From Audience to Authority: Breaking Into Conference Speaking

Many of the audience would love to come up on stage and give a talk of their own – but they don’t know how to find openings, submit a talk, and give a speech, or they’re scared, or they don’t know what they might talk about. This talk goes into all that, except speaking (see Toastmasters).

Would you like to go up on a stage in front of dozens, maybe hundreds, of people at a conference? (And probably get your ticket paid for, and maybe your travel expenses too?) Does the thought excite you, scare you, or maybe both? Come find out how to figure out a good topic, organize your thoughts into a speech outline, create slides, find images for them, find conferences accepting submissions, craft your submissions, submit them, track them, actually deliver your presentation, and what to do afterward. Before you know it, you’ll be gallivanting all over the world as a speaker… or doing it remotely if that’s your preference.

This is applicable to non-technical conferences, but the vast majority of my conference-speaking experience (but not all!) is at tech ones.

Agenda: - Why you might want to present at a conference - Why you might NOT want to - Very basics of Public Speaking, and some resources - What’s different about conference speaking - Finding a Topic - Finding Conferences - Choosing Conferences - Tracking Your Submissions - At the Conference - After the Conference - FAQs - Wrapup

I’m a good choice to speak on this because I’ve delivered about fifty conference presentations, on five continents and counting.