The Call for Proposals is now closed.
Thank you for considering submitting a proposal to the upcoming EMEA Summit! We’re excited for our third summit and can’t wait to see all the proposals for this event.
- Summit Location: Dublin, Ireland.
- Summit Date: 6 May 2025.
- Professional Development Day (TSPA members only): 7 May 2025.
- Submission Types: This year, we are looking for proposals for Presentations, Workshops, Panels, and Roundtables. You may also submit a proposal to be a panelist. You can see full descriptions and criteria for submission types below.
This CFP closed on 23:59 GMT on 27 January 2025. We will not be able to accommodate proposals once closed.
About the Event
TSPA Regional Summits are conferences dedicated to trust and safety professionals who are responsible for the challenging work of keeping our platforms and communities safe. Unlike the global nature of TrustCon programming, summits are focused on regional priorities. Summits support TSPA’s vision to create and foster a global community of practice among trust and safety professionals by centering each region’s concerns, priorities, diversity, and culture.
This year, we are offering a second day of the summit dedicated to professional development for TSPA members, which will take place on 7 May 2025. Submitted proposals will be considered for the main Summit agenda on 6 May. However, we may invite some submissions to participate on the professional development day on 7 May.
EMEA Summit Theme
The theme for this year’s summit is, ‘Owning the Unpredictable: The Future of T&S‘. Focusing on this theme, proposals should explore how trust and safety teams can lead in a regional and global landscape shaped by constant change and emerging challenges. Submitters are encouraged to ground their proposals in forward-looking ideas and actionable strategies for adapting to new realities. Examples may include panelists across industries or regions discussing shifts in regulation and policies, focusing a roundtable on uniting different perspectives to adapt to evolving harms, or sharing research that addresses how uncertainty can be tackled in day-to-day work. These examples are included as inspiration, but submitters are encouraged to be creative with the theme.
The Programme Committee will prioritise three main subcategories within this theme, so please propose sessions that fit one of these three themes. As with the summit theme, the examples listed after each subcategory are meant to provide guidance; you are welcome to submit proposals similar to these examples or on any other topic as long as it’s connected to the theme. See more about submission types below.
- At the Forefront of Regulation. Sessions within this category should address the evolving and regionally-specific landscape of regulation impacting trust and safety practices. Proposals within this category may tackle implications of new regulatory frameworks, the challenges of complying with cross-border requirements, or best practices for anticipating and adapting to shifts in policy. Proposals within this topic may also cover data privacy laws, content moderation standards, or unique approaches to advocacy and collaboration with policymakers.
- Misinformation Across Harm Types. Proposals for topics within this theme should focus on misinformation and its effects across the spectrum of harms trust and safety teams work to prevent. This could include tools and techniques for combating misinformation on platforms, cross-industry case studies, or approaches to collaborating externally to reduce the spread of harmful information.
- Innovation as a Threat and a Tool. Sessions within this category are encouraged to address the dual role of innovation in trust and safety — both as a force that introduces new risks and as a powerful tool for safeguarding users and improving workflows. Proposals could cover quickly evolving technologies that pose novel challenges to the field (such as generative AI or deepfakes) and discuss innovations in T&S practices that improve resilience. Topics may include leveraging AI to scale safety efforts, creating agile responses to unexpected threats, or designing adaptive solutions that scale to combat evolving threats.
Submission Types
Click to expand and read about each submission type below. Pay careful attention to the important notes.
Panels
A panel is a 40-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 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.
- If you are interested in submitting yourself as a single panelist for accepted panel organizers, please complete the Single Panelist Interest Form.
Presentations
A presentation is a 25-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 organisation. You may also want to present research you and your team have recently completed and/or published. 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.
- If your presentation is accepted and includes slides, we recommend sharing a backup copy with TSPA prior to the conference.
Workshops
A workshop is a 60 or 90-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.
Important notes:
- We will accept up to two co-facilitators per proposed workshop.
- TSPA will provide workshop supplies such as pens, sticky notes, whiteboard, and whiteboard markers. If your proposal is accepted and you need additional supplies, you will need to provide those yourself.
- 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.
Roundtables
Roundtables are 90-minute sessions designed to foster meaningful discussion among participants. These sessions 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.
- Roundtables are limited to 20 participants per facilitator and we will accept up to two co-facilitators. You may run two parallel roundtables (totaling 40 attendees) on the same topic during the session, which will require a co-facilitator.
Selection Criteria
The Programme Committee will use the following selection criteria to determine acceptance.
Is the proposal complete?
Successful proposals give a clear overview of what a session will be about, with specifics about the questions it will address and the intended takeaways for the audience. Be sure that you have answered all the required questions. The Programme Committee will reject any proposals found to be incomplete.
Does the submission reify existing biases and/or prejudices?
When you submit your proposal, be sure you’ve considered how your submission challenges rather than perpetuates existing systemic biases. The Programme Committee will reject any proposals that reinforce stereotypes or prejudices.
Is the submission a sales, services, or product pitch?
Summit sessions must focus on sharing knowledge rather than promoting products or services. Your submission should focus on specific, practical insights, frameworks, or methodologies independent of any commercial offerings. The Programme Committee will reject sales pitches and product demonstrations.
Does the submission explicitly benefit trust and safety as a field and/or practice?
Proposals should contribute meaningfully to the trust and safety field. The Programme Committee will consider whether your submission strengthens the collective knowledge and capabilities of practitioners. Summit sessions should offer practical, actionable, and relevant information that can be directly applied to an attendee’s professional practice.
Does the submission introduce new voices, perspectives, and/or conversations?
We seek submissions that expand the conversation and bring fresh viewpoints. The Programme Committee prioritizes sessions that help to bridge gaps between different areas of trust and safety practice, introduce underrepresented voices and viewpoints, and challenge conventional wisdom or present alternative approaches to our work.
Is the submission applicable to the EMEA region? Will the intended audience learn something new?
Summit submissions should be relevant and valuable to the conference’s core audience: trust & safety professionals in EMEA. The Programme Committee will assess whether a proposed session’s content is appropriately scoped for our audience’s expertise level and regional considerations. Your submission should present clear learning objectives and should include as much detail as possible.
Proposal FAQs
A code of conduct reminder: Please keep TSPA’s Code of Conduct in mind as you construct slides, choose panel questions, and run Q&A. All speakers and attendees must adhere to the Code of Conduct in order to remain a part of our community and events. It may be particularly relevant to review the “Healthy Engagement and Communication” section as you consider your session design.
What happens after I submit a proposal?
The Programme Committee, made up of TSPA staff, TSPA members, and trust and safety professionals serving as volunteers, will review all proposals during the weeks after the call for proposals closes. If your submission is incomplete and/or does not meet the criteria outlined above, it will be rejected without further review.
By 10th February, we’ll email you to let you know whether your proposal has been accepted, rejected, waitlisted, or provisionally accepted. In the case of a provisionally accepted proposal, you will be given detailed feedback and invited to revise and resubmit within two weeks. We will then review your revised submission and notify you of the final decision.
In the case of a presentation, panel, or workshop, we may ask you to consider collaborating with another applicant if there’s significant overlap in topics, themes, and/or goals.
If your proposal is accepted, you’ll be invited to register as a speaker. During the speaker registration process, you’ll provide your title, affiliation, bio, and headshot. TSPA staff will then follow up with you to ensure we have all of the additional information required for a successful conference program. If you have any questions about your proposal, please contact summits@tspa.org.
Will you do another “Behind the Scenes” webinar about submitting strong proposals this year?
Our webinar “Behind the Scenes: How to Submit Strong Proposals to TrustCon and TSPA Summits” will take place on 5 December 2024. You can RSVP for the event here, and a recording will be posted on our YouTube channel afterwards.
Can I edit my proposal?
You can edit your proposal as many times as you like until the deadline, which is 23:59 GMT on 27 January 2025. Once the deadline has passed, you cannot edit your proposal. It’s important to remember that if your proposal is accepted, the abstract you provide during the submission process will be used as your session description. This description will be external-facing, available via the conference agenda and website. You will not be able to change it.
Can I submit a proposal on behalf of someone else?
Yes. If you’re submitting a proposal on behalf of someone else, you’ll be required to provide their name and email address during the submission process.
If you’re submitting a full panel proposal, you’ll be required to provide the names and email addresses for all panel participants (panelists and moderator) during the submission process. However, you’ll be the corresponding author (e.g., responsible for all communication).
When should I seek approval from my company to speak?
We highly recommend seeking approvals prior to submission. If you submit a proposal prior to seeking approval, we recommend starting the process immediately. You will have about two weeks to finalize participation should your session be accepted.
What are corresponding and presenting authors?
TSPA uses Ex Ordo, an academic conference submission platform, for the EMEA Summit Call for Proposals. This means the system uses academic terms in some places, including the author fields. A corresponding author is the person submitting the proposal, and whom we will send all our emails to about the status of the submission; the presenting author is a person who will speak at the summit if the session is accepted.
What does it mean if my proposal is waitlisted?
Being waitlisted means that your session isn’t currently included in the main agenda, but it’s considered if a confirmed session needs to drop out. If a presenter of an accepted session drops out, your proposal may be chosen to fill that slot. This typically happens if your proposal covers a similar topic or has a similar theme (e.g. we try to fill a wellness talk slot with another wellness talk). When being waitlisted, TSPA will ask for your availability and the notice period you need to prepare, to ensure we can effectively manage any last-minute changes in the summit’s schedule while respecting your need to prepare.
What if my proposal isn’t accepted?
Due to the length of the EMEA Summit, there are limited speaking opportunities. That means many great proposals will not be selected for the final agenda. If your proposal isn’t accepted, there may be other opportunities in the future to engage with the TSPA on that topic. If you’d like to support the summit in other ways such as volunteering, please reach out to summits@tspa.org.
If my proposal is accepted, will I receive a registration discount?
Yes. Summit registration fees will be covered for speakers. Speakers are responsible for travel and accommodations. If you require further financial assistance to attend the EMEA Summit, there will be an opportunity to let us know in the submission form. We cannot guarantee that we will be able to provide financial assistance, but this will help us estimate how much we will need to fundraise.
What if my proposal is accepted, but I can’t attend?
If you can’t attend, you can have a colleague present on your behalf. If you cannot find someone to present on your behalf, your submission will be removed from the programme.
What if I would like to submit myself as a single panelist?
Please complete the Single Panelist Interest Form if you are interested in providing your information to accepted panels. We will provide accepted panels in need of additional panelists with the single panelist submissions to see if there is an appropriate fit. If you are not contacted by a panel organizer on or before your provided notification date, this means that there are no panels in need of panelists with your expertise.
Note: You may receive outreach from multiple organizers. If you would like to be removed from this list at any time, please reach out to summits@tspa.org.
