SMX – Speaking Pitch Form

Want to speak at SMX? This form allows you to pitch for sessions that have made it to our final agenda.

IMPORTANT: Submissions must come directly from the person making the pitch, in their name, with their email address.

If you’re a PR person or firm, you can work with the potential speaker to help craft the submission. You can even fill out the form on their behalf, as long as they have reviewed the submission.

We have this policy because we’ve found that the best pitches come when speakers themselves make a submission. We’ve also found that the majority of bad pitches have come from PR people who blindly pitch ideas without reviewing our guidelines. In some cases, they’ve not even consulted with a potential speaker at all on the pitch.

To increase the odds of being selected, be sure to have read the agenda for the show you are interested in. Understand what the sessions are about. Ensure that your pitch is on target to the show’s audience and the session. Please also be very specific about what you intend to cover. Speaking in generalities decreases the odds that you will be selected. Also, if you do not see a particular session listed, this is because there are no openings for that session.

Also, while the form below may allow you to pitch for every session, be selective. Submitting to many sessions suggest you haven’t taken the time to properly consider the best place for you to speak. Consider pitching for only up to three or four sessions in all. That’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but it’s good advice. If you pitch more than one session, indicate in the speaking pitch box your priority (this would be my top choice, my second choice, etc.)

Please do not contact our conference chairs directly with your pitch. Honestly, this form is the best way to get your pitch in front on them.

What happened to the old two-step process of session pitches and speaking pitches that you might recall? It’s now gone. We changed this because:

• Some people had great session ideas but felt they couldn’t submit these in the old system unless they wanted to speak.
• During agenda development, we often combine and merge many session ideas. This means we need speakers to pitch for a specific session based on the description in the agenda, rather than a suggested idea.

We still want input, and we always ask for people to suggest ideas for a show using our session ideas suggestion form. That increases the odds that a session you’d like to speak on might make it to the final agenda. However, once a final agenda is posted you’ll still need to make a formal pitch to speak using the form on this page to be considered.

If you’re accepted to speak, you’ll receive a pass to the entire SMX event. Travel and accommodation are not provided.

We do try to notify everyone using this form if they have been accepted or rejected as a speaker, usually 4-6 weeks prior to when the event actually happens.

Watch the SMX Blog to be alerted for when this form opens for pitches for any show.

IF THERE’S NO FORM BELOW, THEN WE ARE NOT CURRENTLY TAKING SESSION PITCHES FOR ANY SHOW.