Sponsored: Speakers Sought for Lean Startup Conference

Sponsored by: Lean Startup Conference 2013, December 9 – 11, San Francisco. 

The Lean Startup Conference, December 9 – 11, San Francisco, is seeking speakers. We’re particularly excited to reach out via Women 2.0, because we aim to have a truly merit-based speaker-selection process (rather than an insiders-based process), and in the past, your community has helped us tap a rich vein of entrepreneurs we didn’t already know who had great advice to share with our attendees. We hope many more readers here will consider applying this year.

A few things to know:

1. We welcome first-time speakers, and we will provide free speaker training. In fact, Kathy Sierra—a speaker and teacher we admire greatly–has volunteered  to offer that training. If you’re holding back because you’ve never spoken at a conference before, or because you did it once and it wasn’t a raging success, now’s your chance to get game as a speaker.
2. As more companies in more sectors use Lean Startup techniques around the world, there are a burgeoning number of useful lessons out there–but fewer chances we’ll know about them. So we’re actively seeking stories we don’t know to share with our community, and we’re interested in people who are not already on the speaking circuit. You don’t need to be an all-time Lean Startup expert; we already know those people.
3. Our audience comprises entrepreneurs—but our definition of an entrepreneur may not be what you’d expect. There’s even a chance our definition of “Lean Startup” may surprise you. In a recent post, we did a deep dive on who attends our conference, what they value in a talk and how we think about Lean Startup. We also linked to past talks that were successful to give you some examples. In a nutshell, we’re looking for advice you can share that will help other people, and our post goes into specifics. If you apply, do read it.
4. Thanks to our merit-based speaker-selection process, we wound up last year with a higher percentage of speakers who are women and people of color than your average entrepreneurship conference. So if you’re in a group that’s typically under-represented on stage, do know that we’ve had success in the past bringing in a range of great speakers–and we intend to build on what’s worked.

The deadline for applying to speak is May 16, and our application form is very short. Please apply, and please pass this along to anyone you think might be a good candidate.