The strange obsession with brand new conference sessions
Every CFP season, I notice the same request.
Priority will be given to sessions that have never been presented before.
Every time I read it, I pause.
Not because I think it’s completely wrong. Because I think it’s interesting.
It’s one of the few places where we seem to believe repetition makes something less valuable instead of more.
Think about almost any other profession built around an audience.
Musicians perform the same songs for years (I’ve seen the Eagles in concert many times and they only ever get better). In fact, we’d be disappointed if they didn’t. Broadway productions are refined over hundreds of performances. Stand-up comedians spend months, sometimes years, shaping the same hour until every word earns its place. Professors often teach the same course semester after semester, becoming better educators because they’ve answered the same questions a hundred different ways.
Even keynote speakers—the biggest names in our industry and beyond—don’t reinvent themselves every weekend. They tell the stories they’ve learned tell the truth. They refine their message. They adapt to the audience. They get better.
We don’t criticize them for repeating themselves.
We admire them for mastering their craft.
Conference speaking seems to be the exception.
Somewhere along the way, many of us decided that the most valuable session is the one that has never been delivered before.
Why?
The people who travel from conference to conference are the speakers. Most attendees don’t. They might attend one or two conferences a year. They aren’t comparing this year’s session to one they saw six months ago in another city. They haven’t seen it.
The only people who usually know a session has been presented before are other speakers and the organizers.
Meanwhile, something interesting happens every time a session is delivered.
A story gets a little shorter because it dragged the first time.
A demo gets smoother because the presenter has already seen what can go wrong.
An explanation becomes clearer because someone in the back of the room asked the question everyone else was thinking.
A joke lands. Another one doesn’t.
The session evolves.
I’ve never met a speaker who gave a talk for the tenth time exactly the way they gave it the first. The content changes because audiences change it. Every question, every confused look, every laugh, every conversation in the hallway leaves its mark. They update a few slides. Change a demo to add a new feature.
By the tenth delivery, it often isn’t the same session anymore.
It’s a better one.
Of course there are exceptions. Product announcements should be new. Roadmaps should be current. Technologies evolve, and conference content should evolve with them. I’m certainly not suggesting someone dust off a deck from five years ago and call it innovation.
But I do wonder whether we’ve allowed the idea of exclusive to overshadow the idea of excellent.
If I were attending a conference, I don’t think I’d care whether I was the first audience to hear a session.
I’d care whether I was hearing the best version of it.
Maybe that’s the better question for all of us.
Not, “Has this session been presented before?”
But, “Will this audience benefit from hearing it now?”
Those aren’t the same thing.
And I can’t help wondering if, in our pursuit of novelty, we’ve sometimes forgotten the value of practicing one’s craft.
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