SEOnerdSwitzerland’s speakers

Writing a compelling speakes’ pitch can feel daunting. We get you. Here are our favorite resources to get you started:

• by Hannah Smith that will welp you: How to Write a Compelling Speaker Pitch
• by Upasna Gautam Public Speaking: Writing Proposals That Get Accepted. If you are a Women in Tech SEO member, ask someone from the community to share Upasna’s WTS workshop

From our experience as speakers, here is what you can expect as a public speaker:

• creating at talk takes at least 5 working days, separated into several steps and tasks: topic definition, writing slides, design and fine-tuning slides, saying the talk several times to prepare (the dry run), organisational emails and calls with us (we keep our info clear and concise to spare your time), and travel time on the day of the talk
• a wonderful rush of adrenaline: for a moment adrenaline takes over when you are on stage you do your talk and are completely present
• a confidence boost: that feeling of getting out of your confort zone is irreplaceable
• worthwhile experience: an experience as a public speaker help in the daily work. Since I’ve been doing public speaking gigs, I find presenting results of audits, pitching for budget with clients and team more confortable.
• meeting new people: you will meet the organisation team and participants who will come to listen to you.

You know many things and we woud be delighted to welcome you as a speaker. That being said, we know it can be difficult to find a topic. Here are our favorite resources to get you started:

• Scroll and find the title ‘Wait! How do you figure out what to talk about?’ in Hannah Smith’s article How to Write a Compelling Speaker Pitch.

Will you get in touch though? Sit back and list everything you have done and delivered at work during the last 12 months. YOU did the work, you analysed, wrote, found answers and did your best.

Interesting is a subjective judgemental adjective, why not replace it with personal? Every piece of experience is interesting because only YOU can tell the story of how you experienced it.

There are many ways to share knowledge and experience. Your way is not everyone’s way. We know for a fact that not everyone in the audience will like your talk. We also know for a fact that at least one person in the audience will relate to your experience. We care about that one person.

As conference organiser, we do not want every talk to sound and seem the same. We want different styles, for different people because there are many different ways to work in the SEO industry. So, don’t be afraid, pitch your talk!

You don’t want to be the SEO who screwed up their talk at SEOnerdSwitzerland, we get it. Who does not want to be the cool kid and/or have companies knocking at their door offering golden jobs? Let’s take a step back here and think about it:

First, who said it is not okay to screw up once in a while when we try something new? What does ‘screw up’ mean? What is the worst that can happen? Forgetting what you say for 5 seconds? Or having someone say something hurtful to you? We won’t let them and we will help you prepare. If something happen on the day of the talk, we will be here on stage with you.

Second, why not let us decide if your topic is interesting? We know our audience, we organise talks for SEOnerdSwitzerland since 2019. We can help you fine tune your topic.

Third, we offer training and coaching. Trust us, we will help you have readable, understandable slides and fine-tune your delivery.

Fourth, public speaking at SEOnerdSwitzerland is one single occurrence in the vast amount of things you do and work. Thank you for trusting SEOnerdSwitzerland to be life-altering, though we are not sure that it the case.

If you’ve never been a public speaker, SEOnerdSwitezrland is a good place to start as we offer a safe space and friendly audience. If you are up to the challenge and ready to put in the work (plan 3-5 days of work) we will help you by 1) reviewing your slides and commenting them to make sure they are visible in a room and framed for a public speech, 2) listening to your talk without an audience to help you get the tempo and duration right.

Here are our favorite resources about breaking through as a public speaker:

Here are our favorite resources about breaking through as a public speaker:

• a tweet from Areej Abuali about speaking in industry conferences,
• a tweet from Ross Simonds about making your way to the main stage.

Here is what SEOnerdSwizerland offers to their speakers:

• Support and feedback on draft-deck,

• Support and coaching on a dry run (we listen to you doing your talk),

• Post-conference speaker testimonial by one of the event organiser,

• A safe, friendly and supportive audience to speak in front of.