Small streams continuously move people to speaking
The last two years have essentially changed the world of conferences, making access to speaking different. TechVoices has walked through speaker mentoring for many new voices, and unlike before, we're now needed on shaping up proposal, not asking for a door to open at a physical conference. The risk of accepting a speaker when travel is involved is higher for conferences that pay travel, and we've had a pause on that risk.
We have been proud that our mentees are getting high remarks and scores in feedback, and are doing better than many established speakers. They get selected from open calls for proposals.
After removing all queuing services, the work within techvoices may not scale the same way, but the results are steady flow of speakers with focus on those we can mentor with the available time. It used to be impressive knowing hundreds of people seek mentoring, and scaling to servicing those numbers when the need was present with volunteers was not easy.
Taking mentees as they come and focusing on mentoring only avoiding administrivia helps us make our impact on the world of speaking.
Collaborating with conferences on marketing their call for proposal on request has also worked nicely for us.