Tag-Archive for » speaker selection «
America has a love-hate-relationship with American Idol.
We boo the negative naysayer and painfully honest founder and judge Simon Cowell. Although we often secretly agree with what he has to say.
We applaud the effervescent Ellen DeGeneres when she says she likes a finalist and compares them to an unripe banana. Although we know she is struggling to find something positive to say when a singer does a poor job.
The entire process of finding the next American Idol is very similar to the process of finding the right speakers for your conference. It takes an extraordinary amount of time. And it can be extremely frustrating as you often have to review a lot of losers before you find a winner.
So how do you identify a winning speaker and know that your audience will agree. Let’s take some tips from the American Idol Playbook to see how those judges sift through the bad and mediocre performers to find the outstanding gems and diamonds in the rough.
1) American Idol judges say: You’re a bit indulgent, aren’t you?
You know these speakers. They’re the ones that are over-the top, selfish and pleasure-seekers. They are there to serve as a mouth piece for their company, their books, and their products. They have the famous bright white speaker smile and handshake.
Speaker selection takeaway: You want a speaker that is transparent and that provides a presentation that is content-rich with relevant information that will help your audience succeed, not one that is clearly there to sell their books.
2) American Idol judges say: That was completely forgettable.
Quickly, can you name one highpoint from the last keynote presenter you heard? Probably not.
But how can we forget, “Yes, we can.” Or “Ask not what you can do for your country.” Those are memorable.
Speaker selection takeaway: Find a speaker that has a memorable presentation that arouses the brain and uses some good adult learning techniques such as repetition, audience participation and storytelling.
3) American Idol judges say: That sounded like a random act of copy cat Karaoke.
It sounds all too familiar, like rehashed, refried, regifted déjà vu and in the end, it’s still just black beans. You might hear an attendee leave this presentation and say something like, “Frankly, we’ve heard better people outside of the subway station on their soapboxes.”
Speaker selection takeaway: Find a speaker that has a message that is unique, compelling and memorable not a carbon copy cookie cutter faux presenter.
4) American Idol judges say: That was very authentic and true to who you are as a performer.
How sincere is the speaker? Does their message feel like a slick, snake-charmer, potion carrying, slimy used car sales approach? Or can you tell by the way the presenter interacts with the audience that they are speaking from the heart, are genuine and the bona fide real thing?
Speaker selection takeaway: Find a speaker that is genuine, realistic, legitimate and sincerely honest. This is one that connects with the audience.
5) American Idol judges say: You have no charisma or stage presence
“I think you are amazingly…wait for it…wait for it…dreadful. I don’t think another human being on the planet will ever sound or act like you.” Ouch! Honest and to the point.
Can you imagine the American Idol judges saying, “Wow, those words were so good, even though you didn’t sing them with much meaning and you couldn’t connect to your audience, you’ll be the next American Idol for sure. America will love you.”
Not! They probably would tell the candidate, you can’t make it on stage but obviously you’re a good song writer, so go write songs.
Speaker selection takeaway: Find a presenter that has great delivery and communication skills such as good eye-contact, appropriate gestures, and correct body language.
Need more help understanding good delivery presentation skills when selecting a speaker? Start with CommCoach: An Online Video and Speech Resource by Professor Corinne Weisgerber for tips on what to seek in a speaker with good delivery.
6) American Idol judges say: Yo Dog, I like you. I like your smile and your look. Unfortunately, that wasn’t very good for me.
We’ve all seen the judges struggling with something positive to say about these finalists. Their looks are attractive and they dress trendy. Unfortunately, it stops there. The judges remind them that it’s a singing competition and in the end, the audience won’t vote for them just based on looks.
Speaker selection takeaway: Choose a speaker that has a memorable message that hits it out of the ballpark. Your attendees want more than just a message that is a bag of air and looks good on stage.
In Conclusion
Ultimately, on American Idol it’s all about viewers picking up the phone or texting their vote for a finalist. For your conference, it’s about your attendees voting by picking up the evaluation and letting you know that they feel as if they got their money’s worth…and returning to next year’s event.
If your attendees are like the ones at my conferences or events, they will complete an evaluation if the speaker is outstanding or painfully terrible. If the speaker is really bad, and I mean really bad, you’ll hear about it for sure.
If the speaker is mediocre or average without much depth to their message, the attendees usually won’t take the time to complete the evaluation. They walk away with a “So what, apathetic attitude.” They weren’t moved to tell you how they feel or what they learned. You didn’t move your audience to vote.
So heed some advice from the American Idol judges to move your attendees to vote, return to the next show and find the winning American Idol Conference Speaker.
What other American Idol speaker takeaways would you add to the list? Share them with us.
Dear Association X (insert your association name here):
I have been a member of your association for several years. I am writing this open letter to you about your annual conference and event speakers, and how they map to my professional development needs.
For the past several years, I have attended your annual meetings and listened to your speakers. I have walked into your general sessions and listened attentively to your choice of keynote speakers. I have sat there and wondered why you chose that speaker and what you were trying to convey, especially if it was the opening general session or luncheon speaker.
And, I’m still perplexed.
I don’t understand why you have paid five- and six-digit fees to secure marquee names like Nancy Brinker, Jeff Corwin, Bill Cosby, Nancy Grace, Jay Leno, Collin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Barbara Walters or any other famous person. We can turn on the TV or click on a website and watch these people any time. Unless they have something specific to say to my job, my industry and my work, I don’t want to hear them. And your insistence to use them only repels me from attending these sessions.
So why do you keep hiring speakers for your general sessions that are not relevant to my professional life? Do you actually think that a big name famous person helps convince my boss that the company should pay for my attendance to your event? Do you really believe the bull from that the speaker bureau representative that the marquee name will put butts in chairs?
So does that marquee name cause me to want to pay for your registration fee? NO! Actually, it causes me to question whether you really know me, my wants and needs. It makes me wonder if you understand your members and our work at all.
OK, I agree that some sports figures will put butts in chairs. And some politicians will too. So when you put a big name like Sarah Palin or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on your agenda for a general session, you will attract an audience. And you will also divide your audience because your speaker cannot speak to the industry without taking political sides. So you attract half of your membership and distance the other half. Is that worth it?
Yes, I understand that you’ve negotiated a great discounted rate with the speaker’s agency. And yes, I understand that your intentions are to motivate and inspire me. And yes, I get that the speaker may have a worthy cause such as the environment.
But seriously, what does their “universal message for the masses” have to do with my professional and personal life? Will it help me do my job better? Is there relevant practical information provided in their speech? Is it memorable? Are their takeaways I can apply immediately?
Or is their message another moving moment of cotton-candy fluff? Is it a message that tugs on my heart strings, get’s my emotions going and I promptly forget as I walk out of the room?
And when you pick four or five professional speakers that talk about “universal messages” and don’t customize anything for your audience, I feel like you’ve made a deal with the speaker bureau to showcase speakers so others will hire them. If I wanted to go to a speaker’s showcase, I would. If I wanted to attend a day of “Motivational Messages,” I would.
And why do you allow speaker selection by committee or board members? Why do you crowdsource the speakers? Why do you continue to take speaker proposals and only select speakers from those proposals?
Do you pick the conference location and venue by committee? Do you pick your AV team and food and beverage by committee?
Of course you don’t! You allow the experts, those skilled in hotel contracts and negotiations to secure your venue. You depend upon your meetings professional to work with the local venue’s chefs or catering managers to choose the right food and beverage for your audience. You hire an AV company that has expertise, great equipment and strong opinions on how to make your event shine.
So why do you insist on allowing the content, the meat, the main product of your conference to be chosen by committee and board members? Oh yeah, it’s political and those people think they know best. But does that serve us, your members?
Don’t you think you should allow experts in education, speaking and training to choose your content and meat? Don’t you think you should allow those that are skilled in finding speakers that understand the neuroscience of presentations help guide your content? Don’t you want people who have experience with adult education helping design your general sessions?
Sure you do.
So, stop it. Stop the madness now. Stop choosing marquee names unless they have something specific for our industry. Only bring us a big name if they are willing to customize their canned speech for the conference’s theme and the industry. Stop fooling yourself that a motivational message from a speaker of a feel-good cause is the right thing to do. It isn’t! It only works if the audience profession is related to that issue.
Of course you should still offer a call for speaker proposals. Sure you should still take suggestions from your speaker’s bureau rep. Absolutely, you should allow your annual conference committee to have input and score speaker proposals. And yes, you should crowdsource topics–not speakers–topics. And you should leave the final content and speaker decisions to a team of experts, not the Board, the committee or even the Association executive.
Just remember, as the association, it’s your job to get out in front of the industry and lead us. It’s your job to show us what’s new and next, not what’s now and yesteryear. It’s your job to lead me, your member to new ideas and better ways of business. It’s your job to bring us relevant, timely, current information. It’s your job to secure experts at molding the conference content.
If you don’t, I’ll stop going to your conference. And, I’m not the only one that will stop. Many of my association friends will too. We’ll say you’ve become status quo and not connected with your members.
We’ll use the “I” word. We’ll say you’ve become irrelevant.
And as my association friend Jeff De Cagna says, “What could be a clearer indication of your irrelevance than the announcement (and subsequent debate) of your own relevance?”
Signed,
Your dues-paying member.
In early history, golf was reserved for the royals, played with sticks and pebbles over natural landscapes.
During the Industrial Revolution, golf clubs and balls became mass produced and inexpensive enough for more of us to chase the little white ball around a fairway, rough and other hazards. Today, there are millions of golfers in the world and thousands of professionals.
So what does this have to do conferences and events? Everything. And I’m not referring to conference golf tournaments either.
With more than 28,000 golf professionals, who are recognized as experts, these are the best of the best. Each April, approximately 90 golfers tee off at the Masters. These masters are unsurpassed at executing, at performing.
However, this doesn’t mean they are necessarily masters at teaching or presenting golf. In golf, it is well understood that mastery of play and mastery of instruction exist separately.
David Leadbetter is probably one of the best examples. He’s well-known as an excellent golf teacher and coach. If you want to improve your game, you go to him. Yet, if you were going to choose a partner in a match and had a choice between Leadbetter and any of the top 20 players at the Masters–choose one of the top 20.
Why? Leadbetter is a master at teaching. The top 20 have mastered playing the game.
Unfortunately, what is so clear in golf is not always so clear in the world of conferences and meetings. Conference organizers ask masters, those we know as subject-matter experts, to present when presenting may not be their strength. These masters know their skills inside-out. Yet knowing how to perform a skill and being able to present that skill to someone else are two entirely different things.
It’s possible to be a great presenter or coach and not be able to execute at the highest level. Only a few are able to do both equally well.
Why? Let’s return to golf for an explanation. To be one of the best in the world requires hours and hours of practice. Those best of the best focus on honing their skills. How they execute golfing has to be their focus. Teaching or coaching someone else becomes a distraction. They’d rather be doing it than showing someone else how to do it.
Similarly, the best presenters get their joy not out of their own play, but in helping someone else move to a new level. They know how to analyze each part of the game: grip, setup, swing, club selection, course management and more. They also know how to explain things in a variety of ways, so if one explanation doesn’t help the learner get the picture, another might. Great presenters have a lot of patience.
That doesn’t mean that golf teachers can’t play the game. They can play and frequently, they play it well. Yet, that is not their focus. Their focus is multiplying and replicating their knowledge in others.
So the next time you are considering people as conference presenters, ask:
- Is this candidate a presenter, a performer, or both?
- Are they more of an expert at their game or an expert at helping others improve their game?
- Is the potential presenter doing things to improve their skills to teach and present?
- What is this candidate doing to create the optimal learning environment?
- What is this candidate doing to ensure that what the attendees learn in their sessions transfers back to their game?
Think long and hard the next time you decide to secure the master or subject matter expert to present. Is that master as presenter in the best interest of your attendee or learner? Does that master really focus on improving their game or improving how they help others learn their subject? Will that master be able to help change behavior?
Understanding this fundamental concept that the mastery of play and the mastery of instruction exist separately, is foundational to a successful conference. Applying this concept, that some are good teachers and motivators, and some are good performers, accurately, can help conference organizers craft a great attendee experience.
We’d like to hear from you. How do you choose who gets to present at your conferences or events? What are some of the best practices for presenters and teachers? Think about some of the best trainers or presenters you’ve ever had. What made that person so effective?
Recently, several bloggers have written about conference speakers including their own personal experiences as a presenter.
Six things to provide to help your conference speakers succeed.
- Some have discussed how a conference organizer has surprised them with magnification of the Twitter feed on the stage while they presented. They didn’t know this was going to happen before they presented.
- Others like Patrick O’Keefe have written about the conference speaker’s responsibility to conference organizers and attendees.
- Michael McCurry posted about the importance of providing guidance to your speakers, especially if you are hosting a hybrid event.
- Midori Connolly provided Speaker Tips and Guidelines for those presenting to virtual audiences.
- TED Conference organizers shared their TED Commandments for speakers.
- Andy Sernovitz suggested ways to help your speakers talk about your event.
I’ve been on both sides of the presentation gig—as the presenter and as the customer or conference organizer. I know that the closer to the event, the more last minute minutiae the conference organizer handles, and the less likely he/she will think about the presenter. (I admit it. It happens to me as the organizer!) I also know that typically I’m not the only customer the speaker has as they are usually traveling from one conference to another.
Speaker Helpful Tips & Guidelines
If you’ve ever hired a professional speaker, you’ve probably signed a speaker contract that contains the details of the event and the deliverables. You’ve also probably completed a lengthy speaker questionnaire that asks the A to Z of the event and audience. (Speakers, if you don’t have a questionnaire for your customers, you might want to create one.) I also require all my industry speakers to sign a contract too.
When I secure a speaker, I’ve already done my due diligence to make sure their content is the right fit and that they have better than average delivery skills. While the signed speaker contract has all the important information, I know that my attendee’s satisfaction is directly related to my speaker’s success. So, it’s imperative that I help the speaker succeed and do the best they can.
In addition to the speaker contract, I require that all of my speakers complete the following documents. (Go ahead and download them for your own files. They’ll help!)
- An AV form with their specific requirements
- An audio/video recording release (I require all speakers to sign this, even if they are denying permission to record their presentation.)
- A travel and lodging form
- A Speaker’s Guidelines Form (includes information about using non-sexist and non-discriminatory language, the use of intellectual property, as well as a non-sales from the podium) This is an important form that protects you, the conference organizer and lets the speaker know you expect professionalism.
I also provide two more things:
- At least one conference call a couple weeks before the event to discuss all the last minute details
- A customized speaker’s tip sheet – this contains the speakers hotel arrival, departure, confirmation number, presentation room, av, etc.
If there were one take away I could give you to help your conference speaker succeed, it would be the customized speakers’ helpful info sheet. Your speakers will love you if you provide this a couple weeks in advance of their presentation. And, they’ll send plenty of kudos your way for it.
What other steps do you take to help your conference speakers succeed? Share your tips with readers.
There seems to be an important theme lately in some bloggers posts.
The topic de jour is the poor quality of conferences.
These bloggers are tired of paying for negative conference experiences. Their posts give conference organizers some insight into what attendees really value at events.
Conference attendees speak out about their experiences.
Olivier Blanchard has some harsh, strong and truthful thoughts about social media conferences. His thoughts apply to all events, not just social media conferences.
Thoughts On The Sorry State Of Social Media Conferences- Comments From Readers
3 Conferences & A Funeral – Part 1: Good Conferences Vs. Pointless Conferences
Don’t miss the 70+ comments from conference attendees too. There’s gold in them there attendee hills.
Nathaniel Whittemore wrote The Conference Is Dead (…Does Anyone Care?). He has more than 20 comments, many from dissatisfied attendees. More than 600 people clicked the link I sent out about this post so a lot of people are reading it)
Angela Rao-Brown wrote Are Conferences Really Necessary? about the 2009 SHRM conference.
What do these posts and comments all have a common?
- Dissatisfied conference attendees
- Average presentations with boring speakers typically chosen from “a call for proposals”
- Monologue presentations with little audience engagement
- Lack of structured peer-to-peer learning and facilitated networking
- $200-$600 registration fees for status-quo conference experiences
I think these writings are a wake-up call to meeting and event professionals. So what can we do differently to provide a better experience for attendees? How can we create more value for our attendee? How can we create raving evangelists of our conferences and events?
Here are eight things meeting and event professionals can do to provide remarkable, purple cow, unique experience with stellar content
1. Focus on the strategic and education design of the conference first.
What are the goals of the event? How do we provide a memorable, unique and remarkable experience? Think strategic first. Then proceed to the logistics and details of the event.
2. Think holistically about the attendee experience.
Put the attendee first. What can we do to upgrade the attendee experience? If it fits with the goal of the event, how can we create a unique, themed experience from the first marketing piece to the post-event reflections? How can attendees help create the experience? Think of Disney, Starbucks and Vegas which all have experiential elements. Stay away from hokey themes. What “Wow factors” can we employ?
3. Find some unexpected and unusual experiences to shake up the traditional conference format.
Do all presentations have to happen at the front of the room? What about using multiple small stages throughout the room? What about in-the-round? Think about the music you’ll use for walk-ins and walkouts. Consider the décor as it affects the experience.
4. Include money in the budget to pay for quality speakers.
It is imperative that conference organizers at a minimum cover conference registration, lodging, travel and expenses when securing speakers. Stop asking professional speakers to present for free. Write incentives into speaker contracts. If the speaker scores 80%-90% favorable from attendees according to your evaluation process, give them a bonus of $xx amount of dollars. If they score 91%-100% favorable, give them a higher bonus. You get the picture. Put the burden of the speaking performance back on the speaker. They’ll either live up to the job or stop asking for fees to speak.
5. Decide what topics should be discussed before choosing speakers.
What trends are impacting attendees? Identify the niche groups in your audience and topics that will attract each. Think about advanced topics too. Choose the topics first, not the speakers. Then find speakers to meet those topics. Don’t depend on the call for proposals to provide you with the best speakers or best topics. Search for the right speakers and current thought leaders. Talk to those thought leaders and ensure that they know how to present using good adragogy (adult learning techniques). Once topics are chosen, think of ways to extend that content by providing basic and foundational content through webinars and blog posts before the event. Then provide advanced content onsite.
6. Consider how to provide the best education design possible for those living in a Web 2.0 world.
Is this conference only about those attending the face-to-face event? Or do you need to engage a larger community including virtual attendees? What social elements can you add to the conference to extend the community experience? Should you provide a genius bar, free Wi-Fi, a bloggers lounge, etc. View the face-to-face conference as one touchpoint within a larger eco-system of the community experience.
7. Choose a variety of presentation delivery methods for the conference experience.
Intentionally structure both vertical, monologue, one-way presentations and then provide facilitated dialogues and polylogues to discuss that content. When choosing panels, choose moderators with experience that can keep the discussion flowing. Create horizontal, networked learning with peer-to-peer facilitated sessions. Provide plenty of adult white space to allow attendees to digest information and connect with each other.
8. Provide opportunities for attendees to learn without walls and customize their experience to their own needs while providing cutting-edge, content in a variety of ways.
What would you add? What have you done that’s been successful for creating a unique, remarkable purple cow event?
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