Planning a Technical Event - Finding Speakers

To present a good technical event you need good speakers. There are a variety of ways you can identify potential speakers. If you are well connected it is likely you already have direct access to a couple of capable speakers. If that is the case, ask for their help to identify qualified speakers. If you don't have this luxury, the speaker hunt will probably be a more time consuming part of your planning effort. Some ways to find speakers are:

• With most things, start with what you know. You have people you would like to see speak at your event, whether your favorite blogger or a popular author. Those should be the first on the list.
• Review the speakers for other similar events. This saves you time by identifying qualified and usually well known speakers.
• Leverage social networking sites (i.e. LinkedIn) which allow you to see the connections of people you know. You may be surprised who your networks knows. Ask for an introduction and start the conversation with your potential speaker.
• Search for books and articles on the target topic. An author is normally qualified in their subject matter and many are regular speakers as well. An author with several books is not always better than someone with a cutting edge book. At the same time, if it is the writers first effort, you might want to learn more about them. Make sure the books are fairly recent, you do not want your keynote to be talking on the "Glory of Windows 95".
• Look for professional awards or certifications that identify subject matter experts. An example of this would be the Microsoft MVP program. If you are doing a Microsoft development event you can build a great list of speakers by topic, just by navigating the site.
• Asking for speaker submissions is a good way to find people interested in speaking. The key is you still have to get the word out about your event and that you need speakers.

None of the options I presented are full proof and many require significant effort. Once you have your list, you are ready to start contacting the speakers. Have your venue and date firmly in place before communicating with any potential speaker. There may be better ways to identify speakers, but I have employed most of these successfully.