Only two weeks until Monday, July 1, when we begin accepting speaking proposals for the 2014 SXSW Interactive Festival.

We expect to receive more than 3000 total entries via this year's interface, so the competition for speaking slots will be fierce. How can you ensure your proposal will get high marks via public voting, as well as in Advisory Board and staff feedback? One of the most basic keys for success is proofread proofread proofread!

To this end, we are often amazed at the number of PanelPicker proposals we receive that include misspellings, poor punctuation, incomplete sentences, bad grammar and an assortment of other typographical problems. These kinds of errors are always serve as a red flag -- if you don't have enough attention to detail to catch these mistakes in your speaking application in July, then it is not likely you will have enough attention to detail to pull off a successful speaking slot in March.