Advance Program Now Available For SM West Show: Speaking Spots Going Fast

The advance program for the Streaming Media West show is now completed and currently available for download as a word file. In the next few days we'll have the entire program online and will open registration. Now that the session topics, presentations, keynote speakers and workshops have been decided upon, I have to start the task of going through the hundreds of speaking submissions and placing speakers.

I have about two months to place all the 100+ speakers but typically, 75% of the speaking spots are filled in the next two weeks. If you didn't get a speaking submission in when the call for speakers was open, you need to email me right away with a proposal, like today. Please keep in mind that of the 110 speaking spots we have, nearly 80 of them go to content owners, content creators and publishers. We don't stack seven speakers on a 45 minute session like many conferences do and we don't fill sessions with vendor sales pitches. Only about 30% of the speaking spots go to vendors and the ones that are chosen are those that invite customers, introduce us to content owners and help us get some of the leading speakers in the media, entertainment, broadcast and enterprise verticals.

This year we will be showcasing a lot more videos during the sessions and mini-demos so attendees can see it in action, so please keep that in mind when sending in a speaking request. Talking about online video is great, but showing it in action is even better.

I'm also on the look out for a few more moderators that have prior moderating experience and know the role and responsibilities of a moderator. Take a look at the agenda and email me if there is a session that has no moderators name attached to it that you might be interested in.

While we're on the subject of speakers, even with the poor economy we're in, our show in May had the most traffic of any of our shows in the past seven years. This is a testament to the quality of the speakers we continue to get each year and for every show we produce, we continue to get a lot of help from PR companies and many third party speaker placement bureaus. I just wanted to thank them for all of their continued help in getting us so many qualified speakers and look forward to any suggestions that have for West.

I can't reinforce enough how quickly speaking spots will go, so please, don't wait to contact me as I won't have anything open as we get closer to the show. Thanks.