Now that I’m reasonably happy with managing my calendar with a combination of virtual assistance and tools like TimeBridge, I’d like to improve my talk management system. I give lots of talks, and I’d love to scale up to do even more, and to do them even more effectively.

Here are the key tasks I might be able to outsource:

• Coordinate with the event organizer on
  • date and time of talk
  • location and directions (public transit and driving; call-in numbers and web conference details if virtual)
  • size and characteristics of audience
  • organizer’s objectives
  • context of talk (previous and next activities)
  • resources available (projector, whiteboard/blackboard, easel, microphone, video recording)
  • speaker’s fee / honorarium / time and materials?
• Add a calendar event with all the details
• Get the event organizer’s emergency contact information
• Send title, abstract, bio, and picture
• Take my outline and look for stories, examples, and statistics
• Take my outline and turn it into text slides
• Add links to my pre-talk blog post
• Add photography (stock photography or Creative Commons Attribution content), with proper citation
• Confirm the date, location, and title a few days before the event
• Verbally remind me the morning of the event and send me a summary e-mail with the event details, the event organizer’s emergency contact information, the talk information, and my outline (just in case slides fail)
• Thank the organizer
• Type in speaker evaluations and contact information
• Follow up with people who attended my talk
• Coordinate with any lucky winners of giveaways
• Put my slides and recordings together (I wish…)
• Update my talk ROI spreadsheet

If I can get parts or all of this process in place, the results will be:

• I’ll worry less about getting the dates wrong
• I’ll worry less about lacking important information before a talk
• The coordination process will be smoother
• I’ll go into the talk with more confidence
• I can spend less time thinking about the details of talks and more time thinking about the fun of it
• I may be able to scale up to more than one talk per week, someday
• I’ll be able to teach other people processes for preparing for talks =)