I come from a world of speakers. In fact I do a fair share of speaking around the country.  As a conference chair myself, I am in charge of putting together a large group, nearly 300 in number, of speakers for a convention and trade show in my industry.  It seems like there is in every industry, the rock stars that everyone want to be a keynote speaker at their event or conference.  In my industry, you can’t afford the huge names, but there are those that build a brand around the fact that they are on the "A-list".  They want to be seen as the top dog.  How do they do this?  They keynote for conferences.

We are fully into the conference season now and every week there is the "best conference" the "most important meeting" and the "must attend event."  The problem is that we tend to get the same echo chamber of speakers at each place.  Worse yet, there are only so many rock stars to go around.  This was the case recently with an event that was in New York.  They had a keynote speaker that had the very same discussion on stage that he did 2 weeks earlier in Las Vegas. 

Make sure that this does not happen to your event.  Make sure that you check out what is on the schedule and ask your keynote where they will be going before they speak at your event or conference.  Make sure if they are keynoting the week or so before your conference, they at least are changing the topic of discussion.  With the speed at which some conferences are reported, the echo chamber may still be ringing in the ears of the people that saw the same presentation online or in blogs or live streamed not long before.  You want your event to stand out so make sure you get a rock star that people want to see but make sure they are not just a talking head saying the same robotic speech to everyone.

Tags: keynotes, conference planning, event planning, speakers