I occasionally hear people grumbling on Twitter about the "same old faces" appearing in web design magazines and at conferences. As somebody who takes an active interest in nurturing new talent, I'd hate to think that a deliberate "glass ceiling" had been erected to prevented new people from progressing in our industry.
There's a lot of nonsense being written about conferences at the moment; so as a regular speaker, organiser and attendee of both free and paid for events, I thought I'd redress the balance.
I've been coming to SXSW for 7 years and I've seen it change from a small and intimate event to the tech sector's equivalent of Glastonbury. Back then bloggers were king and CSS2.1 was the hot technology of the day. Today the conference has gone from 2,500 people to an astonishing 25,000. Blogging is considered old hat, and the new tech superstars are the start-up founders, the professional publishers and the best selling authors. Think Gowalla, Mashable and Shirky rather than Zeldman, Bowman and Veen.
If you're going to be speaking at a conference soon, here are my top 10 tips to make your session a sucess.
As a self confirmed conference junkie I speak at a dozen events each year, and attend many more. As such I've probably seen close to a thousand talks over the last five years. Because of this I've got a pretty good idea what makes for an exciting talk and how you can guarantee your session will suck. As somebody who also organises two conferences, "UX London":http://uxlondon.com and "dConstruct":http://dconstruct.org I'm really keen on getting new talent into the speaking circuit while still maintaining quality. As such I've put together a quick guide to help both new and experienced speakers kick arse/ass. Most of these tips aren't new, but you'll be surprised how few people actually follow them. However if you do, you'll be well on your way to being the next Jeff Veen, Jared Spool or Jason Santa Maria.
Every year SXSW takes on a slightly new dimension so it's never the same experience twice. Change is inevitable and I always have a good time at the event. However I always find myself harking back to years gone by. I guess that's age for you.