by: Jen Willems @j3nwillems “If a window of opportunity appears, don’t pull down the shade” – Tom Peters Women in Agile made a call for speakers to engage in their Launching New Voices (LNV) program. This was a unique opportunity that couldn’t be passed up! The prereqs seemed simple enough: Interested in presenting a short […]
Advice for Aspiring Speakers – Part 4
by Allison Pollard What should I do the day of the event? Learning what to do on the day of the event came from experiences that went less-than-perfectly for us or friends of ours. Let’s start with the good advice that we should follow all of the time and especially when we have a big […]
Advice for Aspiring Speakers – Part 3
by Allison Pollard What can I do to practice? You are wise to practice before your big event! While some speakers brag about making last-minute changes to their presentations just hours before an event, many of us practice aloud to ourselves or do dry-runs with trusted friends to reduce our own stress and minimize the […]
Advice for Aspiring Speakers – Part 2
by Allison Pollard How do I submit to speak at conferences? At some point, you may wish to speak at a conference or other event that has an open call for topics. Writing a submission that gets picked can be tricky. Part of it is your ability to craft a clear proposal that resonates. The […]
Advice for Aspiring Speakers – Part 1
by Allison Pollard Seven of us showed up at the start. We were at a week-long Open Space event in Oregon, and Jenny Tarwater offered “Launching New Voices” as a session to a group of 29 people that included experienced speakers, mentors, and conference volunteers. Jenny wanted to tap into the wisdom of this amazing […]
Seek a topic, not a gender
Women in Agile and its members frequently receive requests to recommend female speakers because apparently they are hard to find. While I appreciate the effort and attention to gender parity, I feel like asking for female speakers is the wrong approach. It feels more about a quota than caring about the quality and the expertise of the speakers themselves. As a conference organizer I wouldn’t want to get called out for not having enough diverse speakers on a panel, but as a speaker I also don’t want to feel that the token reason I was chosen was because of my gender. Conferences need to challenge themselves to consider what their outcome is for a more diverse lineup of speakers, not just diversity for diversity’s sake.