Call for Speakers

You are invited to submit your proposal for the 2008-09 ASTD Southern CT chapter meetings. All proposals should be submitted to Programs Chair Karen Kirchner at Karen@careermanagementconsulting.com.

If you have questions after reviewing this information for speakers, please contact Karen.

Programs are intended to be an opportunity to share learning and provide professional development for an audience of both corporate training and development professionals and independent consultants and trainers providing services to corporations.  We are looking for dynamic speakers who can translate their topic(s) into tactics, techniques, best practices and/or strategies that our audience can put into practice.

Note: Your proposal will not be reviewed until all required information is supplied.

Required Information

1. Program Description / Outline / Expected Learning Outcomes (one page)
2. Special equipment or prop requirements, if applicable
3. Short Bio
4. List previous speaking engagements experience (program title, where, when) and references as a speaker

Topics

Subject areas should be of interest to trainers in the corporate world, primarily, and to independent consultants secondarily.  Topics can either speak directly to the competencies (below), or to matters of current interest and innovations in the business world of training and development.

Programs

Presentations should model effective facilitation/training techniques (e.g. provide opportunity for exercises and interaction.)

Length

Your program, while scheduled for 1 hour, should really be tailored for 45 minutes, to allow time for questions and interaction with the audience.

Start:  5:30 Registration

5:45    Dinner

          6:30    Introductions & announcements

          6:45    Program

          7:30    Q & A

          7:45-8:15 Networking

 Take-aways

The purpose of the talk is for professional development – you want the audience to learn things from you that can be directly applied to their job or livelihood.  A sign of success here is when you see people taking notes.  The take-away might be a new exercise that will work in their training, a new approach to handling an issue, education about new technology or training methods, etc.

Make it interactive

As much as possible and where appropriate, include interactive sections in your presentation.  Get the audience involved. One of the benefits of this setting is that the members get to ask an expert about their field in a non-threatening environment. 

Experiential exercises

This is a group of trainers – if it is appropriate, have an experiential exercise that reinforces your topic or that they can use in their own classes. 

Back up for technology

If you are going to use a projector or even an overhead, have a back up plan in the event of a problem.  The handouts of slides serve as a back up if need be – it is not acceptable to say “The show cannot go on!” due to a technology problem.

No sales pitches

Please don’t use the podium as a soapbox to pitch to a captive audience.  If people want to ask you about a product or service supplied by you or your company, please do it afterwards and offline.

Handouts

Learners/participants should get a handout, preferably a slide summary of their presentation to facilitate note taking and learning. Handouts also serve as “backup” in cases of equipment failure!

The Programming chair should get a copy of your handouts before the meeting.

Design

• Get the audience involved quickly—Take a survey, ask a question, 
• Limit introduction info on company and business challenge –maybe 2 or 3 minutes.
• If it is a large topic, go into depth on at least one aspect of it—ask your ASTD contact for help in identifying the in-depth issue.
• If you are talking about a project, make it more about the content than the process.
• Tell the results—how it worked, or what has happened as a result.
• Try to give the audience a taste of the program—exercise, reading, etc.
• Limit jargon—make sure you identify all terms

Speakers are responsible for securing permissions needed for the use of copyrighted materials that they include/use in their presentations.

Preparation

Once you are assigned a date, you will be contacted by our Public Relations Chair.  The PR chair will work with you to:

• Design a short program description for our advertising and newspaper inserts.  
• Arrange for your room set up and audio visual equipment needs.  Please plan on bringing your own computer and projector if you plan to use a PowerPoint presentation.

 The Location & Date

• Usually the 4th Monday of the month, Sept-June
• Locations in Norwalk, CT

Dinner

Since we are a small, non-profit association chapter, speakers provide their programs gratis.  However, we do provide a delicious dinner.

We sincerely thank our presenters for their contribution to the education of training and development professionals, and the betterment of our field.