Recruiting speakers for a DrupalCamp

As soon as the venue and date are set, if your camp is going to have pre-planned sessions, being the process of recruiting speakers. Look to your local user group as well as other user groups within a few hours of travel-distance from your location. Camps are a great way to encourage people to try their hand at presenting as well as for more experienced presenters to work on a particular talk. For smaller events, it can be helpful to accept as many proposals as possible (even if it means adding additional tracks) - DrupalCamps are a great place for new presenters to get out in front of people for the first time. Regardless of how a camp selects its presenters, it is often helpful to encourage experienced presenters to mentor new presenters. This provides a great opportunity to pass down valuable knowledge.

Some camps require you to register to attend before you submit a talk, but this can be a "catch-22" situation: some people will not attend a conference if they are not selected as a speaker.

Call for speakers

Most camps have an open call for speakers, and may also invite particular speakers (see below). Be as open and public about the process as possible, to ensure that you are including as many people as possible. When you put the call out on Twitter, make sure to use the #Drupal hashtag for wide visibility.

Things to include in the call for speakers:

• Deadline to submit a talk
• Requirements before submitting
• Types of talks or subjects of sessions that are desired
• Process that will be used to select which sessions are selected

Note: Many people are willing to travel large distances to your camp, especially when they are confirmed as speakers, so be sure to get the session planning started well in advance.

Inviting speakers

You can recognize and target specific individuals in your local community to present a session (usually on a specific topic). This allows you to quickly fill up a number of sessions with presenters that you are confident will do a good job. Inviting someone to present at your camp is a compliment to the person; use this fact to your advantage.

Diversity

How do you get a diverse selection of speakers (whether it be women, POC, older/younger folks, new folks, etc.)? It can be too easy to invite the Usual Suspects. 

Soliciting diverse submissions

(needs info here)

Reviewing submissions

1. Dump the data about submissions into a spreadsheet or other shared document.
2. Have someone anonymize the data, removing gendered pronouns, company names, and speaker names.
3. Have the program committee review the list.

Try for a balance between well-known speakers and new voices.

Resources for speakers

It is especially helpful for new speakers, and a good reminder for experienced speakers, if you provide a list of speaker resources. Useful things to include:

• Presentation template with title slide, colors, logos, and any closing slides you want all speakers to include. Here's an example from MidCamp.
• Information for speakers about recording, captioning, accessibility, etc. Here's an example from MidCamp 2021 (virtual conference).