Some Thoughts on Event Speaker Selection

I write this from the perspective of experience. I’ve helped organize dozens of events over the past ten years. Feel free to take the parts of this advice that help and discard the parts that don’t. Enjoy!

Planning an event is hard work. If you’ve never volunteered to help your local User Group or SQL Saturday, I encourage you to get involved. You will work hard and put a lot into it. But I promise you will get more out of it than you put in.

Every organizer is free to organize their event in whatever way works for them. Different organizers have different goals. Not all goals align and not all goals are compatible. And that’s as it should be. It’s important to have a goal, though. Don’t go into organizing an event without priorities. Perhaps your priorities will include providing a forum for first-time presenters to speak. Perhaps your priorities will include facilitating well-known technologists presenting deep-dive topics. These priorities are mutually exclusive but many other priorities are not. (There’s no rule against mutually exclusive priorities…)

Thought 1: Set some priorities.

You may decide to host an open call for presenters. You may decide to invite presenters to deliver certain content. Either is fine. SQL Saturdays and the PASS Summit host open calls for presentations. Each year a number of first-time presenters are selected to present at SQL Saturdays and the PASS Summit. I think this is awesome! In fact, I’ve long encouraged the PASS Summit organizers to include more first-time presenters. Although I doubt I was the only person who made this recommendation, I’m very pleased that there are more first-time presenters than ever at PASS Summit events.

Growing first-time presenters is good for the community. Will they make mistakes? Probably. I did. Allowing first-timers to get up there and take a shot is an investment in the future of the community.

Thought 2: If you’re hosting an open call for presentations, set aside some slots for first-time presenters.

Speaker selection is hard, especially when there are more speakers than available speaking slots. As an organizer, priorities can help here. When I organized events, they grew in popularity to the point where we had more speakers than slots. Our selection committee decided to award a single slot to as many speakers as possible, and promised those not awarded a priority at the next event. Some speakers (few, thankfully) were unwilling to present unless they received multiple sessions. Those speakers were rarely accommodated at events for which I volunteered. While I understand the desire of a speaker to maximize the value of their travel and time, the event is about more than any one speaker.

It is impossible to please everyone. Are you bored? Do you like a good fight? Tune into Twitter the day after PASS Summit session selections are announced. You will be sure to catch disappointment and complaints (sometimes from me!). It’s simply impossible to award everyone who submits an abstract a session. It gets even more complicated when the (non-trivial) amount of money PASS Summit pre-conference sessions generate are added to the mix.

The fact someone complains doesn’t mean you did a bad job. It means someone doesn’t like the way you did your job. And since most organizers are volunteers, you don’t have to worry about losing any (more) money. While listening to complaints about the free hours you poured into this volunteer effort stinks to high heaven, please realize this is part of the job. If you are the type of individual who doesn’t tolerate complaints well, please do not do this to yourself!

Thought 3: Realize someone is going to complain.

Some of the complaints will be valid. If you select only your friends or only people who fall into this category or that, you can expect legitimate complaints. If you have more submissions than slots and you select some speakers for multiple presentations while not selecting other speakers, again, expect complaints. Ethics come into play here as well. If you select yourself, be prepared to defend your selection – especially if selecting yourself means not selecting someone else, there’s money involved (like the PASS Summit pre-conferences), you have a non-trivial personal relationship with the person selected, or some combination thereof. Remember, you don’t have to be wrong to appear wrong, and all that’s required to breach ethics is the appearance of misconduct. It’s usually best to simply pick someone else.

Again, priorities can help. Be aware of the perceptions of your choices. People are lousy at reading minds, so publicly communicating your priorities in advance will diffuse mounds of misperceptions. Privately communicating with those not selected will help as well. It sounds trivial – especially when dealing with an experienced, national- or international-level speaker – to drop them a note saying, “We didn’t select you this time but we appreciate your submission and promise to give your submission priority consideration next year.” But it helps. Failure to communicate is a devastating leadership flaw, volunteer or no.

The best response to legitimate complaints is to admit your mistake, apologize for it, and work to correct it – immediately and / or in the future.

Thought 4: Respond to valid complaints.

These are a few bullets I hope will help everyone managing or considering organizing an event. Thank you, event organizers, for all you do for our community!

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