Running Basis Technology’s Speaking Campaign

2019/09/15 in Porfolio

TLDR: Basis Technology wanted to start speaking at conferences, but leadership didn’t want to spend any money. I put together a campaign that doubled our target speaking opportunity goal and developed content that earned stage time around the world.

Basis Technology wanted to take center stage at financial services conferences, but we had a lean budget (i.e., no pay for play). I knew we needed content and an organized effort, so I led the campaign affectionately dubbed “Project Speak Everywhere.” As project director, I managed the end-to-end development of all content, the conference selection and application process, as well as the preparation of all speakers.

From abstract to full deck, I designed a set of presentations around the messaging I developed for Basis Technology in finance: That the firm was taking its decades of experience working for the global intelligence community and applying it to financial services.

Chris Mack at the Open Data Science Conference delivering “AI for Good” 

This messaging was fleshed out over 5 different presentations at 11 different events, with almost every member of the executive team speaking as part of the campaign.

Slide from Chris Mack’s presentation “AI for Good” that he delivered at 3 different conferences

This campaign was an experiment that few thought could be pulled off—but we succeeded. We received 12 speaking opportunities (we spoke twice at one event), free of charge, taking the stage at Money20/20, FinCEN’s Innovation Hours, and AImpact, among many others. 

We also won awards for our work, particularly Declan Trezise’s presentation at AI Innovation Night: