Speed-Speaking

Posted by David in Open Source, echolibre, industry, innovation
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 11:12

Anyone that goes to conferences knows that it’s nearly always the same people speaking. This is not bad, but this world is vast and the potential amount of decent speakers with very interesting subject and even more knowledgeable ideas is even greater.

In an attempt to identify the reasons why the speakers presence is so repetitive, I nailed it down to the diffidence factor. Today we were discussing about the community on IRC and the issue of low amount of new speakers came up again. So I’m bringing the idea back up to the surface

Many new speakers are scared of coming forward either because they think their ideas are plain bad, they don’t have enough content, they are scared to speak in front of a large audience or simply don’t have time to organize a full length session. Lightning-talks were made to try and overcome those issues however the “speaking in front of an audience” problem remains and some people need to validate their ideas before throwing themselves on stage in front of a 100 people.

In a breeze of imagination I hereby present to you the idea of “speed-speaking” which is basically “speed-dating” for speakers.

The rules are simple:

• 10 tables of different size and shapes (between 6 and 12 seats)
• 1 new speaker per table (That’s 10 new speakers)
• 10 minutes super-lightning talk
• 2 minutes Q&A per table
• 1 minute to change table between the 10 minutes

This result is more or less a hundred and thirty minutes  (say 2 hours), 10 speakers which get the chance to express their ideas, very simple Q&A, contacts are made, speakers loose their speaking virginity and they get out there, more press coverage for the event (imagine if anyone would put up a simple post about each 10 talks), new speakers and out of those at least 1 has to be a good one that will either come back the next year or become a quality speaker due to the confidence boost and experience he just gained.

What I am looking for with this blog post is to gather your feedback on the idea. Is is something conference organizers would be willing to try? Maybe an uncon version? Give me your ideas, changes, thoughts. I’m sure we can find new quality speakers with this

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