Q and A with James Little, Affiliate Huddle
Affiliate Huddle are calling for new speaker submissions, with applications open until early February. I sat down with James Little to find out more.
Hi James, firstly can you give us a quick introduction to the Affiliate Huddle event taking place in April?
AffiliateHuddle is a bit of a passion project for me. It all started about 8 or 9 years ago when I was at a BrightonSEO event and got chatting to the organiser, Kelvin, after the event about how I'd love to see an event dedicated to affiliate marketing and being completely free to attend. The event in April will be the 7th AffiliateHuddle. It’s an event that I'm very proud to run and continues to be completely free to attend for advertisers and publishers.
Last year we moved the event to its new home in Brighton and this year it's just one day before BrightonSEO, hopefully allowing guests to attend both events and bring a different mix of attendees. We're expecting a good turn out again but I can't promise that it will have the same glorious sunshine that we got last year!
For this year’s event you are looking for new speakers to take to the stage. Can you tell us a bit more about this and its importance?
After this year's event I wanted to take a look back and think about what makes the Huddle different from other conferences such as the excellent PI Live or Affiliate Summit. The new location and getting out of the city is certainly one but also because it's not got 1000's of attendees there is a great community feel to it, which I think can be really helpful for new speakers as it's perhaps a bit less daunting. So I then thought that perhaps we could take this kind of feel and use it to really help the industry and bring through a new batch of experts who have not had the chance to speak at other events, so that's what we're trying to do.
There are two key changes we are making.
Nearly every talk on the day will either be a fireside chat or panel. This is good for two things; one, is that if you're a new speaker, it's far easier to have more of a relaxed feel of a panel / fireside chat and two is that it's actually I think more valuable for attendees and will hopefully help fuel debate and discussion.
Other than the moderators, most, if not all, of the panellists will be either brand new to speaking at an event like this or perhaps have only done it once or twice in the past. Putting a rule in place like this hopefully will encourage more people to get involved, especially if they know that all the other people that they will be talking with are in the same position!
What is your advice for new speakers thinking about registering their interest to speak? What topics will spark your interest?
I think it's often hard to put yourself forward for an event - but there are so many people who are knowledgeable in this space that I'd love to hear discuss the channel. I don't have any topics that would spark my interest as such but I'd love to see more advertisers get involved in sharing some of their knowhow; especially as you won't have to share any big numbers or build any big powerpoint slides! The main advice I'd give is to just give it a go - we're going to run a few sessions before the event for anyone who is worried about public speaking for the first time to hopefully share some tips and help with confidence before the event too.
Do you have any top tips for new speakers?
I think the main thing is just to not overthink it or worry. I'm of the view that the great thing about panels is that you don't need to rehearse or even prepare much. Come armed with the knowledge you have to do your role and if there are questions you are not sure how to answer, just be honest and pass on that particular question. We'll also make sure that there is an email chain with the other people in your session and a call or two booked before the event so that you have a vague idea of the kind of questions that might be covered.
How can companies support your new speaker initiative?
I'd love for more people to share what we're trying to do and encourage those that they feel could get involved to do so. Even if you have some ideas for topics but don't want to get involved yourself, feel free to submit them on the request page here.
Also if everyone reading this could encourage just one person to get involved, or do it yourself - think of all the amazing content we could have on the day!
What is the deadline for speaker submissions?
No set date yet - but we'll likely cut off submissions at the very start of February so that we have enough time to get all the panels together and get everyone onboard before the event in April.
You can find our more about the event and register here.