In Which We Discuss Who You Want to Speak at BlogWorld ’11

As the person tasked with stocking BlogWorld with the absolute best educational content possible, I’m very interested in knowing who our attendees enjoy hearing speak. We’re pretty sure we have an idea of what you’re looking for, but we can’t base a successful conference on assumptions, right?

So we asked.

• Many of your suggestions aren’t surprises. Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Scott Stratten, Darren Rowse, Sonia Simone, Amber Naslund and Aliza Sherman are popular choices because they’re entertaining, engaging and educational. Their talks at BlogWorld are always well received.

• Women were well represented. Though there were more recommendations for men than women, it wasn’t a huge, far off difference. This shouldn’t surprise me at all, but because of all the brouhaha over how there are always more men then women speaking, it’s always something I look into.

• We received multiple recommendations for speakers who are new to BlogWorld including Danny Brown, Erica Douglass, Pace Smith, Pat Flynn  and Tamsen McMahon. Some of these speakers were already on our radar, and others we’re going to look into. We’re always looking for new speakers and content.

• A few of the commenters asked if we could have more solo sessions over panels. It’s something the BlogWorld team will discuss as we like to have a good balance. Panels are a way of showing more than one side of a story, and, also, showcasing several speakers at once.

So what’s next? We’re  making a list of all the recommendations. When the time comes We’ll invite most to submit a proposal to speak. For those speakers we’re not familiar with, I’m going to research their blogs and books and see if there are any videos up of prior speaking engagements. If I feel they’ll be a good fit I’ll invite them to submit proposals as well.

We’ll reaching out to you with more questions as we plan our content and conference. Your input is extremely valuable to us and we appreciate your taking time out to let us know what you think.