How to find a technical speaker who does not throw tomatoes
The topic of conferences for the Russian-speaking space is very complex. The share of those who are convinced that conferences are chatter and a waste of time and money is quite large, since the low level of reports, poor organization, too much advertising are too common and do not contribute to the achievement of the goals for which such events are organized.
In IT, everything looks better. This sphere is more focused on export and faster adopts and introduces Western habits, concepts, business standards.
How to find speakers with excellent technical reports - the root component of any conference? Especially if you have never done such things before and do not plan to contact an event-agency.
You can outsource handouts, sell tickets and organize all sorts of little things, but no agency will perform the task of finding speakers with excellent technical reports better than you.
Our company is developing modules for the world's most popular e-commerce platform - Magento. The Meet Magento network conference has been held in different countries for several years in a row. Amasty conducts it in Belarus for the second time, and we have something to tell you about the independent search for technical speakers.
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In general, the number of Magento developers is not very large compared to other developer communities. This circumstance greatly complicates the search. Both in the past and this year we were faced with the task of drawing up a program for the whole day, consisting of current technical reports diluted with one or two reports on e-commerce topics.
Among technical speakers, on average, fewer people who publicize their name, actively communicate with colleagues and are generally present in the media space. Therefore, sometimes the speakers need to literally dig out from the ground.
The final conversion of letters into speakers was 3.5%. If you plan to have 10 reports in the program (with the expectation that someone might not come, forget, break the collarbone, give birth to twins, or simply refuse), then you need to find almost 300 suitable candidates and write them letters.
It is necessary to scroll through all the relevant contacts in your messengers, mail, lists of partners and major customers.
No need to be limited to direct contact with potential speakers. This is especially true of candidates from other cities or countries. Often, the company itself is interested in the performance of its employee , paying all expenses of the speaker.
In the case of Meet Magento Belarus, we needed to make a list of companies from Belarus, Ukraine and Russia that work with Magento. The task is not easy, since many companies are encrypted and do not directly indicate the location of their offices or development centers.
We started with LinkedIn and looked at which companies are listed in the profile of Magento developers from the above countries.
The next step is to check the search engine for all possible variations of keywords in the Magento theme of developing and creating a store on Magento. Do not forget about the English language and the addition of the name of the country in the query.
Next, we downloaded the data from the official directory of Magento-certified developers for the necessary countries - a couple of dozen companies.
But that's not all! Sometimes the only sign by which one can understand that a company really has a Russian-speaking office is a vacancy. Therefore, we went through the issue of the request “Magento Developer” on popular job search sites like HeadHunter.
At the last stage, we looked for Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian large stores on Magento. In addition to ready-made lists that can be found on the forums, you need to put in the browser a plug-in identifier of the site platform and check the lists of the top 50 online stores for each country. Here are the sites from the portfolio of companies we have found.
In our case, these were conferences in Minsk, Moscow and Kiev on the topic of e-commerce, PHP and Magento.
In any popular forum, there are always gurus and masters.
Down with skepticism!
Since LinkedIn search is limited to a free account, you can and should attend to buying one of the LinkedIn Premium plans. Then you will be able to send InMail messages, use a more advanced search. Those who do not want to allocate funds for this functionality, you can cheat a little and use Google:
LinkedIn also has landing pages with top profiles by subject, country, company. They are not always 100% relevant, but it also helps to find more interesting people.
But that is not all. In LinkedIn there is another interesting option: if you are in any group for more than four days, and your free account is older than 30 days, then you can send 15 emails per month to group members without sending them a request to add to contacts.
Look for the authors of educational materials of any kind on your subject - perhaps among them will be interesting characters. In the case of development subjects, you can also search for those who provide code review services.
For example, in our case these were hosters, companies that make statistical services for e-commerce parts of Magento, export and import tools. JetBrains (creator of PHPStorm) for the second year in a row become sponsors of the Meet Magento Belarus conference.
“ What kind of project was it, I won’t say, no, I won’t say the subject matter either ” and “ how many downloads did we have in the app store? I will not say, you will calculate this application "- these are real phrases of a living person. In response, I just want to ask: are you serious?
If the speaker’s report is replete with such “holes”, it is better to exclude it altogether from the program. Your listeners have paid money and / or want to spend their time with benefit.
Specify, specify, ask to reformulate, let it not make you feel overly meticulous and intrusive. At this stage, it is desirable to exclude any misunderstanding of the topic and format of the report so that there are no surprises at the event.
It’s not at all necessary for your speaker to approach Google or Apple top managers in terms of audience exposure. For a technical specialist, there will be enough intelligible speech, logical and consistent presentation of thoughts and professional gestures and facial expressions.
Another five years ago for a conference with a number of people over 150 gold standard was one year. That is, ideally, exactly the year determined the date of the event, the conference room was booked, the search for speakers and partners began.
Now IT specialists are very mobile, and it is unlikely that you will be able to agree with the speakers so much in advance.
It is necessary to start the search 6-3 months before the date of the event. Six or three depends on your event. The wider your audience, the later you can begin to act. In our case, the audience is not too large, and we started writing to potential speakers about 6 months before the event.
As a result, two months before the event, the Meet Magento Belarus 2015 program was fully formed.
Why is this so important? Spectators very rarely agree to buy a ticket to the conference if they are not aware of the speakers or at least the approximate topics of the reports. In general, the early formation of the program gives you more opportunities for PR activities and frees your hands in the last weeks before the event.
The ideal option is when a potential speaker immediately reports that he has an interesting topic that he would like to share with the audience.
If the candidate has a desire to speak, but there is no clear topic, you can and should be helped by outlining the framework to ask leading questions.
This ema should be very close and familiar to him , that is, he worked closely with her or understands it at least at the advanced level. In addition, the topic of the report should be relevant, fairly new or unusual and interesting for at least 60 percent of listeners (and better - all 80-90%).
For the report, uniqueness is important, as well as the personal experience of the speaker . Simply put, it is hardly worth inviting rank-and-file employees with rank-and-file topics (with the exception of educational conferences for beginners or students, as well as sponsorship reports).
It is extremely vicious practice - to give the speaker a topic , and then expect him to figure out how the student is preparing for the diploma defense. This is not interesting to the audience, since everyone knows how to google, and besides, the speaker can very shamefully “fill up” on questions. Although many candidates still say something like: "Give me a topic, and I will speak." The main ideas should come precisely from the speaker, because it is he who will broadcast them from the stage.
The search for speakers is absolutely not typical for most IT companies. However, someone will have to do this work.
In our opinion, the perfect combination is a tandem of a marketing / sales specialist / HR and a technical specialist. The first one will do all the work of making lists, writing letters, and solving organizational issues. The technician should be as experienced as possible with experience attending thematic conferences, as he will evaluate the quality of the proposed topic. If you do not have such a tough technical specialist, you can form an organizing committee and involve gurus from other companies in it.
And why avoid conflicts at all, you will surely ask, for no, they say, there is no court. Despite the fact that now the book “Do not work with m * dakies” is very popular, any good manager will tell you that you also need to be able to refuse - so that you can disperse without unnecessary sharpness. Who knows, you may have to work with this person in the future.
So, if you refuse to speak to a speaker at your conference, then you need to explain reasonably why you are doing this.
In case of refusal, a universal psychological rule applies: you reject a specific report and comment only on it , you should not criticize the candidate himself, evaluate his competence, level of professionalism or anything else aloud.
The second rule: refusing, give something in return . Give a person a discount on a ticket, tell me that you will contact him next year, wish success in speeches at other conferences.
NB: anyway, someone will be offended and will long and meticulously ask why you refused.
A lot of articles have been written about such letters (outreach emails), in which there is everything: from choosing a headline to sending time, from the optimal length of a letter to recommendations for follow-ups. We will not repeat common truths, but only add something from ourselves:
For example: “ We were impressed with your performance at Conference X last year and therefore would like to invite you ... ”; “ Your experience in X would be very interesting to our audience ... ”.
If you use any email tool to send, it is also worthwhile to conduct an A / B test of the header or text of the mailing.
Whether to invite paid speakers is only a matter of the budget of your conference.
But if you call the speaker on an absolutely free basis, be prepared to explain why he needs it.
If you cover any expenses of the speaker, help with the visa - immediately inform about all these options in the first letter.
If you refused to speak to the speaker, or he himself refused because of employment or the absence of a coherent topic, this is not the last step in your work on the conference.
In the next letter or call, offer the candidate something else:
To summarize, the search for excellent technical speakers for an event is both a very routine and very creative business. Sometimes you have to show miracles of ingenuity to find personal contacts of candidates or to get an answer to your letter.
In any case, if you have long wanted to organize an IT event - now you have a plan for finding technical speakers.
In IT, everything looks better. This sphere is more focused on export and faster adopts and introduces Western habits, concepts, business standards.
How to find speakers with excellent technical reports - the root component of any conference? Especially if you have never done such things before and do not plan to contact an event-agency.
You can outsource handouts, sell tickets and organize all sorts of little things, but no agency will perform the task of finding speakers with excellent technical reports better than you.
Case
Our company is developing modules for the world's most popular e-commerce platform - Magento. The Meet Magento network conference has been held in different countries for several years in a row. Amasty conducts it in Belarus for the second time, and we have something to tell you about the independent search for technical speakers.
')
In general, the number of Magento developers is not very large compared to other developer communities. This circumstance greatly complicates the search. Both in the past and this year we were faced with the task of drawing up a program for the whole day, consisting of current technical reports diluted with one or two reports on e-commerce topics.
Among technical speakers, on average, fewer people who publicize their name, actively communicate with colleagues and are generally present in the media space. Therefore, sometimes the speakers need to literally dig out from the ground.
The final conversion of letters into speakers was 3.5%. If you plan to have 10 reports in the program (with the expectation that someone might not come, forget, break the collarbone, give birth to twins, or simply refuse), then you need to find almost 300 suitable candidates and write them letters.
How we made the contact list
- personal contacts and recommendations
It is necessary to scroll through all the relevant contacts in your messengers, mail, lists of partners and major customers.
- search through companies
No need to be limited to direct contact with potential speakers. This is especially true of candidates from other cities or countries. Often, the company itself is interested in the performance of its employee , paying all expenses of the speaker.
In the case of Meet Magento Belarus, we needed to make a list of companies from Belarus, Ukraine and Russia that work with Magento. The task is not easy, since many companies are encrypted and do not directly indicate the location of their offices or development centers.
We started with LinkedIn and looked at which companies are listed in the profile of Magento developers from the above countries.
The next step is to check the search engine for all possible variations of keywords in the Magento theme of developing and creating a store on Magento. Do not forget about the English language and the addition of the name of the country in the query.
Next, we downloaded the data from the official directory of Magento-certified developers for the necessary countries - a couple of dozen companies.
But that's not all! Sometimes the only sign by which one can understand that a company really has a Russian-speaking office is a vacancy. Therefore, we went through the issue of the request “Magento Developer” on popular job search sites like HeadHunter.
At the last stage, we looked for Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian large stores on Magento. In addition to ready-made lists that can be found on the forums, you need to put in the browser a plug-in identifier of the site platform and check the lists of the top 50 online stores for each country. Here are the sites from the portfolio of companies we have found.
- Related conference speakers
In our case, these were conferences in Minsk, Moscow and Kiev on the topic of e-commerce, PHP and Magento.
- forums, stack exchange, professional groups in social networks
In any popular forum, there are always gurus and masters.
Down with skepticism!
Since LinkedIn search is limited to a free account, you can and should attend to buying one of the LinkedIn Premium plans. Then you will be able to send InMail messages, use a more advanced search. Those who do not want to allocate funds for this functionality, you can cheat a little and use Google:
LinkedIn also has landing pages with top profiles by subject, country, company. They are not always 100% relevant, but it also helps to find more interesting people.
But that is not all. In LinkedIn there is another interesting option: if you are in any group for more than four days, and your free account is older than 30 days, then you can send 15 emails per month to group members without sending them a request to add to contacts.
- books, courses, trainings
Look for the authors of educational materials of any kind on your subject - perhaps among them will be interesting characters. In the case of development subjects, you can also search for those who provide code review services.
- Also, if you are looking for foreign speakers, directories of speakers may be useful.
- companies that develop languages, related services, tools, software
For example, in our case these were hosters, companies that make statistical services for e-commerce parts of Magento, export and import tools. JetBrains (creator of PHPStorm) for the second year in a row become sponsors of the Meet Magento Belarus conference.
What kind of speakers do you not want to see on your event
- Speaker, in which every second phrase is "spelled" NDA
“ What kind of project was it, I won’t say, no, I won’t say the subject matter either ” and “ how many downloads did we have in the app store? I will not say, you will calculate this application "- these are real phrases of a living person. In response, I just want to ask: are you serious?
If the speaker’s report is replete with such “holes”, it is better to exclude it altogether from the program. Your listeners have paid money and / or want to spend their time with benefit.
- a speaker who speaks solely for the purpose of advertising himself, his services, product or service. Such a statement is permissible only in the framework of sponsorship.
- the speaker, who is an excellent specialist in his field, but does not know how to speak
- a speaker who can speak but is not an excellent specialist
- a young (or not) unrecognized genius who wants to show his unique and unparalleled invention to the world (script, service, patch, new kind of database, new programming language, underline)
How to determine how good the speaker and his topic?
- ideal if the speaker has already spoken somewhere, and you have the opportunity to watch a video with his report
- Ultimately, the speaker must provide the working title of the report, a brief description and abstracts . If at this stage there are problems, then you should think about the appropriateness of inviting this candidate.
- If you have doubts, ask questions!
Specify, specify, ask to reformulate, let it not make you feel overly meticulous and intrusive. At this stage, it is desirable to exclude any misunderstanding of the topic and format of the report so that there are no surprises at the event.
- If you are not sure that you will be satisfied with the oratorical qualities of the candidate, ask him to devote ten to fifteen minutes of talking on Skype.
It’s not at all necessary for your speaker to approach Google or Apple top managers in terms of audience exposure. For a technical specialist, there will be enough intelligible speech, logical and consistent presentation of thoughts and professional gestures and facial expressions.
When to start looking for speakers?
Another five years ago for a conference with a number of people over 150 gold standard was one year. That is, ideally, exactly the year determined the date of the event, the conference room was booked, the search for speakers and partners began.
Now IT specialists are very mobile, and it is unlikely that you will be able to agree with the speakers so much in advance.
It is necessary to start the search 6-3 months before the date of the event. Six or three depends on your event. The wider your audience, the later you can begin to act. In our case, the audience is not too large, and we started writing to potential speakers about 6 months before the event.
As a result, two months before the event, the Meet Magento Belarus 2015 program was fully formed.
Why is this so important? Spectators very rarely agree to buy a ticket to the conference if they are not aware of the speakers or at least the approximate topics of the reports. In general, the early formation of the program gives you more opportunities for PR activities and frees your hands in the last weeks before the event.
Theme selection
The ideal option is when a potential speaker immediately reports that he has an interesting topic that he would like to share with the audience.
If the candidate has a desire to speak, but there is no clear topic, you can and should be helped by outlining the framework to ask leading questions.
This ema should be very close and familiar to him , that is, he worked closely with her or understands it at least at the advanced level. In addition, the topic of the report should be relevant, fairly new or unusual and interesting for at least 60 percent of listeners (and better - all 80-90%).
For the report, uniqueness is important, as well as the personal experience of the speaker . Simply put, it is hardly worth inviting rank-and-file employees with rank-and-file topics (with the exception of educational conferences for beginners or students, as well as sponsorship reports).
It is extremely vicious practice - to give the speaker a topic , and then expect him to figure out how the student is preparing for the diploma defense. This is not interesting to the audience, since everyone knows how to google, and besides, the speaker can very shamefully “fill up” on questions. Although many candidates still say something like: "Give me a topic, and I will speak." The main ideas should come precisely from the speaker, because it is he who will broadcast them from the stage.
Responsible for working with speakers
The search for speakers is absolutely not typical for most IT companies. However, someone will have to do this work.
In our opinion, the perfect combination is a tandem of a marketing / sales specialist / HR and a technical specialist. The first one will do all the work of making lists, writing letters, and solving organizational issues. The technician should be as experienced as possible with experience attending thematic conferences, as he will evaluate the quality of the proposed topic. If you do not have such a tough technical specialist, you can form an organizing committee and involve gurus from other companies in it.
Humiliated and offended. How to avoid conflicts at this stage?
And why avoid conflicts at all, you will surely ask, for no, they say, there is no court. Despite the fact that now the book “Do not work with m * dakies” is very popular, any good manager will tell you that you also need to be able to refuse - so that you can disperse without unnecessary sharpness. Who knows, you may have to work with this person in the future.
So, if you refuse to speak to a speaker at your conference, then you need to explain reasonably why you are doing this.
- the report does not correspond to the subject, audience, format of the conference
- you doubt the quality of the report (will it be complete, informative)
- ...
In case of refusal, a universal psychological rule applies: you reject a specific report and comment only on it , you should not criticize the candidate himself, evaluate his competence, level of professionalism or anything else aloud.
The second rule: refusing, give something in return . Give a person a discount on a ticket, tell me that you will contact him next year, wish success in speeches at other conferences.
NB: anyway, someone will be offended and will long and meticulously ask why you refused.
What and how to write?
A lot of articles have been written about such letters (outreach emails), in which there is everything: from choosing a headline to sending time, from the optimal length of a letter to recommendations for follow-ups. We will not repeat common truths, but only add something from ourselves:
- Yes, most likely, you will use the letter template, because it’s impossible for all 300 people to write a completely unique and personal letter. The text about the conditions of participation, links to the details of your event can be copied. But it is vital to include in the letter at least one or two noticeable proposals personally for the speaker .
For example: “ We were impressed with your performance at Conference X last year and therefore would like to invite you ... ”; “ Your experience in X would be very interesting to our audience ... ”.
Tearchange patterns! As correspondence with the candidates you will ask questions. Include replies in an updated email.
If you use any email tool to send, it is also worthwhile to conduct an A / B test of the header or text of the mailing.
Whether to invite paid speakers is only a matter of the budget of your conference.
But if you call the speaker on an absolutely free basis, be prepared to explain why he needs it.
If you cover any expenses of the speaker, help with the visa - immediately inform about all these options in the first letter.
Do not miss the opportunity to cooperate.
If you refused to speak to the speaker, or he himself refused because of employment or the absence of a coherent topic, this is not the last step in your work on the conference.
In the next letter or call, offer the candidate something else:
- ticket discount
- conference partnership or sponsorship
- ask him to recommend a person who would be interested to speak
- How else will you be helpful to each other? Feel free to ask this question directly.
Conclusion
To summarize, the search for excellent technical speakers for an event is both a very routine and very creative business. Sometimes you have to show miracles of ingenuity to find personal contacts of candidates or to get an answer to your letter.
In any case, if you have long wanted to organize an IT event - now you have a plan for finding technical speakers.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/293926/
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