Written by: Vickie Sullivan | October 15, 2013
International Events Increase
Do you speak at association conferences for pay or to promote your perspective? Well, looks like you will have more opportunities in 2014 according to this international study by IMEX and ICCA.
Bottom line: this is a positive bunch, with almost a third (30%) planning more events and almost half (47%) predicting higher attendance. Translation: yes, we are concerned about the economy, but no, we are not slowing down.
The sample size here is quite small, but the majority (77%) represents events with more than 500 attendees. Enough to make the trip worthwhile.
Yes, it is true that many speaking fees are lower internationally. These stats are still promising. Ask yourself: does international speaking upgrade my brand? For one of my clients — who spoke at the World Innovation Forum in Cannes — the answer was a resounding yes.
Author : David Lim
Published: 2013-11-26 19:45:22
One of the unspoken but key part of the statistics are that 90% of these association meetings don't usually have room for a generalist speaker on cross-industry process skills like eg leadership, change, motivation, staff retention, diversity, et al. And most non-industry speakers tend to have competencies and a business around these skillsets. You'll need to have very industry specific, and usually, relevant technical skills, to speak about e.g water resources, timber grading, microbiology, negotiating oil and gas contracts etc. How do I know? I keep a close watch on MICE trends in Asia, and based in Singapore ( probably the one of the top 3 MICE destinations in Asia), it helps.Some of my thoughts on speaking more in Asia was published in SPEAKER magazine in April 2013 - http://www.nsaspeaker-magazine.org/nsaspeaker/201304#pg16 - i'd be happy to trade notes on speaking in the USA with speaking for high fees in Asia.