Our Speaker Selection Tips

The past few weeks we have been posting introductions to our speakers for this years event. In doing so, we have received a few questions from people asking how we made our speaker selections and inquiries into what really stood out in an application.

While there were many factors that had to be looked at and analyzed when determining who would be speaking at our event, there were three main areas that we focused on when reviewing an application:

1: How well their topic fit into our theme

This first point is really one that is two sided. To start off, while it is important to remember that you do not want your speakers to all be talking directly to you theme, you really do want them to be talking around the theme. Mostly, we did not want the speakers to be repeating our theme directly in their talk, but rather talk about things that related to the theme. The second side to this was making sure that applicant’s theme and idea were suited for our audience. When reviewing speaker applications, there were many talks and ideas that were wonderful, but did not fit into the type of experience we were looking into giving our audience.

2: Stage Presence

While this one may seem like a no brainer, it really is important to select applicants based off of how poised and comfortable they are either onstage, or in their filmed application video. If they are able to be very comfortable during the application process, the idea is that the day of the event they will be able to remain that way. If they are already nervous or fidgety in the applicant video, that will be amplified the day of your event.

3: Organization of Idea

This may have been the biggest factor in our decisions. We really wanted to get a general feeling of just what the essence of a person’s message was during the application process. If we were unable to keep track of where thoughts and ideas were going, it is unlikely that a live audience would have been able to do so either. We strongly recommend that people hone in and condense their ideas to make them stronger and more efficient messages.