Contacting potential speakers

The ideal speaker

When contacting speakers for your workshop, you’re trying to find people who:

  • Have expertise in the particular aspects of reproducibility you’ll be focusing on at the workshop

  • Have spoken at reproducibility events in the past

  • Can provide diverse perspectives on the impacts of reproducibility (you don’t want everyone to be from reproducibility companies)

  • Are local (this makes things logistically easier)

  • Will work with you to create a great talk if they don’t already have one

Tips for contacting potential speakers

  1. Make your speakers diverse You’ll foster better discussion and likely attract more workshop attendees if your speakers are as diverse as possible. Among other things, you should have a good distribution of:

    • Female/Male speakers

    • Racial backgrounds

    • Cultural backgrounds

    • Early/late career speakers

    • Academics/non-academics

  2. Get an introduction through your network if possible While it can work to send an email to someone without any prior contact (don’t be afraid to do this if you have to), potential speakers are much more likely to respond if you are introduced through your network.

  3. Contact speakers in person if possible It’s very easy to ignore an email, but it’s not so easy to ignore someone who introduces themselves at a conference or other event. If you’re looking for speakers for an upcoming workshop and you have the opportunity to meet someone in person before sending an email invite, you should do so. You shouldn’t make the introduction solely about speaking at your event but can simply ask if the person is interested, exchange contact information, and follow up with a written invitation later. Even if you’re initial contact is via email, it’s often useful to talk to speakers about your workshop over the phone or video chat prior to the event to make sure you and you’re speakers are on the same page with reference to goals, logistics, and other expectations.

  4. Don’t make it all about you While we’re sure your workshop is going to be amazing, remember that everyone likes to know that they’re awesome as well. In your initial contact with potential speakers, make sure you indicate why you’re reaching out to this particular person and why you think they’d make a great speaker.

  5. Be as concise as possible Possibly even more so than potential sponsors, great potential speakers are often very busy. Speakers should be able to skim your initial contact email and make a quick decision about whether or not they’d like to participate. Make sure your initial contact email hits the following key points as concisely as possible:

    • Who you are

    • What the event is

    • Why you think they’d make an awesome speaker

    • Brief (1 sentence) description of what will be expected of them as a speaker

  6. Avoid paying if possible You likely won’t have a huge budget for your workshop and should work on finding people whose goals are so well aligned with the goals of the workshop that they’re willing to speak for free. While it may be possible to pay for traveling fees, you should also work hard to find someone local to speak at your event. If the workshop will be taking place at a university, try to find someone at the university. If the workshop is going to be part of a conference, try to find a speaker from the list on conference attendees.

Example contact email

Dear Professor X,

My name is XXX and I'm currently working with a graduate student at SCHOOL to organize a mini-symposium on reproducibility at SCHOOL. With your experience as dean of SCHOOL and previous writing on reproducibility, we thought you would make a great speaker for this event.

Would you be interested in giving a roughly 20 minute talk on best practices institutions and PIs can use to promote reproducibility in their research? Please let me know and we'll work to find a date that will fit your schedule.

I look forward to hearing from you.

XXXX

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