As the events arm of CoinDesk, the leading crypto and blockchain-focused media company, we treat Consensus - and all of our other events - as an extension of our newsroom. As such, we emphasize the editorial nature of all content that is produced on stage. What this looks like in practice is that all of our content and programming decisions are made independently of sponsorship or other considerations. There are no "pay to play" considerations made.

Please note that we do offer sponsored session opportunities. These are handled separately by our sales team, lie outside of the content team’s purview and are clearly identified in onsite branding. You can learn more about these opportunities here.

We work year-round identifying potential Consensus speakers and themes in our efforts to build a program that most accurately captures the industry’s evolution. A critical part of this process is a formal Call for Speakers and Sessions. We receive 1,000-2,000 submissions each year from the industry’s best and brightest, and can only accept approximately 10% of applicants. So rest assured that if your submission was not successful, it’s not for want of quality.

Because of our emphasis on dialogues, conversations and narratives, you won’t see as many stand-alone speeches at Consensus as you might at other conferences. The ones we do put on stage, however, are high-impact and high-value to a broad audience. Most speeches or presentations will be 20-30 minutes in length and will have question and answer periods built into the session.

Panel

The majority of the sessions you’ll encounter at Consensus are panel discussions. Our standard panel format is a tight 30 minute session with an expert moderator and no more than three participants and preferably only two. We find this structure to be most conducive to a lively and impactful conversation, and it affords each panelist sufficient opportunity to make their views known.

1:1 Dialogue

Known as a ‘fireside chat’ in other settings, we use these dialogues to highlight a noteworthy person or company representative who fields questions from an interviewer. These sessions will typically run 20-25 minutes.

Our goal is to field as many high-quality speaker submissions as we can, and we strive to give each one its due consideration. When assessing and grading these submissions, we employ a number of objective and subjective criteria. These include but are not necessarily limited to:

1. News and/or Announcements - because we are an editorially-driven event, being able to create or break news at our event is an important factor in our decision-making. If you have news (or expect to have news) that you would like to announce at our event, please be as descriptive as possible in your submission (i.e. partnership with a major insurance company). We may follow up to request additional information or detail about your announcement. These conversations can be had under embargo if desired
2. Exclusive Insights and Analysis - what differentiates the speaker from the rest of the pack? Do they have new and exclusive information or a relevant piece of new data to share?
3. What is the social media following and personal/company brand cachet?
4. Is there alignment with our broader program objectives and the topical themes that we are trying to highlight?
5. Do they have prior speaking/on-stage experience at CoinDesk events and elsewhere?
6. Does the speaker help us to achieve demographic and geographic diversity on our agenda?
7. Is the speaker a founder, CEO or C-Level executive?
8. What unique crossover appeal does the speaker possess?
9. Has the speaker been in the news, or is the speaker well positioned to speak on a topic of current editorial interest?

Other factors to consider when crafting your speaker submission:

1. Speaking slots are not inheritable. Should a speaker from Company X be accepted but then become unavailable, we reserve the right to allocate that slot to a different speaker altogether.
2. If you are a public relations professional submitting an application on behalf of a principal, the proposed speaker’s contact info must also be included in the submission. We must be able to communicate with the speaker directly to ascertain topics of discussion before approving a submission, should such a conversation be warranted.
3. All decisions are made at the discretion of the content team on a rolling basis and are final.
4. All else being equal, early submissions will be prioritized over late or last-minute ones.
5. Consensus does not pay travel subsidies except in rare instances.

Individual speaker submissions will be considered beginning in January 2024. Decisions are made by the content team on a rolling basis. Our goal is to provide applicants with a final decision by March 1, 2024.

Community Sourced Session Submissions

For full-session submissions, we will stop accepting applications on December 4, 2024. Then there will be a public voting portion for selected sessions from January 15, 2024 - February 2, 2024.

In the process of reviewing your application, our content team may reach out to learn more about the speaker or clarify items in the submission.

If you have questions about the process or a material update to your submission, please email us, but please be aware that we field a very large number of applications so may not be able to respond in a timely manner.