Planning a \”Make me a speaker\” event

As some of you know, Meri Williams has set up a Wiki for people who want to become speakers at summits and events at http://www.makemeaspeaker.com/ (currently spammed :-() and I am a very big fan of the idea (even pimped it in my Highland Fling Talk).

However, except for some minor changes to the Wiki and some posts about it not much happened, which is why I am taking the initiative to take it a bit further. I already chatted to several people and we’ll organize “Make me a Speaker” events in London soon. The format will be pretty straight forward:

• Prospective speakers have 5-10 minutes (depending on how many sign up) to present a topic of choice
• A panel of “experts” (organizers of events, experienced speakers) will give advise and praise afterwards as to what was good and what needs improvement
• Both the panel and the audience vote for the best presentation of the evening and the winners will get a small prize.

I already got feedback from Foyles (the bookstore) to sponsor books as prizes and I am thinking of using the Yahoo! office in Covent Garden, London and BBC’s Bush House in Charing Cross, London (with thanks to Ian Forrester) alternately as the location of the event.

All that is left now is to sort out a date when to do this (and my calendar is quite full right now) and actually gauging if there is interest in something like that.

So what say you?