How to recruit great speakers for your conference (and avoid the terrible ones)

Speaking at conferences and running training programs for corporate groups represents about half of my revenue these days. I speak at about 30 conferences a year and have an opportunity to hear some amazing speakers and also many incredibly terrible ones.

The worst speakers prattle on about their stupid products instead of educating and informing the audience.

In my experience, these awful speakers come in two main categories:

> Those who are chosen by conference organizers because they signed up as a "Platinum Sponsor." These speakers assume they have the right to bore audiences because they paid for it.

> The second group are "big names" (such as a company CEO). Because these speakers are chosen for their brand value ("hey, he's CEO of XYZ Company!") instead of their ability to hold an audience with a compelling presentation, these speakers often suck big time. When one of these big names steps up to the podium, the audience is anticipating something extremely interesting. But then within five minutes of some inane nonsense about how their services work, half the crowd is playing blackberry. Ugh.

So I am intrigued by the way that a conference called Business Software 2007 is recruiting some of its speakers: with a Software Idol contest. If you want to speak, you have to submit a short YouTube video "on a topic that will inspire, and be relevant to, an audience of software executives. Start off by saying who you are, that you want to speak at Business of Software 2007 and then pitch. Your video should be no more than 3 minutes long."

How cool is this approach?!

Even better, visitors to the web site can vote on who they would like to hear! The selected contest winners will have expenses paid to speak at the event.

Beats the heck out of some windbag CEO talking about their "flexible, scalable, cutting edge, mission critical solution for improving business process."

Comments

[Neil Davidson]

David,

Thanks for the link to the conference. Hopefully I'll see you there? Or maybe you want to submit a video yourself?

- Neil

PS There's a conference blog at http://blog.businessofsoftware.org where I'll be posting interviews with speakers and other interesting topics between now and the conference

[oggigorilla]

David,

I went to a conference hosted by the San Antonio Technology Accelerator Initiative in April. You guessed it, ATT, the platinum sponsor, had their tech guy speaking at a banquet honoring innovators in technology. And, while the speech should have been on the role of innovation in technology or how San Antonio could work on developing more technology, it was a pitch for the new ATT bundle video/phone/Internet services.

As the PR guy for the event, I was aghast that the SATAI management decided to have this guy speak. And, if I was the ATT PR guy, I sure would have told him to put together a short five minute speech on the topic.

When I graduated from the Air Force NCO Academy in 1993, the four star general who gave our graduation speak took only three minutes, but the message was right for the group and the evening.

[David Meerman Scott]

Neil, Alas, I cannot make it this year. It would have been nice to see the results of your great idea.

oggigorilla, thanks for posting your experience. Unfortunately this sort of thing happens too often. And it annoys people a great deal and ultimately harms a brand because people talk about the offending company (as you are doing here).

Thaks to you both.

David

[Barrett Niehus]

Great speakers are hard to find, and it is only fitting that they audition. I recently attended a speaker training workshop, and the instructor was a professional stage director. It is amazing how appropriate stage direction and acting lessons are for training great speakers.

-4MySales

[David Meerman Scott]

Barrett, you are absolutely right. In my younger and thinner days I acted in TV commericals (in Japan). That acting experience was essential to my current work as a keynote speaker and seminar leader.

Thanks for stopping by my blog.

David

[Nancy Williams]

Coming across this post made me think of a conference I was at just recently, where one of the speakers felt it necessary to give a 45 minute presentation on how fantastic her company was, and how many big names they had worked with.

This in amongst a fantastic lineup of people talking about blogging best practice and how to use social media.

It made me realise that speaking at a conference is not dissimilar to writing a blog post. If you provide value for the audience, laced with a good dose of entertainment, people will talk about you for days or weeks to come. If you fill it with thinly veiled marketing hyperbole, you can be sure to not just lose the audience, but lose any future credibility from the people watching.

Not sure why so many people don't get that?