I used to attend a lot of conferences. I used to speak at lots of conferences.

But one keynote opened my eyes. I no longer do conferences.

A university professor was keynoting. Their topic was, “Everyone Should Code!” Which means all teachers should be teaching all students how to code.

The professor gave a tour of a popular coding-for-kids website.

I have a degree in computer science. I do not think everyone should code – anymore than everyone should become a car mechanic, a farmer, or a lawyer.

So afterwards, I wanted to chat with the professor.

Guess what?

The keynote speaker did not know how to code.

But! They spent an hour telling overworked teachers to add “teach your students to code” to their list of to-dos.

Now, surely the good professor had led a class of students through that website they shared.

Nope.

The speaker’s only experience with the coding website was… they played around with it once. Didn’t even finish the project, though.

The icing on the cake?

This person was paid thousands of dollars to give this keynote.

So…

I learned that (some?) conferences do not check whether their keynote speaker knows what they’re talking about. And that means they certainly aren’t checking their breakout speakers.

And I realized that, in my own keynoting career, no one ever previewed my talks. No organizers asked me to demonstrate my competence. The folks who hired me watched me give my presentation for the first time along with the audience. They honestly had no idea what I was going to say!

So, if you’re a leader in education, beware hiring someone to talk to your teachers without confirming that they can do the thing they’re talking about! And if you are the one giving the talk, please only speak from experience.