Propose, Prepare, Present ― How to Become a Successful, Effective, and Popular Speaker at Industry Conferences

Every year, tens of thousands of companies—from industry giants to aspiring upstarts—apply to speak at conferences. They pump millions of dollars into these events, hoping to find new customers, strengthen their brand, and meet new partners. Sadly, for most of them, things don’t go that way. Submitted topics aren’t chosen; when they are, they come across as tone-deaf sales pitches.

What does it take to be chosen to speak—and to rock the mic when given the chance? This book takes you behind-the-scenes of the conference process, showing you how to submit, plan, and deliver a talk that matters. Event organizer Alistair Croll provides many examples based on his experience with a wide range of conferences, including O’Reilly’s Strata, Velocity, Web2Expo, and TOC Conferences.

• Learn 11 items that help your submission stand out—and 11 items that will get it tossed
• Explore the hurdles your proposal has to clear before it’s accepted
• Tailor your talk to a conference’s topics and themes
• Discover why images work better than words in your slide deck
• Achieve your business goals by engaging the audience before, during, and after your talk

"We’ve been running successful events worldwide for over a decade, and the simple truth is that the people who get chosen, and give great presentations, follow the rules in this book."

--Gina Blaber, VP Conferences, O’Reilly Media

Alistair Croll has been an entrepreneur, author, and public speaker for nearly 20 years. He’s worked on a variety of topics, from web performance, to big data, to cloud computing, to startups, in that time.

In 2001, he co-founded web performance startup Coradiant, and since that time has also launched Rednod, CloudOps, Bitcurrent, Year One Labs, the Bitnorth conference, the International Startup Festival and several other early-stage companies.

Alistair is the author of three books on web performance, analytics, and IT operations, and is currently working on Lean Analytics, a book on using data to build a better business faster that's due out in March from O'Reilly Media. He lives in Montreal, Canada and tries to mitigate chronic ADD by writing about far too many things at Solve For Interesting. Alistair chairs O'Reilly's Strata Conference.