{"id":5016,"date":"2018-10-16T19:19:02","date_gmt":"2018-10-16T14:19:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/?page_id=5016"},"modified":"2026-04-14T19:50:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T02:50:34","slug":"speaker-terms","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/speaker-terms\/","title":{"rendered":"Want me to speak at your event?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Hi, I&#8217;m <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MrAhmadAwais\/\">Ahmad Awais<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>I love public speaking \u2013 so much that I&#8217;ve spent most of the last five years on the road (with an average of 33 conferences\/meetups\/seminars a year).<\/p>\n<p>I am also a very busy man (yes, my\u00a0stream might make you think otherwise, but I am not kidding) and I am getting roughly 200-300 emails a day and about an offer to speak each week. This is not boasting, I am happy that people want me to speak, and I don\u2019t want to disappoint anyone.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m genuinely humbled by the pace at which things move in my world, even if my <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MrAhmadAwais\/\">Twitter<\/a> suggests otherwise. Each day, I&#8217;m navigating through a sea of 200-300 emails and receiving weekly invitations to share insights and experiences. This isn&#8217;t a humblebrag; it&#8217;s a heartfelt expression of gratitude.<\/p>\n<p>Being asked to speak and share my passion for technology and innovation is something I deeply value. I&#8217;m committed to sharing my knowledge without letting anyone down.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"email\">If you\u2019d like me to speak at your event <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/contact\/\">send me an email with the subject [Speaking Opportunity]<\/a><\/span>. Please include the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The dates and location of your conference<\/li>\n<li>The nature of your conference (who do you target, how many people you expect, and how many talks will be there)<\/li>\n<li>The nature of the talk (keynote, workshop, panel\u2026)<\/li>\n<li>If there are any travel arrangements or not (more on that later)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"postcontents full dark\">\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\" style=\"text-align: center;\" id=\"speaking-terms\">Speaking Terms<a href=\"#speaking-terms\" class=\"heading-link\">#<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<section class=\"postcontents wrapper\">\n<p>I am a professional presenter with lots of experience. Therefore, I want to make sure that there is no misconception about what I expect and deliver.<\/p>\n<p>If I speak at your event I will:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Deliver a fitting talk for the intended audience<\/strong>. I am happy to discuss content with you but I will not send slides for review and allow changes by conference organizers. I tend to deliver a unique talk every time I can and it will be an up-to-date talk. This can not be achieved if I need to send in the deck weeks in advance (in the software world, a week old slides can be rendered useless by new updates). Slides to me are wallpapers of a presentation and I treat them as such.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Deliver the talk on time and stick to the defined format and duration<\/strong>. I need to know what time frame you expect and what format you want it to be in. I will show up at the times you need me to be there and set up on stage with enough time for AV people to wire up microphones and other equipment. I tend not to need any dry-run or setup, but I am happy to do so if that is your conference policy.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Use my own computer to deliver my talk<\/strong>. Many times I will go beyond slide decks and show live code examples. That requires me to have <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/uses\/\">my own setup<\/a> which at the moment is a Macbook.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Attend your event to mingle with attendees<\/strong>. I do speak because I want people to learn something. Therefore I will take part in your conference to be able to answer people\u2019s questions before and after my presentation or workshop. I consider parachuting in and out of conferences and only mingling with other speakers a waste and unprofessional demeanour for a conference presenter. We\u2019re not rock stars or actors who deliver a concert or play and leave. That said, I can\u2019t always be there for the whole conference, especially for multi-day events. I\u2019d appreciate a schedule to where you really need me to be there.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Promote my presence at your event<\/strong>. I will tweet\/blog before, during and after the event about what I will do at your event and interesting things I encounter. Feel free to connect with me <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MrAhmadAwais\/\">@MrAhmadAwais<\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong>Publish my slides and screen recording after my talk<\/strong>. If there is a good enough connection, this normally happens right after the presentation. Everything I create at your event will be shared via a detailed blog post or a tweet with links to the slide deck.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 id=\"i-expect-you-to\">I expect you to:<a href=\"#i-expect-you-to\" class=\"heading-link\">#<\/a><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Provide me with a prime speaking slot<\/strong>. I\u2019ve <a href=\"https:\/\/Awais.dev\/talks\">proven to be a good keynote speaker<\/a> and find interesting topics to open or close conferences. I also work well as a moderator or on-stage interviewer. I don\u2019t feel I am used to the best of my abilities for your event when I speak to a half-empty room in a side track. I am happy to promote and remind people of side-track activities though.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Deliver a professional stage setup<\/strong>. I bring my own laptop and stuff, but I expect at least a power plug, dongles (if your projector doesn&#8217;t connect to a MacBook) and a microphone. I am very good with audio engineers but I am not there to fix audio issues or set up projectors. I expect this to work and be available. I normally don\u2019t need an internet connection but would love to have one.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Record and publish my talk<\/strong>. As each of my talks is unique there is no danger that people can attend one they already have seen on the web. Recordings are a great advertisement for your conference.<\/li>\n<li><strong>If possible, I\u2019d like you to cover my travel and hotel<\/strong>. I am on stage and need to be able to concentrate on that. I can not do so if I need to find lodgings and organize travel to your event in addition to presenting. I don\u2019t expect first class or business class flights, but I do expect to arrive a day before the event and leave the day after with lodging organized in between. I do not want to book and pay myself and get reimbursed. International payments are a mess and I don\u2019t have time to deal with paperwork in between events seeing that I am presenting almost every two weeks. <em>I am sorry if that sounds harsh, but I want to concentrate on my talks, not try to explain to the tax department what all these invoices are about.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong>Keep me out of sponsorship discussions<\/strong>. I am at your event as Ahmad Awais and to present. No \u201cpay to play\u201d and I won\u2019t speak at sponsored speaking slots. I am happy to provide you with contacts of who to invite instead when we negotiated my participation. I am also happy to introduce you to company colleagues dealing with sponsorships, but this is not \u2013 at all \u2013 what I do. If you are looking for a corporate sponsoring to sell speaking slots, I am not the person you want.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All this is a lot of work, and beyond what is generally considered practice for presenters. Therefore I expect professional treatment by the conference organizers the same way I am professional about this.<\/p>\n<p>Some of these are negotiable and depend on the nature of your event. For example, I am fine to cover my own travel expenses for a single track, independent, not-for-profit event, but I don\u2019t see a point in doing the same for a commercial multi-track conference with a high price tag on the ticket. If you make money, it is just fair to share the load. I go above and beyond my call of duty as a presenter and I\u2019d like to see this being appreciated.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"deal-breakers\">Deal breakers<a href=\"#deal-breakers\" class=\"heading-link\">#<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>I am an agreeable person when it comes to supporting events, but there are a few things I am not happy about:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I will not come to speak at an event that supports any kind of harassment or offers a platform to presenters who bully others<\/li>\n<li>I don\u2019t pay to play. If I can\u2019t justify my time and effort to my employees\/board to come to your event then I can\u2019t come. Unless I take holiday and then I expect to be fully reimbursed for my efforts<\/li>\n<li>I don\u2019t support events that didn\u2019t make a good enough effort to represent the diversity our market should have. I am happy to introduce conference organizers to people I support and know to be great presenters on my behalf<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span id=\"email\">If you&#8217;ve read this, I am super glad we understand each other better. Now let&#8217;s get down to the business \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/contact\/\">send me an email<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Peace! \u270c\ufe0f<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi, I&#8217;m Ahmad Awais! I love public speaking \u2013 so much that I&#8217;ve spent most of the last five years on the road (with an average of 33 conferences\/meetups\/seminars a year). I am also a very busy man (yes, my\u00a0stream might make you think otherwise, but I am not kidding) and I am getting roughly 200-300 emails a day and about an offer to speak each week. This is not boasting, I am happy that people want me to speak, and I don\u2019t want to disappoint anyone. I&#8217;m genuinely humbled by the pace at which things move in my world, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5016","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Want me to speak at your event?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hi, I&#039;m Ahmad Awais! 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Founded Langbase.com, AI cloud to build, deploy, and scale AI agents with tools & memory \u00b7 Creator of Command.new. \"Awais is an awesome example for developers\" \u2014 Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. NASA Mars Ingenuity Helicopter mission code contributor 8th GitHub Stars Award recipient with 5x GitHub Stars Award (Listed as GitHub's #1 JavaScript trending developer). Google Developers Expert Web DevRel. Ex VP Eng (DevTools & DevRel) Rapid \u00b7 Google Developers Advisory Board (gDAB) founding member \u00b7 AI\/ML\/DevTools Angel Investor (Replit, Resend, Daytona, Gumroad and you?) \u276f AI\/ML Advisory Board San Francisco, DevNetwork. Award-winning Open Source Engineering leader authored hundreds of open-source dev-tools and software libraries used by millions of developers, including Shades of Purple code theme and corona-cli. Linux Foundation (Node.js Committee Lead), OpenAPI Business Governing Board. 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