Class A, B and C Speakers at Conferences

The ROOTS 2011 poster just reminded me of a comment Allan Kelly had at the beginning of his talk at the ACCU 2011 conference in Oxford a couple of weeks ago. He said every conference has class A, B and C speakers. What follows is more or less what he said, mixed with some of my own thoughts.

• The class A speakers are the big names, the ones that sell the tickets for the conference. On the ROOTS 2011 poster, there are four of them (Michael Feathers, Dan North, Jim Webber and Jurgen Appelo), and you recognize them by the huge font for their names. Often they are the keynote speakers.
  
• The class B speakers are the not so big names, but still regular speakers at conferences. Allan Kelly is one of them. Sometimes they're the local stars, as opposed to the international stars above, or they're the stars in a smaller niche. They provide good content –otherwise they wouldn't be class B speakers– and deliver the bulk of the material at the conference, but often they're a bit predictable too. Their names are on the ROOTS 2011 poster too, but in the smaller font.
  
• The class C speakers are all the others, including the speakers that will have a talk but didn't make it to the ROOTS 2011 poster. (I'm one of them, hoping that one day, I'll become a class B speaker.)

Allan Kelly's point was that when you go to a conference, you should not just go to the class A and class B speakers. You should go through the list of class C speakers, and pick some of them too, because that's where you'll find the really interesting stuff.

I wouldn't call this a revolutionary insight, but I've never heard it expressed before. In his particular case, it was his excuse for not having attended Tom Gilb's talk earlier that day, because he had gone to Emily Winch's talk instead. This evening, I was reminded of his comment again, because the ROOTS 2011 poster illustrates so well who the class A, B and C speakers at the conference.