Great Garden Speakers--The Official Launch

Some of you may remember that a few months ago, we posted an online survey to gauge the interest in a new website called GreatGardenSpeakers.com.  The idea was to make it easier for garden clubs, botanical gardens, flower shows, conferences, and other such venues to find speakers with expertise in gardening, nature, horticulture, ecology, landscape design, and floral design.

Well, guess what?  After a few hectic months of consultation and design, we're live and ready to start signing up speakers.  Feel free to visit the site and check it out.

In particular, here are a few things you might want to do:

• Browse our growing list of garden speakers and post an Audience Review if you've seen any of them speak before.

• Check out our page of frequently-asked questions for speakers who are interested in joining the site.

• If you are a program chair, events coordinator, conference organizer, or part of any group that hosts speakers, read our frequently-asked questions for program chairs here. 

• Sign up for our email newsletter to get updates on new speakers, new topics or book releases, tour dates, and tips for hosting successful events.

On a personal level, I've thought for a long time that a speakers bureau dedicated just to garden, nature, and design speakers would be a wonderful thing.  Garden clubs and master gardener groups all over the country host speakers every month, but the program chair duties rotate annually, making it hard to stay in touch with them. Even the botanical gardens, flower and garden shows, conferences, etc. may have staff devoted to scheduling events, but they are often juggling so many things at once that it's hard to spend hours on the Internet searching for speakers.

Great Garden Speakers has some nifty features that I hope will make life easier for these groups.  The ability to post Audience Reviews is a big deal as they rely on word-of-mouth recommendations.  We also created a Coming to a City Near You feature that lets speakers post the cities they may be traveling to.  That lets groups take advantage of speakers who are already coming through town, potentially saving on travel costs and fees.

Anyway, go check it out, and let us know what you think.  Oh, and in case you were wondering--the geniuses responsible for getting this off the ground are:

Scott Calhoun

Mary Ann Newcomer

Debra Prinzing

Nan Sterman

Amy Stewart

Comments

[susan harris]

Big ole kudos to you all!

[Kathy J, Washington Gardener Mag]

Congrats and a FABU idea, indeed! As both a speaker booker and a speaking bookee, this is long past needed. Signing up pronto (starting doing it yesterday and got side-tracked, only have my own butt to kick for that.)

[greg draiss]

Excellent idea. I have done more than thirty talks already this year.
Speaking on BBQ Friday night in Hudson NY and "Slugs Bugs and Other Thugs" at Mohonk Mountain House on the the 30th

The TROLL

[Ann Flower]

I just recently discovered your blog and am so glad I did. What a sweet post!

[Evelyn Hadden]

Thanks to you geniuses for setting up this wonderful resource, and for making it really easy to use. I just signed up. It's going to be so helpful for speakers as well as venues and organizations.