Most proposals are declined. At a single-track regional event with eight slots and somewhere between fifty and a hundred and fifty submissions, the great majority of good proposals lose, and they lose for reasons that have very little to do with how good they were. Understanding which reason applied is the whole of what to do next, and the decline notice almost never says.
What a decline actually tells you
A decline is one bit of information: this proposal was not among the small number programmed by this committee for this event. It is not a judgement of the idea, the speaker or the writing, because the committee never made one of those independently of the day it was assembling. A programme is built, not ranked, and the last places go on fit.
Why there is no reason attached: a committee that declined sixty submissions cannot write sixty pieces of feedback in the same fortnight it is building a schedule, chasing confirmations and answering sponsors. The silence is capacity, not disdain. Events that offer feedback on request are doing something genuinely unusual, and asking one that has not offered is asking for unpaid work.
The four reasons, and what each one implies
Balance and capacity. The commonest by a distance. The day was full, or already had three talks aimed at the same experience level, or the committee had committed a slot to a newcomer. Nothing about the proposal caused it and nothing in the proposal needs to change.
Collision. Two or more proposals covered the same subject and a single track could spend one slot on it. The proposal that lost was frequently the better written of the two, and the difference was often the speaker’s track record rather than the text.
Unclear. The reader finished the abstract without being able to say what the talk was about or who it was for. This is the only band where rewriting is the answer, and it is a minority of declines.
Wrong event. The subject was outside what the audience came for. The fix is a different conference, not a different proposal.
Working out which one applied
The published programme answers it, and it is available within weeks. If a talk on the same subject appears, that was collision. If the day is full of talks at one level and the proposal sat at a different one, that was balance. If nothing resembles the proposal at all and the event clearly had room, the honest reading is that the abstract did not land, and the abstract is what to work on.
Read the programme that was published. It is the feedback.
There is a fourth signal worth noticing: whether the same event has declined the same proposal twice. Once is noise. Twice is a pattern, and at that point the proposal is worth showing to somebody who has served on a committee before sending it a third time.
Resubmitting, and what to change
The default is to resubmit unchanged, because in four cases out of five nothing was wrong. A talk declined for balance at one event is frequently the exact talk another event is missing, and rewriting a proposal that was never the problem tends to make it worse: the specifics get sanded off in an attempt to broaden the appeal, and specifics were the strength.
Where something does change, it is usually one of three things. The title, which is the cheapest part to rewrite and the one carrying the first twelve seconds. The scope, where the proposal promised a survey and the talk underneath it is actually about one thing. Or the format, where a forty-five-minute proposal is resubmitted as a twenty-minute talk and becomes much harder to decline.
One thing to add rather than change: the notes field. Saying that the talk has been given before, where, and what changed since is useful to every committee that reads it, and it converts a fact that might otherwise be discovered into one that was volunteered.
When to retire a talk
A talk has a life, and it ends. Three or four outings is a normal run at regional scale, after which the subject has usually either become common knowledge or stopped being true. The signal is not declines, it is the room: a talk that used to produce questions and now produces polite nodding has finished.
Retiring a talk is not the same as retiring the underlying work. The second version of a talk, written two years later about what actually happened afterwards, is frequently stronger than the first, and it is a new proposal rather than a resubmission.
The mechanics upstream of all this are on the call for speakers page, and what the committee is doing while the pile sits unanswered is set out on the review process. If the change worth making is to the proposal itself, that work is on the abstract and the title, and the proposal builder walks through both.
Questions
Why was my proposal declined without a reason?
Because a committee that declined sixty submissions cannot write sixty pieces of feedback while it is also building a schedule and confirming speakers. The absence of a reason carries no information about the proposal, and it is the normal case rather than a discourtesy.
Should a declined proposal be rewritten before resubmitting?
Usually not. Roughly four declines in five are caused by balance, capacity or collision, none of which the proposal can do anything about. Rewriting in those cases tends to sand off the specifics, which were the strongest part of it.
How can the actual reason be worked out?
Read the programme when it is published. A talk on the same subject means collision; a day pitched entirely at one experience level means balance; an event with obvious room and nothing resembling the proposal points at the abstract.
Is it rude to ask a committee for feedback?
Not rude, but it is asking for unpaid work from volunteers in their busiest fortnight. Where an event offers feedback on request, take it. Where it does not, the published programme answers most of the same question at no cost to anyone.
How many times can the same talk be submitted?
As often as it stays true and stays useful, which is commonly three or four outings. The signal to stop is the room rather than the declines: when a talk stops producing questions, the subject has become common knowledge and the talk has finished its run.