Speaker resources

If you’ve asked me to speak, you probably want some more information for your website or promotion. Here are some tools you can use.

Bio

Here’s some background text you can use.

One line

Alistair is a serial entrepreneur, event organizer, speaker, and bestselling author who works at the intersection of technology and society.

Short bio

Alistair is a serial entrepreneur, event organizer, speaker, and bestselling author who works at the intersection of technology and society.

After an early career in product management and telecommunications at Eicon, Primary Access, and 3Com, Alistair built web performance pioneer Coradiant and sold it to BMC for $135M. He launched the Year One Labs incubator, chaired O’Reilly’s Strata and UBM’s Cloud Connect, founded FWD50, and has taught at Stanford and Harvard Business School.

Alistair has co-written four books including Lean Analytics, widely considered required reading for startups, and Just Evil Enough, a handbook for systems thinking and underdog strategies. You can learn more and subscribe to his newsletter, Interesting Bits, at alistaircroll.com

Long bio

Alistair is a founder, bestselling author, and conference organizer. After a decade as a product manager in deep tech at Eicon, Primary Access, and 3Com, he co-founded Real User Monitoring pioneer Coradiant, raising a $20M series A in 2001 (the largest investment of its kind in Canadian history at the time.) Coradiant’s groundbreaking TrueSight traffic performance technology was acquired by BMC in 2011 for $135M.

In 2010, Alistair co-founded the Year One Labs accelerator, an early-stage incubator that turned $350K in investment into $10M in valuations in six months, launching companies like Localmind (acquired by AirBnB to build their local experiences offering.) He also spent three years as a visiting executive at Harvard Business School, where he worked with Srikant Datar to create the MBA course Data Science and Critical Thinking. He has also been a guest lecturer at McGill and Stanford, and has written for Wired Magazine, O’Reilly Radar, and GigaOm.

Throughout this time, Alistair has been a sought-after public speaker and the founder of several leading technology conferences, including UBM’s Enterprise Cloud Summit and Cloud Connect, O’Reilly’s Strata, the Scaletech conference in partnership with Georgian Partners, Pandemonio, and Data Universe. He is also the co-founder of Startupfest, Canada’s original startup event; FWD50, the leading independent conference on digital government modernization.

Alistair has co-authored several books, including Managing Bandwidth (a definitive text on QoS and network performance); Complete Web Monitoring (one of the first books to tackle social media monitoring in depth); the bestselling Lean Analytics (which has been translated into 8 languages, and is widely considered required reading for startup founders); and Just Evil Enough, a handbook for systems thinking and underdog strategies. You can learn more and subscribe to his newsletter, Interesting Bits, at alistaircroll.com.

Photos

My setup

If I’m speaking for you, my style is generally many slides with few words on each of them, accompanying what I say on stage. My personal record is 144 slides in 9m56s, which is more like animation or subtitles than a slide deck. To make this format work, I strongly prefer the following setup:

• My notebook in front of me on a podium, so I can see the presenter view on my monitor and the slides on the main screen.
• A talk with no audio, but animations and videos, using Keynote.
• A headset mic or Lavalier, and my own remote.
• A confidence monitor (showing what they audience sees), countdown timer, and a monitor with presenter notes. If you want to look really sharp, project the presenter notes on a screen at the back of the room. Your speakers will thank you, and it’s way more engaging.

The most detailed speaker checklist ever

I’ve hosted thousands of speakers on stage across many events. Each time we forget something in their preparation, or a question comes up, I add it to a list. The result is the most comprehensive checklist I’ve ever seen on speaking at an event.

I use this to make sure we’re on the same page, whether I’m the speaker or I’m hosting someone else. Even if you’ve run events in the past, I promise you’ll find something useful in here that you hadn’t thought of. Answering them tends to avoid any confusion, misunderstanding, or mis-set expectations as we work together.

About the event

Basic details

• Where is it?
• What’s the URL?
• What’s the name?
• What are the dates?
• Do you have a code of conduct?
• What is your policy on speaker diversity?
• For how many years have you been running this event?
• How many attendees do you expect for the event as a whole?
• Roughly how many attendees will be present for my talk?
• How much are attendees paying to attend?

Event goals

• What are the objectives of the meeting/conference/workshop?
• Is this a one-day event, a one-hour event, a one-week event?
• Who is organizing and sponsoring it?
• Is the audience paying to be there?

Audience details

• Who is your audience (seniority, profile, age)?
• How much does the audience know about the topic?
• What are their main concerns at the moment?
• Where do they feel they’re lacking knowledge?
• On a range from technical/rational to leadership/feelings, where is the audience?
• Who are some of your favorite speakers?

The other speakers

• How many speakers do you have in total?
• Who are the other speakers
• What will other speakers talk about?
• Are there any panels or interviews that do not include diverse range of participants?

The vibe

• What is the attire that most folks wear to your event?
• How casual or formal are the talks?
• Is swearing appropriate or inappropriate in talks?

The topic

Why me?

• Why do you think I am a good fit to speak to your audience?
• Which talk do you want me to give?

Preparation

• Do you have a recording of one of your favorite talks from past years?
• Can I have the contact details for 3 critical people who will be in the audience? By contacting them, I can customize my talk to the audience better and call out specific issues

The effect you want me to have

• What effect do you want the talk will have on the audience?
• What is the biggest issue that needs to be addressed in the talk?
• When my speech/presentation/session is over, what behavioural change do you want participants to walk away with?

Any constraints

• What do you not want me to do on stage?
• What do you want me to do on stage?

Timing and details

• When should I arrive and leave?
• Where in the event agenda will I be speaking? In what track/on what stage?
• What format do you want?
  • ❏ A talk.
  • ❏ A Q&A or AMA.
  • ❏ A panelist.
  • ❏ An MC, interviewer, or moderator.
  • ❏ Something else.
• How long is the session?
• What information do you need from me?
  • ❏ Headshot.
  • ❏ Short bio.
  • ❏ Long bio.
  • ❏ Social media accounts.
  • ❏ Talk title.
  • ❏ Talk description.
  • ❏ Testimonials.
  • ❏ Videos of past talks.
• How do I invoice you?
• What are your payment terms?
• Do I need to become an approved vendor?
• Do I need a passport, visa, work certification, W8-BEN, or other documents? Will you be providing assistance with those?

What you’ll give me

• ❏ A speaking fee.
  • How much?
  • What are the terms?
  • How much will I get paid if you cancel?
  • By when can you cancel without me billing you the full amount?
  • What happens if I get sick or am unable to attend?
• ❏ Transportation.
  • Who’s booking the travel?
  • Can I choose my own carrier?
  • What’s the budget?
  • Am I booking economy, premium, business, or first class?
• ❏ Accommodation.
  • Who’s booking the accommodation?
  • Can I choose the brand or chain?
  • What’s the budget?
  • Is transportation between accommodation and the venue included?
• ❏ A per-diem.
  • How much?
• ❏ A travel buy-out.
  • How much?
• ❏ A free pass to the rest of the conference.
• ❏ Passes for others.
  • How many?
• ❏ The right to sell books, products, or otherwise monetize my participation…
  • ❏ while onstage.
  • ❏ at a booth.
  • ❏ on your website.
• ❏ A written testimonial.
• ❏ A recording of my talk I can share with others.
• ❏ Photos of me on stage to which I have a perpetual, non-exclusive copyright.
• ❏ Your eternal gratitude.

What I’ll do for you

• ❏ Speak at the event.
• ❏ Prepare slides for the event.
• ❏ Create handouts or printed/digital takeaways for the audience.
• ❏ Grant you a perpetual, non-exclusive license to a recording of my talk … 
  • ❏ for your own use as excerpts.
  • ❏ for internal use.
  • ❏ for public viewing.
  • ❏ to promote future events
  • ❏ that you can sell or monetize afterwards.
• ❏ Participate in training or prep sessions.
  • When, where, how often, and for long?
• ❏ Send my slides ahead of time
  • By when do you need them?
• ❏ Review and edit my slides based on your feedback.
  • Who will be doing the review?
  • How many rounds of edits?
  • How many hours do you estimate this will take?
• ❏ Promote the event.
  • Is there a URL, a press kit, or other material?
• ❏ Invite others to the event.
  • Do they get a discount, or some other code?
• ❏ Attend a speaker dinner.
  • When and where? What’s the attire?
• ❏ Attend other talks.
  • Which ones?
  • Will you pay for my accommodation on the days those talks happen, if they aren’t the same as the day of my talk?
• ❏ Spend time in the Green Room.
  • How early will I need to get there?
• ❏ Do a Q&A with the audience.
  • What kind of questions will I get in the Q&A?
  • How will the audience submit questions?
  • How will questions be filtered/chosen?

Technical setup

• What format is the event?
  • ❏ Virtual/online
    • What platform are you using?
    • Will I be sharing my screen?
    • Are there any bandwidth, lighting, or other criteria you need from me?
    • Will I be expected to change to a custom background?
  • ❏ Physical/in-person
    • What’s the stage setup?
    • What’s the screen aspect ratio?
    • Is there a slide template I need to use?
    • In what format do you need my slides?
• How will my slides be shown?
  • ❏ From my own computer, on stage.
  • ❏ From an A/V computer I control with a remote.
• Can I include audio in my slides? If so, how will you get audio from the computer?
  • ❏ A 1/8" audio jack?
  • ❏ The same HDMI the video is on?
  • ❏ Something else.
• Can I include video in my slides?
• How will I control my slides?
  • ❏ With a remote I provide.
  • ❏ With a remote you provide.
  • ❏ A technician will control them for me.
• Will the stage have:
  • ❏ A podium?
  • ❏ AC power?
  • ❏ Reliable Internet?
  • ❏ A timer?
  • ❏ A Confidence monitor showing my current slide?
  • ❏ A Presenter View monitor showing the next slide and speaker notes?
• How will I be mic’ed?
  • ❏ No mic, just speak loudly.
  • ❏ Wired stick mic (handheld.)
  • ❏ Wireless stick mic (handheld.)
  • ❏ Lavalier.
• ❏ Headset.
• ❏ Shotgun mic from the A/V team.
• What format should my slides be in?
  • ❏ Doesn’t matter
  • ❏ Keynote.
  • ❏ Powerpoint.
  • ❏ Adobe PDF.
  • ❏ Google Slides.
  • ❏ HTML.
  • ❏ Prezi.
  • ❏ Something else.
• Is there a stage technician?
• Is there an MC?
• Will this be filmed or recorded?
• How will you introduce me?
• Will you solicit audience feedback? If so, will you share it with me?