TrustCon 2025 Call for Proposals

A panel is a 50-minute thematic session consisting of 3-4 panelists and facilitated by a moderator.

Panels are great opportunities to investigate a topic from different points of view. Successful panels require a strong moderator who can facilitate conversation and ask succinct questions. Successful panels also require panelists who are willing to engage openly, honestly, and respectfully with one another—especially when they disagree.

When submitting a full panel, you must provide the following information:

• A draft list of possible questions to be asked and discussed.
• The name of the moderator. If you are are the moderator, be sure to note that in your submission.
• The names of your confirmed panelists.

Panels submitted without these specifics will not be considered for acceptance into the program.

Important notes:

• If your proposed panel is accepted, you (the person who submits the proposal) are considered the panel organizer and will be responsible for communicating important information (i.e., registration requirements, deadlines) to and scheduling all meetings with your panelists. We strongly recommend that you confirm your panelists are available and have organizational permission to participate before you submit your proposal.

• We will prioritize panel submissions that are intentionally inclusive of different lived and professional experiences, races, ethnicities, ages, genders, disabilities, economic statuses, and other diverse backgrounds. We reserve the right to add panelists to a session to ensure inclusivity and representation.

A presentation is a 20-minute talk that may or may not be accompanied by slides. Presentations are great opportunities to share current work, lessons learned, or how you and your team have built a product, service, policy, or organization. You may also want to present research you and your team have recently completed and/or published. Each presentation will be followed by time for Q&A.

Successful presentations are well-organized and rehearsed with explicit key points and take-aways.

Important notes:

• Only one speaker will be accepted per presentation; we will not accept presentations with co-presenters.

A workshop is a 90 or 120-minute hands-on session focused on a specific audience and with specific goals in mind. For example, you may want to plan and facilitate a workshop for trust and safety managers about how to provide online and offline security for their frontline employees.

Successful workshops engage participants in collaborative work, meet predetermined goals, and generally result in an artifact of some kind (i.e., shared notes, a template, a set of preliminary evaluation metrics).

With this submission type, you will be asked to describe the goals and outcomes of the proposed workshop, the proposed format and/or schedule of activities, the ideal number of participants for your workshop, and how the workshop will contribute to the trust and safety community. Please be sure you indicate whether your workshop is intended to run for 90 or 120 minutes.

Important notes:

• If you want to provide pre-work for your workshop, you will need to include a description in your proposal. You’ll also need to make all pre-work (for example, readings) available to potential participants during workshop registration.

• We will accept up to two speakers per proposed workshop (that is, we are accepting co-facilitators for workshop sessions).

• TSPA will provide workshop supplies such as pens, sticky notes, whiteboards, and whiteboard markers. If your proposal is accepted and you need additional supplies, you will need to provide those yourself.

Roundtables are 90-minute sessions designed to foster meaningful discussion among participants. These sessions are limited to 20 participants per facilitator and emphasize open dialogue and collaborative problem-solving. For example, you may design a roundtable to discuss cross-industry collaboration or the evolution of trust and safety policies within a specific topic. Strong roundtables include a skilled facilitator able to guide the conversation, encourage respectful disagreement, and keep the group on-track.  

Important notes:

• Roundtable submitters may indicate target audiences for roundtable participants. You can choose criteria such as roles focused on Child Safety, role types like managers, or describe a group of roles you hope to see represented. However, all roundtables are first-come-first-serve and cannot be limited to specific companies, organizations, or individuals.

• If your roundtable is selected, you will be responsible for communication and organization with a facilitator or co-facilitator. You may be required to send a copy of your questions to TSPA ahead of the roundtable. 

• You may run two parallel roundtables (totaling 40 attendees) on the same topic which will require a co-facilitator. 

Community activities are organized and led by members of the TSPA community. Their purpose is networking, gathering, or engaging in an individual activity. For example, you may want to lead a lunchtime walk, lead a lunch table for those interested in a specific topic, or set up a crafting corner attendees can engage in throughout the conference. We encourage submitters to get creative!

Important notes:

• Community activities are informal in nature and intended to connect attendees through networking. These activities do not include presentations, demos, panels, or similar programming.

• If your community activity is approved, TSPA will provide hosting space and basic necessities such as tables, tablecloths, food (if taking place at lunch), and signage. A full list of resources will be listed in acceptance emails. Hosts may bring additional materials if desired.

• Though not required, we recommend at least one co-organizer.
• Community activities are TrustCon events and do not include distributing branded handouts or merchandise from other organizations. Donations of unbranded materials are welcome and will be acknowledged in the description.