Comments on: The Honor and Burden of Chairing a Conference

By: Peter Evans

Peter Evans — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:35:39 +0000

Wow….what an amazing blog post Whitney. My brother just mentioned to me that he was just asked to chair a prestigious global conference and found your writings here doing a google search. You managed to scare the life out of him! ;-)

Luckily some of us are trying to ease the pain conference organizers have with regards to discovering, evaluating and selecting speakers. Volunteer organizers really do need help as you cite in your blog post. My new startup (Speakerfile) started with the premise that event organizers need a better way to find experts beyond their own personal networks and communities of practice. We’re focusing on the corporate speaker market – the people who don’t get listed in a (paid) speaker bureau site. Recruiting the right speakers who will come speak at your event at no cost is a major challenge. And we are doing our part to help with this. I’d invite you to check out http://www.speakerfile.com There is no charge for anyone looking for speakers. Best of luck in your blogging, speaking, UX’ing and of course…conference organizing in 2012!

By: Paul Mueller

Paul Mueller — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 04:27:06 +0000

Good post, Whitney. It is so true that we often notice only when things go poorly.

Another great conference leader is Joe Welinske, who puts together the WritersUA conference (www.writersua.com) each and every year.

By: Russ

Russ — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:04:05 +0000

Thanks very much for the mention, Whitney! It’s truly great to see the mention, and even as a chair / curator / whatever my job really was/is, it’s not done alone, and last year’s IDEA had a lot of great people helping out (many of whom are back again!).

So, for the folks who made it this far to the comments, I’d encourage you to take a read of a blog post that I wrote thanking all the folks who helped prop me up while working on IDEA.

http://www.userglue.com/blog/2009/10/25/idea09-debts-of-gratitude/

Thanks!

By: Janna Sundby

Janna Sundby — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:31:37 +0000

Thanks for the honest blog on conference planning. Just completed one in Cambridge for AMIN Worldwide and had so many last minute cancellations that we had to charge attrition costs to those that cancelled (even though the reasons were legit). It’s a tough job, but I do like doing it.