Do you have an educational TTRPG that you think would help educators?

Do you have experience using TTRPGs to teach or help students?

Are you using TTRPGs for therapy and SEL skill-building?

Are you a librarian running youth programs in a low funding environment?

Consider submitting a proposal to SXSW EDU 2026 to help others with your XP, raise awareness, share tips with others who face the same challenges, and meet folks who working in the same sphere!

I’ve presented at SXSW EDU 2023 and 2024, and I’ve been on the SXSW EDU 2025 advisory board! I’ll be on the board again for 2026 and would like to help others both find the convention and feel empowered to send in a proposal (that meets what the conference is looking for). I want to share my XP so you know what the even it all about and can create a talk, workshop, panel, etc that will help others.

What is SXSW EDU?

SXSW EDU is a yearly educational conference that proceeds (and is now somewhat overlapping with) the famous film, media, and music festival that is held every year in Austin, Texas.

Educators and educational-focused professionals from around the world come to speak at the conference and share thier strategies, advise, and experience with other educators who can take this information back to their schools and school districts.

In addition, educators and librarians in many states are required to complete Continuing Education Credits to stay certified, and this conference is a mecha for folks to earn these credits while also being able to connect with others in their profession.

What is SXSW EDU 2025 looking for?

SXSW EDU is education focused but VERY MUCH understands that a lot of education takes place outside of traditional classrooms. Libraries, therapeutics, arts programs, and more are all welcome and part of the conference as well.

For this year (2025), SXSW EDU is looking for proposals about or including:

• Education at all levels (pre-K, K-12, higher ed)
• Grass roots movements
• Community building
• Success stories
• Library and museum focused content
• Therapeutics and SEL
• Diverse groups of folks

Why should I send a proposal to SXSW EDU?

In 2024, over 228k people attended SXSW EDU either in person or online to listen to speakers talk about what they’re passionate about and what they felt could help in the classroom and in youth-focused programs. That’s A LOT of people connecting, looking for knowledge, and seeing your work.

SXSW EDU is a concentrated conference full of educators who are specifically looking for new ways to teach and connect with their students.

If you have an educational TTRPG (or other youth-focused project) that you think could benefit teachers or students with classroom use OR if you have specific experience that you can share with other educators to help them with classes or in using TTRPGs with students, this affords you the opportunity to get your voice out there and help the EDU community with your work.

How do I submit a proposal?

You’ll need to submit your proposal through the SXSW EDU panel picker page here (make sure you select SXSW EDU and not SXSW).

The form will require you to submit information about your proposal, details for you and any co-presenters, and a short video so the judges can see your presentation style.

This MUST be submitted by July 27, 2025.

Recommendations from TTRPGkids on your proposal

There are a TON of submissions to SXSW EDU, and only a fraction are selected, so it is a pretty competitve environment. It can be hard to submit a proposal that gets accepted, but it helps A LOT if you follow the recommendations by SXSW EDU and make your proposal evaluator-friendly.

I want to use my XP to help you submit a proposal that gets noticed!

I’ve been part of five successful submissions in three years, one in each of the following: panel, solo-presenter, workshop, mentor session, and meet up.

Between these five submissions and having been on the advisory board (which is a part of the proposal selection process), there are some key features of a presentation that will help it be selected by the advisory board and during community voting.

* as a note, I am on the advisory board, and to be fair in judging, if there is a conflict of interest with me judging any proposal because of my work in TTRPGkids with that person, I will excuse myself from judging that proposal and the rest of the advisory board will evaluate it. The tips here are for general use.

Include all presenters in your video

If you’re submitting for a workshop or panel that will have multiple presenters, make sure that ALL of the presenters that you are listing are in the video. This helps the board to see that all the speakers are able to be in a presenter role and talk comfortably about their topic.

Keep your video concise, clear, and candid

Keep your video under 5 minutes (shorter, if possible) while still explaining your material. This shows that you know what the key points are about your topic and it helps reviewers to stay focused during your pitch (they have many to watch).

You don’t need to clutter your proposal with graphics and animations and whatnot – the easiest ones to review are usually ones where folks have just recorded their group on zoom with an organized explination of their work. Your passion for the topic will shine through much more brightly than the fancy fluff… and it can save you A LOT of time.

Choose an interesting and focused topic

If you choose “TTRPGs and Education” as your presentation title, this is probably too broad, and it may be hard to delivery on what everyone wants to know about every point in “TTRPGs and Education”.

If you choose a topic like “Classroom TTRPGs: Blending STEM and Social Skills Development” or “Using TTRPGs to Teach the Engineering Problem Solving Process”, that sounds a lot more interesting and is just focused enough that you could give a 1 hr talk on it while still hitting what most of the audience would expect.

Focus on how you can help versus a product

If you’re coming in with a game that you’ve made and want to show how it can help in the classroom, be careful to not turn it into a sales pitch. The core focus should be on the strategies and knowledge that you offer for educators to take away from your session, not on how awesome your particular product is.

The SXSW EDU attendees AND the selection committee are really sensitive to sales-pitch talk. If you go in helping folks with your work, people will see that and then you show where they can find your work, chat with people after, and keep connecting on your product.

Choose a format that needs more submissions

SXSW EDU has a certain number of spots available for each type of session format, and they get a lot of submissions for panels, which means that if you submit for a panel, you face a bit more competition than if you submitted for a workshop. If you can run a quality workshop for the event, submit for a workshop if you can! If you want to do a panel with your colleagues but think that you could also run a solo-presenter session, submit both proposals in case the panel spots are full but they pick your solo proposal.

Most competitve proposal type (harder to get your proposal selected):

• Panels

Less competitve proposal types (easier to get your proposal selected):

• Performance
• Solo talk
• Workshop

If you’re submitting about TTRPGs… make your proposal understandable by someone who doesn’t know what a TTRPG is

Not all of the advisory board is deep into TTRPGs or knows what a TTRPG is. A large part of the selection process also comes from community voting, and this will include people who are there to see educational content and may not know what a TTRPG is.

Because of this, don’t assume that the evaluators are going to know general TTRPG terms. The earlier title examples can demonstrate this. If someone doesn’t know about TTRPGs and they see “TTRPGs and Education”, they may pass it up since they don’t know what half the title is. However, if they see “Classroom TTRPGs: Blending STEM and Social Skills Development”, it’s clear that this new acronym is doing something interesting with STEM and social skills. Then, in the explination, give a very brief explination of TTRPGs (i.e. collaborative storytelling games) and focus on the benefits – the longer TTRPG demonstration or chat can come when you present or run your workshop at the conference, if necessary.

Basically, make sure you define your non-TTRPG part really well so people can still get an idea of what you’re talking about.

What if my SXSW EDU proposal is selected?

If your proposal is selected, CONGRATS! You’ll need to attend SXSW EDU in Austin, TX in 2026 to present and you’ll get a free presenter pass to the conference to be able to attend other events yourself as well.

You will have several months to prepare for your talk, workshop, or other event between being confirmed and the actual conference, so there’s lots of time to plan (though it can feel like it goes by fast).

When I’ve presented, the SXSW EDU team has been very responsive in providing helpful materials and answering questions about any kind of set up for my specific events. The conference itself is also AWESOME. I was able to connect with so many wonderful educators and TTRPG players through the events, and I’ve kept in touch with several of them since meeting. In addition, I had the opportunity to attend many talks on my own and learn about the latest in educational spaces, which I’ve been able to feed back into content on TTRPGkids and in my games. Austin is a great and inclusive city in general, and the conference itself has been a welcoming environment, in addition to being a great opportunity to learn from others while sharing your own knowledge.

With that, I wish you luck with your proposals, and if you have any questions about it, please feel free to reach out to meet at hello@TTRPGkids.com! I’d be happy to chat, and I look forward to hopefully seeing some TTRPG folks at the conference next year!

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