Identifying presenters
The first thing you need to do when you have finalised your program is nominate presenters for each presentation:
- Keynote
- Moderators
- Panelists
- Case studies
Presenter profile and quantity
Through your research you will have discovered the exact profile of potential presenters for each session of your conference according to:
- Geo
- Sector
- Company scale
- Job title / function
- Sex
- Moderator
Example
Panel: Innovation in global low cost vaccine production
Geo: 1 x AsiaPac, 1 x Middle East/Africa, 1 x USA, 1 x Europe, 1 x Latin America
Company / scale: top vaccine manufacturers from each market
Job title: Director/Head of Vaccine Manufacturing
Sex: We need at least two women on this panel
Moderator: Vaccine industry analyst
If you mess up the profile of the speakers you mess up the entire proposition. Quantity. You need to nominate the number of presenters needed for each session
Presenters and the food chain
There should only ever be two types of presenters at an IMAPAC conference:
- Senior and important executives from Tier One organisations
- Really interesting people from very interesting companies redefining an industry
Nobodies destroy conferences. The second we nominate tier three executives from tier five companies is the second we start to lose credibility: from speaker invitation through sponsorship through delegates. Nobodies destroy entire propositions. Premium pricing can only be achieved through Tier One presenters. Simple!
Tier One organisations are those in the top 30 in a profile for a vertical market event. It could be less. For a horizontal market event we would consider top 200 – 300. Tier One organisations are genuine market leaders.
Geography
The geographic profile of your presenters must match the geographic profile of the concept and our delegate target: If it is the World Sustainable Agriculture Congress and we want delegates from all over the world we must have global representation – otherwise, and fundamentally, we will betray the concept and it will not work. If indeed you are serious about creating a Global or Super Regional event you need to be prepared to work smarter and different to an event solely focused on your market:
- Overcoming language challenges
- Working different time-zones – starting early some days, late some others
- Identifying and inviting in the first days of the project – extending the time you have to successfully close
Women
50% of all business travellers are women – that’s our audience. Yet only 17% of all delegates are women. In other words we are missing out on a lot of business. We think that this is, fundamentally, because only 10% of our presenters are women. The message is simple. Research expert women presenters and then go out of your way to confirm women presenters. There are loads of advantages in having more women involved in our events including having more attractive presenter photos on our brochures and having a much more fun and agreeable onsite environment.
Keynotes
Genuine industry (and general business) leaders as keynotes set the tone for the whole conference enterprise. They will help you “sell” participation to other presenters; and of course, sell the event to delegates.
Some good advice:
- Invite early. Big shots plan their diaries years in advance so the longer notice you can give the more chance you will have. If they are interested in the event but can’t attend (and if our own scheduling is sufficiently advanced) immediately invite them for the following year.
- Make it great. Make it interesting. The whole proposition needs to be super interesting, and the topic that you ask them to speak on needs to be spot on their interests and hobby-horse – just to have a chance of being considered in a sea of speaking invitation noise.
- NB Don’t embarrass yourself by asking the CEO of a big organisation to speak on a technical topic / inappropriate topic
- Gurus. Sometimes we invest large amounts in securing guru speakers. At IMAPAC this is reserved for very special events, when we are confident of revenues. Gurus need to be genuinely interesting and appropriate – there is nothing worse than investing huge amounts of money in yesterday’s man/woman.
Moderators
The bulk of our agenda is panels, with a trend to even more interactivity. Simply, this style of presentation does not work without high quality moderators, we need a lot of them.
Moderator profile:
- Deep and broad sector knowledge
- Objective – a consultant or journalist
- Great presentation and moderating skills – broadcast journalist
- Highly recommended from multiple sources