Why speaking at conferences is worth the effort
A talk at the right conference puts your founder or a team expert in front of a room full of potential buyers, introduced by an event those buyers already trust. A good talk does more for credibility than a booth, and it keeps paying off afterward as a recording, a set of slides, and a reason for people to look you up.
The hard part is timing. Most industry conferences choose speakers through an open call, and that call often closes four to eight months before the event. The agenda usually goes public after the call closes, which is exactly when most people notice the event and think, "We should speak there next year." Without a system, every deadline is discovered just after it passes.
Doing this well takes steady, unglamorous work. Someone has to decide which events your buyers actually attend, find each event's call for speakers page, write down the deadline, and check back when next year's call opens. Then they need a talk idea that suits that event, a proposal written to its guidelines, and a bio ready to send. It's research-heavy, it's different for every event, and it has to keep running all year, which makes it a good job for an AI agent.
Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. For speaking opportunities, it finds the events worth speaking at, tracks their calls and deadlines, and writes the proposals. Here's how it works.
How Kite finds speaking opportunities at conferences
Kite starts with what it already knows about your company. During onboarding, it builds a knowledge base of your positioning, products, customers, and competitors. That tells Kite who your buyers are, which shapes which conferences matter, and what your founder can talk about that those audiences will want to hear.
From there, Kite works through the job in order:
- It builds a shortlist of conferences over the next six to twelve months that your buyers attend, scored on fit, timing, and cost.
- It finds each event's call for speakers, its deadline, and what the organizers are looking for.
- It reads each event's past speaker lineups and sessions to judge how realistic a speaking slot is.
- It writes the talk abstracts, bios, and submission answers for each call you decide to pursue.
- It keeps every deadline on one calendar and checks for new calls on a schedule.
You see the shortlist and every proposal before anything is submitted or sent, and you approve the work in the conversation with Kite. You can work with Kite in your browser or in Slack.
- Find the conferences your buyers attend
- How do you find open calls for speakers in your industry?
- Judge whether a talk is likely to be accepted
- Write the proposals and bios
- How do founders get invited to speak at industry events?
- Keep every deadline on one calendar and check for new calls
Find the conferences your buyers attend
The best speaking opportunities are at the events your buyers go to, which are not always the biggest events in your industry. So Kite builds its list from your customer profile rather than from a general list of popular conferences.
Kite searches official conference and trade show pages, industry event calendars, and the event pages of your competitors, partners, and customers. It also looks at where people like your founder have spoken before. If the founders of three companies that sell to your buyers all spoke at the same regional summit last spring, that summit belongs on the list even if you've never heard of it.
Kite then scores each event on the things that decide whether a talk there is worth the time. These include how closely the audience matches your buyers, whether the attendees are there to evaluate products or mostly to network, how realistic a speaking slot is, and how the timing lines up with your plans. Travel and cost count too. Kite sorts each event into one of five recommendations: must attend, sponsor selectively, attend only, monitor, or skip. It explains each recommendation in a sentence or two, because the reason matters more than the score. For a closer look at how to judge a single event, read How to decide whether a conference is worth attending Coming soon .
How do you find open calls for speakers in your industry?
Open calls for speakers are posted on each conference's own website, usually on a page called "Call for speakers," "Call for papers," "Call for proposals," or "Speak at" the event. Many technology conferences collect their submissions through Sessionize or PaperCall, and both sites list calls that are currently open. Directories such as confs.tech track technology conferences along with their call deadlines. In most other industries, the trade associations and the event organizers' own newsletters are where calls get announced first.
These directories are a good place to browse, but they only show the events that chose to list there, and they can't tell you which ones your buyers attend. Kite starts from your shortlist instead and goes to each event's official page. For every event, it records:
- Whether the call is open. Kite notes whether submissions are open now, closed for this year, or not yet announced.
- The deadline. Kite writes down the exact date from the official page. When the date isn't public, it says so and links the page where it will appear.
- What the organizers want. This includes the tracks and themes, the talk formats and lengths, and any rules, such as a ban on product pitches.
- How to submit. Kite links the submission form or platform and lists the questions it asks.
Kite checks the year on every event page, because conference sites often leave last year's call online. When the only information available is from a past edition, Kite labels it that way and treats the date as an estimate.
Judge whether a talk is likely to be accepted
An open call is only an opportunity if a talk from your company has a real chance of being chosen. Before recommending an event, Kite reads its published speaker lineup and agenda, along with past editions when this year's lineup isn't out yet.
The lineup shows what the organizers actually accept. Kite looks at who spoke, what roles and companies they came from, and what their sessions covered. If an event's speakers are mostly practitioners sharing results, a talk built on what your founder learned from 200 customers fits well. If the stage is filled with sponsors and big-company executives, an open submission from a startup founder is a long shot, and a sponsorship package that includes a speaking slot might be the more realistic route. Kite says which situation each event is in.
Kite also researches five to ten of the most relevant speakers at each event, with their roles, their sessions, and why they matter to you. That tells you who you'd share the stage with, and it gives your founder people worth meeting while they're there.
Write the proposals and bios
A strong proposal answers the question the organizers are really asking: why would this audience want to hear this talk? Kite writes each one around that question, using your positioning, your founder's experience, and the event's own tracks and guidelines.
For each call you decide to pursue, Kite drafts a talk title and abstract, the answers to the submission form's questions, and a speaker bio at the lengths the event asks for. It can also write a one-page speaker summary for organizers who want more detail. A talk idea that works at a developer conference will often need a different angle for an industry trade show, so Kite adapts the same core idea to each audience rather than sending one abstract everywhere. You review the drafts, make any changes, and submit them through the event's form.
Related Use Cases
- Write conference talk proposals Coming soon Develop a talk idea into abstracts and submission answers suited to each event.
- Write a founder bio for press: Keep a bio ready at several lengths for organizers, hosts, and reporters.
How do founders get invited to speak at industry events?
Founders usually get invited to speak because an organizer has already seen their work. Keynotes and panel seats are rarely filled through the open call. Organizers fill them from people they've heard on a podcast, read on LinkedIn, met at last year's event, or been introduced to by someone they trust.
Kite helps on two fronts. First, it finds the contact path for each event's organizers, which is usually the official speaker inquiry page or form. When you ask for it, Kite also finds the organizer's name and professional email. It then drafts a short note your founder can send that proposes a specific talk and explains why it suits that event's audience. You approve the note, and Kite sends it from your team's Kite address or your founder's connected Gmail.
Second, Kite helps your founder become someone organizers have already heard of. Appearances on the podcasts your buyers listen to, posts your founder shares on LinkedIn, and a recording of an earlier talk all make an invitation more likely. Kite can get your founder booked on podcasts and turn each talk your founder gives into posts and articles that keep their name in front of the same organizers.
Keep every deadline on one calendar and check for new calls
The surest way to stop missing deadlines is to track the events you care about all year, not only while their calls are open. Kite keeps a dated calendar of every event on your shortlist, with its call for speakers deadline, its sponsorship and registration deadlines, and the status of each submission. It saves the calendar in your team's knowledge base, so the next round of research starts from it.
When an event's call has already closed, Kite doesn't drop it. It notes when the call opened last year and puts that date on the calendar as the time to check back. That way, you hear about next year's call when it opens, not when the agenda is announced.
Kite can also run the search on a schedule. For example, it can look for newly announced events and newly opened calls on the first of every month, update the calendar, and bring you the ones that fit. Each new call comes with its deadline and a recommendation, so you can decide whether to submit while there is still time to write a good proposal.
What you get
A ranked shortlist of conferences
The events in the next six to twelve months that your buyers attend, each with a recommendation, the reason for it, and links to the official pages.
Call for speakers details for each event
Whether the call is open, its deadline, the tracks and formats the organizers want, and where to submit.
A read on each event's speakers
Who has spoken there, what kinds of talks get accepted, and five to ten speakers worth knowing.
Proposals ready to submit
Talk titles, abstracts, submission answers, and speaker bios written for each event you choose.
Notes to organizers
Short pitches for events without an open call, sent after you approve them.
A deadline calendar that stays current
Every event's submission, sponsorship, and registration deadlines, updated each time Kite checks for new calls.
How to get started
Get started for free and tell Kite what you want in plain language. You might say, "Find conferences where our CEO could speak to operations leaders at mid-sized manufacturers," or "Which events in the next year are accepting speaker submissions for fintech founders?"
Kite uses what it knows about your buyers to build the shortlist and sends it to you with each event's call for speakers status and deadline. Tell Kite where you can travel, which months are busy, and who on your team wants to speak, and it adjusts the list. Then choose the calls you want to pursue, and Kite drafts the proposals for you to review.
You don't need to connect anything to start. Kite's built-in research finds the events, their calls, their speakers, and their organizers. Connect your founder's Gmail when you want notes to organizers to come from their own address. When the first list is done, ask Kite to repeat the search every month so new calls reach you while they're still open.
Integrations used to find speaking opportunities
Kite finds conferences, reads their speaker lineups, and tracks their calls for speakers with its built-in research, so you don't need a subscription to an event database. The one integration that helps is the one that sends your founder's notes to organizers.
Send notes to organizers from your founder's address
Common questions
How far ahead do conferences open calls for speakers?
Many conferences open their call for speakers six to twelve months before the event and close it four to eight months before. Large events tend to run on the longer end, and smaller regional events and meetups often accept talks only a few weeks or months ahead. The pattern for a specific event is usually steady from year to year, which is why Kite uses last year's dates to decide when to check again.
Which conferences are accepting speaker submissions this year?
The answer changes every week and depends on your field, so any fixed list goes out of date quickly. Sessionize, PaperCall, and confs.tech show many open calls for technology events, and trade associations post calls for their own industries. Kite can pull the current list for your field, check each call on the event's official page, and filter it down to the events your buyers attend.
Can Kite submit the proposal for me?
Kite writes the full submission, including the title, abstract, form answers, and bio, and links you to the event's submission form. You or your speaker submit it, which also keeps the speaker's account and any follow-up from organizers with the person who will give the talk. When an event takes proposals by email, Kite can send the email for you once you approve it.
Should we pay to speak at a conference?
Sometimes it's worth it, but it should be a deliberate choice. Some events reserve their speaking slots for sponsors, and a sponsored talk can still reach the right audience if the event fits your buyers well. Kite tells you when an event's speaking slots appear to come with a sponsorship and compares the cost with the open-call events that reach a similar audience. To decide where sponsorship money is worth spending, see how to plan your event sponsorship strategy Coming soon .
Can Kite help after the talk is accepted?
Yes. Once a talk is accepted, Kite can research the other speakers and attendees your founder should meet, draft notes to book meetings before the event, and turn the talk into blog posts and social posts afterward. See how Kite helps you get pipeline from conferences and events.