How to invite keynotes

Inviting keynotes can be a bit intimidating for some folks. Generally speaking, chairs invite keynote speakers, and doing so shouldn't be done without sign-off from chairs, however, there's no reason non-chairs can't do the actual inviting. If someone on staff has a relationship to the potential speaker, it's best that they reach out.

Figuring out how to contact them

Keynote speakers are usually very well known, and thus get a lot of email/messages. It's important to spend a moment and determine their preferred method of contact. For example David Wheeler has a contact page which lists a specific "tag" that must be in the subject header, which he rotates regularly.

We're asking people to give up some of their time to come keynote our conference, so taking the time to ensure we're respecting their needs is critical.

Crafting the invitation

When emailing/messaging the individual, it shouldn't feel like an copy-paste invitation that could have been sent to anyone. You should reference their area of expertise and give some idea of what kind of talk we're looking for (or if we don't have a specific request, give a set of options). Don't assume the person knows what SCALE is, so be sure to include that, as well as a link.

Such an example might look like:

Hi {them},

My name is {you} - I'm {a chair|a co-founder|on the program committee} of the Southern California Linux Expo[1]. If you're not familiar with it, it's (as far as we know) the largest volunteer-run opensource conference in the US.

We wanted to invite you to be our {Saturday|Sunday} {morning|evening} keynote speaker this year!

We believe your work on {OSS Licensing|OSS Security|Building OSS organizations|etc.} will be perfect for our audience. We are open to the topic, but were thinking perhaps a talk about {idea or ideas}.

The conference is {dates} in Pasadena, CA and if you are interested in the keynote slot it would be on {date}.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks,
- {you}

[1] https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/