As co-chairs of SMX West 2008, Chris Sherman and I oversee the agenda of over 50 editorial sessions. Pulling together the session ideas, formats and speakers is no easy challenge, especially when you have high quality standards that are backed by a guarantee. Fortunately, we have an excellent team of people working with us on the show that I’d like to introduce and pay credit to.

Each individual session has a “panel coordinator” who is in charge of selecting speakers and establishing the session format (who will talk for how long, on what topics and so on). The coordinators ensure that attendees get a session that is well orchestrated. Rather than speakers overlapping each other on topics (or being off-topic for the session), SMX panel coordinators ensure that everyone is set to deliver a complementary performance.

For SMX West 2008, our panel coordinators are:

• Jessica Bowman
• Chris Elwell
• Vanessa Fox
• Gord Hotchkiss
• Detlev Johnson
• Rob Kerry
• Misty Locke
• Chris Sherman
• Stephan Spencer
• Greg Sterling
• Danny Sullivan
• Jeffrey Rohrs
• Matt Van Wagner

In most cases, panel coordinators will also serve as moderator of the session that they put together. However, we have a few cases where a different person may serve as the session moderator, such as when a panel coordinator might assemble two sessions running at the same time.

Moderation is an important part of programming. Moderators are there to crack the whip if the speakers don’t stick to their times, plus they help elicit further responses to questions posed by the audience. Moderators themselves are also often great sources of knowledge and can help provide a further perspective on panels. Below are the SMX session moderators to date, in addition to the panel coordinators who are already also serving as moderators:

• Jessica Bowman
  
• Chris Elwell
• Vanessa Fox
• Gord Hotchkiss
  
• Detlev Johnson
• Rob Kerry
• Misty Locke
• Gillian Muessig
• Jeffrey Rohrs
  
• Chris Sherman
  
• Stephan Spencer
• Greg Sterling
  
• Danny Sullivan
  
• Dana Todd
• Matt Van Wagner

SMX also has a second type of moderator that we’re debuting at SMX West. This is the Q&A Moderator. SMX devotes a huge amount of time for Q&A and discussion, as we feel it’s an essential part of a successful and valuable session. However, just picking hands from the audience is a fairly random and unrepresentative way to decide on what to put to the panel.

Our solution is the Q&A Moderator. During most SMX sessions, attendees will be able to send questions to the Q&A Moderator. We’ll describe the exact process in the future — but it will be easy and accessible to everyone in the audience. The Q&A Moderator — who is an expert themselves on the session topic — will group similar questions together. Then they will assemble a top list that gets put to the audience to vote on. This way, the entire audience can influence which questions get asked. As the Q&A period progresses, new questions will be posted and voted on.
Here are our Q&A Moderators:

• Brent Csutoras
• Fionn Downhill
• Rob Kerry
• Anton Konikoff
• Cindy Krum
• John Marshall
• Mike McDonald
• Matt McGee
• Gillian Muessig
• Greg Sterling
  
• Danny Sullivan
  
• Dana Todd
• Matt Van Wagner

Wondering how you become a panel coordinator, session moderator or Q&A moderator? It’s pretty straight-forward. We work with our own staff from Search Engine Land along with others who have typically distinguished themselves by being outstanding speakers. To learn about speaking at SMX, see this page. Most sessions are now filled for SMX West, but other shows will have openings in the future. Remember, we always announce when new sessions openings are available here on the SMX Blog.

Finally, is there an SMX Advisory Board like some other conferences have? Absolutely — and it’s a pretty inclusive group of people. It’s you. It’s anyone that ever attends one of our shows. Whether you provide feedback to using our formal evaluation forms, send us email or just talk to us at the show, we take all that advice back to constantly reshape and improve our events going forward. So congrats! If you’ve been to one of our shows and provided some feedback, feel free to link to this post and name yourself as an advisory board member!

Interested in speaking at our upcoming SMX West conference? We’re now taking submissions through the Speaker Pitch Form that was updated today, with all open sessions listed.

Please use this form even if we know you and you have spoken before. We’re moving to a centralized conference management system and submitting through the form helps us keep everything organized, and get pitches quickly to the person who’s coordinating each session.

Ready to pitch? Again, please use the Speaker Pitch Form (not email) to express your interest. Thanks, and we hope to see you at the show!

Want to speak at our Search Marketing Expo West event in Santa Clara, California from February 26-28, 2008? This is the page to watch. It’ll give you the agenda and speaker invitation timeline and keep you updated with more information over the coming weeks. Monitor this page, if you want to take part as a speaker.

Speaking Openings

Below are sessions where we are now accepting pitches. Unless noted, READ the session description (the session link will take you to the description) and offer a pitch on the topic that you think would be suitable.

• In House Issues
• Search 3.0: Online Retail & Blended Results: We’re specifically looking speakers who can talk about how they got shopping and retail content to show up within the *REGULAR, BLENDED* results in the major search engines, based on actual experiences.
• Unraveling URLs & Demystifying Domains
• Web Analytics Roundtable

NOTE: From Oct. 30 through Nov. 7, we accepted pitches to help create the agenda. That period is now over, the agenda is set, and we’re no longer accepting session ideas. If you pitched an idea during that period and haven’t heard back by now, please pitch for the actual sessions listed above.

How To Pitch

Ready to pitch to speak? Please use ourSMX Speaking Submission Form, and if you want to speak on multiple sessions, use it for each individual session (and indicate in comments your preference, plus don’t pitch to speak on more than four sessions).

The pitch should be about 2 to 7 paragraphs long. We don’t need an essay, just a general idea of what the session would be about, along with some specifics about what you might cover. We’re especially interested in practical, tactical advice.

Also send some background about yourself, your company and the type of work you do. We don’t need a resume nor a lengthy bio. Just a few sentences to describe yourself.

If you’re accepted, you’ll get a pass to the entire SMX event. Travel and accommodation are not provided.

Final Speaking Openings Posted: December 12, 2007

On this page, on December 12, we’ll post any remaining speaking openings. These are spaces yet to be filled after first working through the list of those who submitted session ideas, pitched for a particular sessions, have spoken at past conferences or others that have been short-listed based on things they’ve written or spoken about.

If you pitch for one of the remaining sessions, you’ll know if you’re accepted by January 5, 2008. IE, you’ll receive a confirmation. Unfortunately, because of the high-volume of speaking pitches, we cannot always notify those that weren’t selected.

Interested in speaking at SMX Social Media 2007 in New York this October? Hang on! Please, really, hang on to those pitches! We’ll have information on when and how to pitch on this page sometime during the week of July 23. If you start sending now, you’ll risk your pitches being lost in the shuffle. Just keep an eye on this page!

Want to speak at our upcoming SMX Local & Mobile 2007 show? This is the page to watch for news and information.

At the moment, we’re not taking speaking submissions. Any openings will be posted on this page around mid-July. So check back then, or subscribe to the blog, and we’ll do a fresh post to alert you to any openings plus how to contact us.

Want to speak at our SMX Advanced event in Seattle this coming June 4th and 5th? Here’s the scoop!

I accepted pitches for session ideas from March 5 through March 9. From that, an agenda was created, and I invited some of those pitching ideas to be on sessions. Then after the agenda came out, I listed openings for further pitches. That period has now closed.

If I haven’t been in touch about speaking by April 7, you weren’t accepted, sorry. I wish I could tell everyone personally they weren’t accepted. Unfortunately, I get too many pitches to make this possible. I also wish I could accept everyone to speak. I do! But that’s also not possible.

If I have any late breaking openings happen, they’ll show up on this page.