Presenter: Brady Forrest
Brady@oreilly.com
@brady

Works for O'Reilly Media - they do books, websites and events

Chairs conferences -- range from 10K to 500 including Ignite events around the country - technology focused Asked some questions to start about who attends conferences, in technology,

Gave some background about Ignite before the talk began

• 5 minute presentations generally at a bar
• Each speaker has 20 slides that auto-advance
• People usually talk about their passions

Next Ignite event in Seattle

• King Cat theater
• Taking pitches now
• April 29
• www.igniteseattle.com

His talk will focus on getting into the "organic section of the conference"

• Two ways to do this:
  
  • Paid sponsor - not talking about this
  • Call for speakers -- going to focus on this one

How conferences work:

• Each conference has a cycle
  
  • They start planning, figuring out key themes
  • Then they'll release a Call for Proposal (CFP)
    
    • Usually things like name, experience, why your talk
  • Evaluation and selection
    
    • Their job -- to get the best conference for the attendee possible relative to content
      
      • Example -- Web 2.0 conference he just ran had 6 tracks they were choosing content for -- had 1100 submissions and 200 talks, left some time open for late breaking technology
      • Sometimes speakers drop out at the last minute, don't show up…
  • Then the event takes place

Question: what happens when people don't show up -- is it good to be prepared just in case?

• Yep -- you never know, but you need to submit to the conference organizer

Pick your Target:

• You need to make sure it's the audience you want and the type of event you want
  
  • Camps you can just show up and speak
  • Formal organized industry conferences

• Most conferences have past websites -- look at them to find out
  
  • Who was the audience
  • Who were past speakers
  • Who is the selection committee
  • What were the past talks?

• Two main types of talks - conferences have different balances of these
  
  • "Boss talks" -- why your boss would send you to the conference
  • Brain candy talks - inspirational talks

• Key thing to remember -- it's about the attendees!
  
  • These are the people who pay to come -- need to give them a reason to be there
  • Not about you and your product pitch -- about giving the attendees something worthwhile
    
    • He recommends the technologies you reference be ubiquitous or easy obtainable, talks about using proprietary tools that people pay a lot of money for are more for sponsored talks
    • Good to talk about what you did and how you did it
  • If you can get really smart people who are willing to prepare and have someone who can build a great conversation that will have some conflict (not a fight) -- then a panel can be good and interesting -- but overall they aren't good

• Submitting to the Call for Proposal
  
  • The session name -- want something catchy, but something informative
    
    • Boring sounding talk people likely won't choose to attend
  • Pitch it
    
    • Need to be able to describe the talk -- both on paper and in person (he calls people to ask about their talks)
      
      • Why does he call -- to hear how you're going to talk about it -- you're speaking, not writing a newsletter :-)
    • Need to know where the talk is going to go
      
      • What are the key things people are going to get out of the talk
  • What to include in your proposal:
    
    • Good name
    • Couple sentences to describe it
    • Quick paragraph
    • Outline or blog posts talking about it
    • To show you're not just winging it
    • You must do it yourself - don't have your PR company do it
    • Video yourself doing your 2 minute elevator pitch -- they may not watch it, but it might be the one thing that tips the selection in your favor
  • Example: The rating system Brady uses to evaluate proposals for his conferences is on a 5 point scale:
    
    • 5 = great topic AND great speaker
    • 4 = great topic OR great speaker
    • 3 if you're not sure about one or the other
    • less than that -- don't worry about it
  • If you get rejected
    
    • Be an adult about it -- don't write a nasty blog post, flame mail…
    • Wait a couple of days and ask for feedback (may have to follow-up)
    • As it gets closer to the conference might want to re-pitch with improvements based on the feedback in case they have someone drop out
  • Note that conferences may also have curated content that is chosen for the conference by the event organizers - so there may not be that many spots for pitched content
  • Where online can you look for conferences?
    
    • Confabb.com
    • upcoming.com
    • techflash has an events page
    • O'Reilly Radar (the blog that Brady writes for) has a page

• Does O'Reilly pay for speakers?
  
  • Sometimes -- but usually not a lot, speakers generally get noticed doing conferences like this and then earn money by doing corporate speaking engagements or consulting engagement
  • Workshops -- since they are so much work do generally get paid
  • Might get travel paid

• Hubs for conferences
  
  • Technology -- San Francisco to San Jose is the biggest hub
  • Publishing -- New York

• During the talk
  
  • Stick to the plan
    
    • Deliver the pitch you gave -- don't switch up your slides and give a product pitch
    • It's about the audience
  • Remember your audience
  • Check-in
    
    • Encourage people to give you feedback
    • If you want to speak again might want to contact the organizer, but keep in mind having the same person/pitch year after year -- might need to change it up

• Then he went through some really bad examples
  
  • Enterprise Mashups in the Clouds -- too vague, buzzwords might be a little much
  • Automatic mapping of news reports enables global and local awareness -- bad title

• If you have a great idea the organizer might suggest a new title or adjust the content a little -- but usually only if you are established -- better to have a great pitch
• How should conferences change?
  
  • Concern about the amount of resources it takes to throw one
    
    • Paper for agenda
    • Carpet and resource usage in the convention center
  • Talking about doing mobile -- but you use the person to person

• Good audience comment about the "experience economy" --- people have enough stuff, what they are looking for now are experiences -- and conferences can provide those experiences
• From attendee perspective
  
  • Do you see value in still seeing the expo instead of going to sessions?
  • Sure -- you can get a nice browse of what's going on
  • You can often go to sponsored sessions
  • You can talk to people out and about

What do you do if the organizers are running later than expected getting back to you?

• This often happens
• Send mail to the conference alias (this usually goes to all the organizers)
• Follow-up without stalking