burbank, California.
Cathy: There are no cars going by.
Reid: No
Cathy: So, one of the things actually you help me with this, my very first conference I had never submitted before and Reid’s like “Why don’t you just submit? You never know.” Any…I’d met a few people through Reid and I was brand new to the sex geek community but I presented a lot at other conferences
Reid: Yeah
Cathy: for engineering
Reid: Cathy has PhD’s and patents and things like that.
Cathy: So I…what I did, one of the things I encourage people to
Reid: Lots of patent. Is it patent or patent, patent, patent?
Cathy: Patent
Reid: Patent? Patent, how do you pronounce patent? Put that in the comment
Cathy: I’m not going to say it right anymore.
Reid: Okay. Alright, see? Patent
Cathy: He suggest “go ahead and submit.” So what I encourage people to do is actually read that when they do a call for papers or proposals there’s an actual section what their theme is, they actually spend a lot of most conferences spend a lot of time developing that theme and if you can weave what you want to talk about with that theme, that what that’s going to it’s going to show them that you actually paid attention and it’s more likely to get their attention.
Reid: And they’re excited that…that look a proposal that actually fits into our theme.
Cathy: Something related to it.
Reid: Oh my goodness
Cathy: And then also just…I submit more than one proposal. I don’t just submit one because you never know where the gaps are and if you get to know people that help organize it you can say “Hey, what do you need this year? What…what do you feel like you’d really want to target?” So you can actually as you start getting go into more conferences you can kind of weave that in but when you’re just starting off you may not have that but you can find a friend like you go up to someone and they…you admire. Find someone you’d like to get to know better that has a philosophy you really like and say “Hey, I’m thinking about submitting a proposal around this topic. Is there some place where you can you know what would you like is there anything you’d like to say about that?”
Reid: Why you’re talking to me? Talk to the microphone.
Cathy: Well, I was using you as an example like when we were talking
Reid: Use them as the example
Cathy: Okay so
Reid: When would you like to be used as the example like Cathy just takes her attention away from you
Cathy: I’m so sorry
Reid: Right here on Facebook
Cathy: I’m so sorry. Yeah, just like you go up to them and you like say “Hey, can we get copy and brainstorm together?”
Reid: U-huh
Cathy: And if I don’t know someone well enough, I’ll often ask them to do some YouTube videos or YouTube interview with me first just to see how we flow together, if we have a similar philosophy, I’ve done a
Reid: So you don’t want to create a panel with a bunch of people that you end up realizing you don’t like
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: when the panel’s happening
Cathy: Yeah and I’ve done a couple of video interviews that have ended up in the trash, not very many but like halfway through I realize the person’s philosophy was totally opposed to mine so it’s a lot easier to spend 10 minutes on a video and toss it away than a whole conference where you’ve got to submit everything.
Reid: Sure
Cathy: And then find a bunch of people if you can, find out what the…read the…again, read the actual submission guidelines and say “Oh, there’s four people. What four people can I include that would make this a really diverse, inclusive, powerful panel?” I like to include people that don’t always agree exactly with what I’m saying because that makes it a lot more interesting for people and then just actually write it up and have other people look at it if you can. A lot of times that there’s not a lot of time ASEC deadline is this Wednesday coming up, Catalyst is the end of the month I think and Convergence Con is on the middle of November
Reid: There’s…there’s a season for certain for certain submissions
Cathy: Yeah and what I do? It annoys Reid because I ask way ahead about it
Reid: Keep talking, it’s just, just a little battery warning.
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: Everyone’s used to it
Cathy: Yeah, they’re…it’s what happens. You need a new iPhone 10.
Reid: Wow, here we go, here it goes. It’s not even old yet and she’s shaming me about not
Cathy: No, no, no
Reid: having a new phone.
Cathy: It’s enticing you
Reid: Yeah, yeah, okay alright
Cathy: I will actually submit different versions of it to different conferences when you don’t know if it’s going to be
Reid: Why is it annoying to me?
Cathy: Well, ‘coz I asked you to decide way ahead if you’d like to be on conferences and that… way ahead
Reid: Oh yeah that’s annoying, that’s annoying.
Cathy: I’m like
Reid: I don’t…I can’t barely plan out like what…what are we doing today? Oh Sex Geek Mastermind yeah
Cathy: Yeah so I’m saying so for next May and April
Reid: For 2018 Reid, which conferences do you want to submit to?
Cathy: Yeah. So what I do is I submit like I…I make them different enough like when I talked about beauty and status and influence, and then we’re going to talk about and we’re going to talk about how beautism affects sexuality so like they’re not the same talk but they’re…they’re along the same rate of vain so I can look at what the conference has for a theme and weave that in and make several submissions that are similar but not with the same panel if they’re willing or similar panel and then I can get them all done usually like at October, November I get all of my submissions done for the following year and then I just wait to find out.
Reid: And…and that can be really useful if you’re…like if your area or specialty is a certain topic or if you’re starting to you know launch not taking over a certain topic but wanting to be more known for a certain topic, doing panels when you bring in a bunch of people that are also really articulate and have some really great information, one you get to promote their work but you also get to actually have a live conversation in front of other people about these topics. And then what about any tips for diversity?
Cathy: That’s…like I try to be as diverse as possible, I ask a lot of people, I spend a lot of time on that well [Inaudible 00:06:02] has a list and maybe you’ll put the link below
Reid: I’ll put the link
Cathy: And also just sitting down with people that you think like you like I like going to talk so other people haven’t seen how they present that’s one way I’ve done it, going down to other people YouTube channel and it can be someone who’s never gone to that conference though I sometimes will pull the previous year’s proceedings and go down the list and see who…’coz like if someone’s been to the conference before it’s more likely they’re going to be a yes to come back again.
Reid: Yeah and also if you’re, if you if you’re going to a conference and you’re looking for local educators like people who don’t have to fly in or rent a hotel
Cathy: That’s great
Reid: again like you…now you’re promoting not just your work but the work of the people who are local to that specific city or town or area of the country so there’s all kinds of diversity too, right? It’s just not sex educators from the big city kind of a thing. We’ll put some links
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: in the thing we’ve got to we’ve got to cut this short because we’ve got Sex Geek Mastermind happening today.
Cathy: Maybe we can come back another time and talk about what to do to promote
Reid: Never. No, no, no, no. How about you all ping Cathy and tell Cathy to start doing some more Facebook lives.
Cathy: Cathy doesn’t like doing lives by herself.
Reid: What? We’re alone right now Cathy?
Cathy: No but I can’t
Reid: you just you just you just…they’re right there, they’re right there. Leave some emoticons so that Cathy knows that you’re watching, that we’re not alone, that we’re not alone. Leave your comments and questions, Cathy does we’ll read the comments and questions, we’ll put some stuffs in the links. Thank you everybody for being part
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: see look, they’re right here. You just, you just ignore them like
Cathy: No
Reid: they’re not there
Cathy: No Reid, no
Reid: like they don’t, they don’t matter. Oh my god Cathy, they’re never going to invite you on their panel
Cathy: Oh no
Reid: Never, never.
Cathy: [Laughing]