This is the first in a series of posts about getting speakers for your event. In this one, I'll try to focus on it from the event planner's perspective. I will have at least one more from the speaker's point of view. These posts are based on my experience as a paid public speaker for more than 20 years, and a chapter leader off & on in the interim.
Most of what I will share probably isn't applicable if you're looking for a highly known and visible keynote like a professional athlete, or if you're looking for a speaker for a huge audience. There are resources for those, including innumerable speakers bureaus, the National Speakers Association and Meeting Planners International. Rather, my focus is on connecting speakers in the information management industry with events, especially local ones, that need speakers on those topics.
So! When you're looking for a speaker for your event, there are a couple of things to consider.
What are you looking for?
What kind of meeting are you looking for a speaker for? Different speakers will have different comfort levels based on the size and type of audience. Some speakers are fantastic on, or facilitating, panels or interviews, but don't like being the main attraction.
Are you looking for someone to be on a panel, or facilitate one, or lead a breakout session, or deliver a keynote? Keynotes, in my opinion, are not just plenary sessions in front of a larger audience. More on that in a separate post. Are you hoping for someone who can fill multiple spots at the same event - or even fill a full- or multi-day event by themselves?
What topic(s) are you looking for? If it's something mainstream, what's the twist that will make it interesting to your audience? If it's cutting edge, how cutting edge is it - that is, will your audience be interested, and can you find a speaker that can make it relatable?
What you should definitely be looking for:
- Speakers who don't "sell from the podium." As a consultant for nearly 20 years, and a vendor before that, I get it. Part of the reason many of us get into speaking is to drum up business. But it shouldn't be the primary reason, and definitely shouldn't be the only one. The consultant and vendor speakers I know that are effective know that people come to learn, not to hear about my "Add Water Heat & Eat Assessment Methodology(TM)" or RMSystem's world-changing release of Version 6.2.2. Service Pack A. I wrote more about vendor and consultant speakers in a previous post.
- Speakers who are prepared. I take every single speaking opportunity seriously, whether it's a conference keynote or a chapter meeting with 10 registrants. Your speakers should do the same, meaning that their contracts are in on time, their descriptions and bios, their materials - and yes, you should review them well in advance to make sure they are meeting your audience's needs. They should be willing to do a dry run to make sure there are no technical issues, and this applies whether in person or virtually. It's your meeting and your audience. If they aren't willing to do these types of things, I'd take that has a huge red flag.
- Speakers who are knowledgeable and engaging without being too broad, too abstract, or too technical or in the weeds. This is sometimes a matter of opinion and can depend on the topic and format - you want a broad, inspirational keynote, while a workshop should be fairly specific and technical if appropriate. The key is that the speaker aligns with your expectations.
- Speakers who meet your budget! While many speakers volunteer their time, especially for non-profit-type activities like chapter meetings, they still have expenses and a day job. At a bare minimum I would expect an in-person event to cover reasonable travel costs: advance-purchase coach airfare, lodging, meals, and ground transportation. I generally don't charge speaking fees to chapters these days, at least for a typical 60-120-minute chapter meeting, but I generally do for longer sessions or for for-profit entities. Make sure you and your speaker are in alignment on this before someone buys plane tickets!
Where do you find speakers?
With all that in mind, where can you find speakers? I don't think it has to be as hard as you'd think. While there are a few dozen of us that seem to "make the rounds", I can give you a list of at least 100 speakers right now, including biographies and representative topics.
Where? If you looked at these sources going back just a couple of years, you could easily identify more than 100 speakers to pull from.
- Conference speakers. AIIM, ARMA, MER, InfoGov.Net, and InfoGovWorld all have an annual conference. Their speakers are listed on the conference website - at least while the conference is being marketed, so even if you're not going, maybe take a look at the speakers and sessions. And these aren't the only ones - look at specialty groups too, like NAGARA for government or NIRMA for nuclear energy.
- Chapter or regional event speakers. Of course you don't want to have, say, me, speak at your chapter every month or even every year. But the regional events in particular can be almost as rich a source as the annual conferences - ARMA Houston, ARMA Canada, ARMA New Jersey, and ARMA Metro NYC for example all have multi-speaker/multi-track and full- or multi-day events. An anonymous commenter underscored this at the chapter level - reach out to other chapters, including chapters outside your specific association, to get referrals for their speakers.
- IM/IG-adjacent groups. Lots of people at PMI are doing and talking about interesting things. Same with IAPP. And ACEDS. And Georgia Records Association. And PRIMA. And the list goes on. They have chapters, and conferences, and regional confabs, and user groups, and so on.
- Speakers for association webinars. An association might offer webinars anywhere from 1x/month to 1x/week. They are often end users; I'll talk about vendors and consultants separately shortly.
- Chapter leaders or members working on interesting stuff. See who's doing something interesting that they are willing, and able(!), to talk about publicly. If they are not the best at public speaking, make it an interview. Get someone else working on something similar and make it a panel. I see lots of chapters this year that had meetings about a unique role, like a police records manager or zoo registrar, and/or offered tours. Note that this doesn't have to be you, and your project, at your company - what about the work your colleagues are doing that has some relevance?
- Consulting firms. There are some really smart people that become consultants, and that broadens their perspective because instead of being a records manager or business analyst for this company, or even this industry, they are doing it across multiple companies and industries. Some of the best sessions I've ever attended have been delivered by consulting firms like Doculabs, Access Sciences (full disclosure - I worked there from 2007 - 2010), Infotechtion, and the like. Of course, due diligence and alignment of expectations is even more important here to make sure the session is not pitching their service offerings.
- Vendors. Like consultants, vendors often bring a broader perspective; and like consultants, many vendors hire from the ranks of deep dive experts to support their solution offerings, so there is some real expertise to be had. But again, like consultants, you have to be careful to set expectations that a particular presentation is not to be a sales pitch. Case studies can be fantastic, but I'd set it up to require that an end user be involved and ideally be the one talking, with the solution provider relegated to a supporting role (and same by the way with consultant case studies). I am also pretty leery of vendor speakers whose job title includes CEO, product marketing, product management, marketing, or sales. I know some fantastic speakers with those titles, but the most sales-y presentations I've ever heard - the ones I've walked out of at conferences - generally come from them.
In short, there are lots of speakers out there, and many of them are happy to share their time and energy for low or no cost. If you absolutely cannot seem to make headway in finding a speaker, reach out to me and I'd be happy to try to help - and I don't mean just as a speaker.
Possible Speakers for Your Events
In the meantime, here's a starting point of people I know are generally available as speakers and are good at it. It's up to you to reach out to them directly to discuss topics, fees, logistics, etc., but they've given me permission to include an email to contact them at.
