After 2 years of CFP rejections, what actually makes a conference talk get accepted? I’ve been applying to speak at tech conferences for \~2 years now and haven’t been selected yet. I’m trying to understand how this works in practice, because from the outside it feels like: \- a lot of accepted speakers are developer advocates or frequent speakers. \- many talks are either very polished or on niche/deep topics. \- and increasingly, trending areas like AI seem to dominate. Which makes me wonder where does that leave beginners or regular engineers? Do you need to: \- already be an “expert” in something niche? \- or be really good at packaging and presenting ideas? Or is the CFP process unintentionally favoring people who already have speaking experience?…