Yesterday was the day we sent out all of the acceptance and rejection letters to speakers for the New Media Expo in August. I have a love / hate relationship with this day because I know I’m going to make a few people very happy and a lot of people very disappointed. We’re fortunate enough to get hundreds of proposals which means we can pick and choose from many topics to fit the “feel” and content we’re looking for in that particular year. We received over 700 proposals for just 52 spots.

Because the New Media Expo focuses on a “newer” industry, the speakers are chosen not because of how well they are known, but about how well we feel they can educate the attendees. The question I ask myself when making the final approval is, will this speaker/session have the attendee saying to themselves, “Wow, that session made the entire trip worthwhile. If that was the only session I attend here, it was worth coming!” Get 50-55 of those types of sessions and you’re conference will always be a winner.

I personally send every invitation and turn down email to every single speaker that sent in a proposal. It takes two days to send them all (doing nothing but that all day). Is it the best use of my time? I don’t know that I’ll always be able to do that, but it just feels right when someone has taken the time to put together a proposal and send it in. The downside is that I have to tell a lot of people I consider friends, that we don’t have a spot for them at the show. Sometimes it’s overlap in content, and sometimes it’s giving a shot to someone we’ve turned down the last three years and has refined their proposal over those years to be something really terrific. We had to turn down some pretty darn good proposals and it’s difficult to do, but tough choices have to be made.

Most people who are turned down are appreciative of the fact that we let them know and valued the time they put into the proposal. From my experience, most events simply don’t get back to the speakers – you know you haven’t been chosen because you never hear back from them. That’s not how I want to run my company and so whether I do it or our conference coordinators do it, we will always let the speaker know either way.

But as you can imagine, some speakers don’t take it well….at all. Each year we have at least one reply to the turn-down email that I post on our bulletin board in the office hallway – for a quick laugh and also to remind everyone that burning bridges is never appropriate.

Here’s this year’s:

Oh darn…Gee, I wonder how many of those 52 speakers are professional speakers? Like me. Gee, I wonder how many of those 52 are women? Women over 60? A women Professional Speaker over 60 into New Media. Very unusual, Very sought after…tell your committee to cram it….I’ll go elsewhere in August. Sour grapes, you betcha!

Probably a boys/geek fest with no class anyway…..well, that felt good to let it all out……..

Now bring on the real jobs…….

Patti Serrano
www.eClubNetworking.com

Aside from the fact that we have more women speaking this year than ever, all I can say is, thanks for confirming we made the right choice, Patti.

But we’ve got our conference lined up now and it’s one to be proud of. I’m looking forward to August!