A speaker that says something offensive, or fails to show up, or delivers a lousy performance wreaks havoc on the conference that the planner has been working on for 6 months or a year. So accept a ‘free’ speech with a good crowd promised, and get the A/V folks to give you a copy of the tape of your speech at the event. After that, it’s up to you to create the buzz that will have conference I shared a ‘Core Conversation’ yesterday afternoon at SXSW with the consummate professional speaker Tim Sanders , author of Love is the Killer App , The Likeability Factor , and Saving the World at Work .

There’s a time and a place for a sales presentation, and conferences aren’t it. People pay good money to go to conferences. Conference sponsors find this hard to resist, having paid good money to support the delegates’ voracious appetite for liquor each evening. The TED conference is a shining example of how successful In return, they want to learn amazing new things, discover future trends, and learn how others in the same industry have solved problems. They don’t want a blatant sales hustle from the lectern.

I've been attending events there since I was a small child, and I've always been impressed with the amount of echo in the space. Now imagine a conference and expo held in this large echoing hall, with speakers or musicians on the stage at the same time as a couple hundred people shmooze their way through the expo. The organizers of the event could have done a couple of things to make this better for everyone involved. Over this past weekend I shared a booth at the Women's Festival at Earl Warren Showgrounds in Santa Barbara. The main exhibit hall at the showgrounds