Finding speaking opportunities has never been easier. Evaluating whether they’re actually worth your time? That part hasn’t changed much.
In Brief
- Discovery is no longer the hard part — platforms like SpeakerRadar, Google Alerts, and AI search tools have made finding open calls for speakers faster than ever
- The real bottleneck is evaluation: knowing whether an opportunity is worth your time before you invest hours in an application
- Audience composition matters far more than headcount — 25 CHROs in the room beats 500 random attendees every time
- Define both positive and negative criteria specifically before you start browsing; vague criteria produce vague decisions
- Research every event before applying — past speakers, sponsors, and session recordings tell you more than the call for speakers ever will
Search has improved dramatically in the last decade. When I first started working in competitive intelligence, tracking information from multiple sources was genuinely laborious — you cobbled together RSS feeds, Boolean search strings, and manual monitoring just to stay current. Today, a well-formed query in an AI search engine can surface conference calls for speakers across a dozen industries in under a minute. The infrastructure for discovery is better than it’s ever been.
But the bottleneck was never really discovery. It’s evaluation. It’s knowing (before you spend three hours filling out an application, preparing a proposal, and following up) whether a given opportunity is actually worth your attention.
This post covers both: how to find opportunities efficiently, and how to assess them honestly.
Finding Opportunities: Tools Worth Knowing
Before getting into evaluation, a quick word on the discovery side, because there are some genuinely useful resources that most speakers don’t know about.
Dedicated speaker opportunity platforms
SpeakerRadar is one of the better tools in this space — it aggregates open calls for speakers across events and makes it searchable. (Full disclosure: one of the founders is a former colleague.) If you’re not already using something like it, start there.
I also maintain a manually curated list of open calls for speakers on this site, updated weekly. It’s smaller than what a platform can offer, but everything on it has passed a basic quality check.
Search and AI tools
Google Alerts remains underused by most speakers. Set up alerts for terms like “call for speakers,” “speaker applications open,” or “[your industry] conference 2026” and let the opportunities come to you instead of going hunting.
For AI-assisted discovery, the most practical approach right now is to query large language models or AI search engines directly — something like: “What are the 20 most relevant conferences in 2026 for speakers focused on wellness and HR audiences?” Tools like Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Google’s AI search layer are increasingly useful here, though they’re better at identifying recurring annual events than surfacing live open applications with current deadlines.
If you want to get more systematic, some LLM platforms (ChatGPT’s paid tier, for instance) now support scheduled tasks — meaning you can set up a recurring prompt that runs weekly and surfaces new opportunities without you having to remember to go look. It’s early-stage but worth experimenting with if you’re investing heavily in the speaking circuit.
A note of caution: none of these tools are reliable for real-time deadline tracking. Always verify application deadlines directly with the event before investing time in a submission.
Event planner resources
If you want to understand the event ecosystem from the organizer’s side — which is useful context when you’re evaluating whether an event is professionally run — resources like BizBash and Meetings & Conventions cover the industry from the planner’s perspective and can help you understand what serious events look like from the inside.
The Part Most Speakers Skip: Actually Evaluating the Opportunity
Here’s where the real work is. Most speakers operate with vague criteria — they know roughly what a “good” opportunity looks like, but they haven’t articulated it precisely enough to make fast, confident decisions. The result is a lot of time spent on applications that were never the right fit, and opportunities declined that probably should have been pursued. My trick? You should be able to hand this to someone and they be able to evaluate it FOR YOU. It should be that specific.
A more useful approach: get specific about both what you’re looking for and what you’re actively trying to avoid.
Define your positive criteria — specifically
“Good networking opportunities” is not helpful criteria. What does good networking actually mean for your business right now?
If you’re trying to break into the financial services speaking market, a good networking opportunity means rooms with VPs of HR, CHROs, or CFOs at mid-to-large financial institutions. If you’re building a pipeline in healthcare, it’s a very different list. The more precisely you can define who needs to be in the room for this opportunity to matter, the faster you can evaluate whether a given event qualifies.
Some dimensions worth defining clearly:
- Audience composition: Not headcount — job titles, seniority, decision-making authority, industry. 100 first graders is not the same as 25 CHROs. Audience size is almost never the right filter.
- Strategic fit: What doors could this specific opportunity open? Think beyond the speaking fee. A modestly-paid engagement in front of the right room can generate far more value than a well-paid engagement in front of the wrong one.
- Relationship potential: Are there attendees, sponsors, or fellow speakers who represent meaningful connections for you? If a former Fortune 500 CEO who now sits on multiple boards is attending — and you have a warm introduction path — that changes the calculus entirely.
- Topic alignment: More on this below.
Define your negative criteria — specifically
This is equally important and more often skipped. What makes an opportunity definitively not worth pursuing, regardless of other factors?
Some examples to consider:
- Events that expect speakers to generate their own registration or ticket sales
- Conferences with no public attendee list and no history to research
- Engagements that require you to speak significantly outside your core area
- Events where past speakers are consistently unknown or early-career, suggesting limited budget and audience quality
- Organizers who are unresponsive or vague during the inquiry stage
Your negative criteria are your time protection. They’re what lets you pass quickly without second-guessing.
The topic fit question — and why speakers get this wrong
Some speakers try to fit the mold of what an event is calling for rather than what they’re actually built to deliver. If you’re a strong speaker, you might be able to pull it off. But consider what you’re creating in the market: confusion.
If you’re known for leadership communication and you start showing up on stages talking about supply chain resilience because a well-paying conference needed someone, you’re diluting your positioning. Not every stage is worth the speaking fee if it costs you clarity about what you stand for.
The right question isn’t “can I speak on this topic?” It’s “does speaking on this topic, at this event, in front of this audience, move me toward where I’m trying to go?”
How to research an event before you apply
Open calls for speakers rarely tell you everything you need to know. Do some intelligence work:
- Look at who spoke in previous years — speaker quality is a strong proxy for event quality and budget
- Check the event’s social media and post-event content for evidence of real audience engagement – who attends year over year? Who was there?
- Review sponsor lists — the caliber of sponsors signals who attends and what the budget reality is
- Look for session recordings or post-event write-ups; serious events produce them
- If you have contacts who attended previously, ask them directly
- Talk to your network. If you know someone who was there, ask them (generally) about their impressions of the event. Then ask more specific questions as desired, but start general. Know multiple people? Ask them, too. You’re looking for signal, not noise.
The investment in this research pays for itself many times over in applications you don’t send.
Starting from the top: filtering before you evaluate
If you find yourself evaluating 40 opportunities individually, your filter is set too wide. Start with a narrower initial query.
Whether you’re using a platform like SpeakerRadar, an AI search tool, or a curated list like the one I maintain, begin with your most important constraint — audience type, geography, topic area, fee threshold — and narrow the field to a manageable shortlist before doing individual evaluation. Ten well-researched applications will outperform forty rushed ones every time.
Need help with evaluating opportunities?
A Practical Starting Point
If you haven’t already, spend an hour getting your criteria down in writing — positive and negative, as specifically as you can make them. What does the right opportunity look like? What makes something an automatic pass?
Once that’s written, every discovery tool becomes more useful, because you know what you’re actually filtering for. And every application you send becomes a better one, because you’ve already done the work of confirming it belongs in your pipeline.
Browse the current open calls for speakers — updated weekly, manually curated.
Jonathan Dunnett is a Council of Competitive Intelligence Fellow and keynote speaker business development coach. He helps established speakers build strategic, relationship-driven pipelines using the same intelligence frameworks Fortune 500 companies use to win competitive deals.
