Guest Speakers

Benefits of inviting a guest speaker to your recurring or one-off event:

🎢 offer an engaging experience to attendees,

❓give community members direct access to a researcher to ask questions,

🌺 attract new members to attend,

🤝 you get to make a connection with a researcher whose work you admire.

Though it requires more advanced planning, once the logistics are in place, there is not too much overhead.

Planning

📮Post your idea to the leads channel: When considering who to invite, we recommend you post to the leads' channel. We want to make sure that we aren't doubling up on asking the same researchers to present all the time, and you may not know who other leads are/have been in touch with in the past. 

Guest Communications

Outreach

When you first reach out to a potential guest speaker, be sure to: 

❓ explain what the Cohere For AI community is, 

🤗 explain your role as a volunteer lead,

📅 provide a few potential date presentation dates/ times to help move planning along. *Live C4AI support is only avaialble M-F, 9am-5pm ET (with some exceptions)

Feel free to CC Madeline (madeline@cohere.com) and/or Brittawnya (brittawnya@cohere.com) on outreach emails for organizational visibility, but make it clear the message is coming from you. Knowing who the invitation is coming from will provide important context to the speakers, and they will look favorably upon your volunteerism and initiative to give back to your community.

Here are some email outreach templates to help you get started.

Feel free to copy the template below and make it your own!

Confirming Details

Once a guest agrees to present, we need to confirm a few more logistics. At this point, Madeline or Brittawnya can jump in and communicate the following:

• Confirm date and time, including length of the talk (typically 1hr total event time), and place a calendar hold for guests and hosts - Madeline is only able to live support events that occur M-F, 9am-5pm ET (with some exceptions)

• Request the name of the talk they will be giving

• Confirm the structure of the talk (eg. I will briefly talk about the C4AI community before introducing you and handing things over. Once you finish your talk, I will help facilitate a Q&A from the audience, as time allows.) 

• Solicit a photo, brief bio, social media and weblinks to help promote the talk

• Let them know if you plan to record the talk and how the recording will be used (eg. shared internally with community members). N.B. Depending on the nature of the talk, we may be able to post it to Cohere’s YouTube channel and the C4AI Podcast, Exploring the unknown, together. This is decided on a case-by-case basis.

• Ask them to sign on to the call 5-10 minutes early to ensure the technology is working.

Promoting the Event

Brittawnya will create a graphic to promote the event. Unless otherwise discussed, this will be used on the Discord event listing, and shared on social media.

📣 Promote the event on Discord: 

• Post to #announcements telling everyone about the event and letting them know what to expect. 

  • Share a link to the Discord event listing, and encourage them to sign-up in advance (if this is how your event is set up). 

  • You can tag @everyone for the initial announcement, 

• Plan to post reminders a few days before the event and on event day

  • Please refrain from tagging @everyone for subsequent reminders.

• Also post to any channels that are relevant to your event, though avoid tagging folks too often.

🐥 Re-tweet the C4AI posts about your event or make your own. You can also re-share on LinkedIn.

Hosting

Be prepared to host your event. 

👋 introduce yourself

Eg. My name is X. I work at X doing X. My research interests are in X. As part of the Corhere For AI community, I lead X.

💙 introduce the C4AI community (if hosting a public event)

Eg. Cohere For AI is a non-profit research lab that seeks to change where, how and by whom ML research is done. Our community is a space where researchers, engineers, linguists, social scientists and lifelong learners connect and collaborate with each other. Learn more and join our community by visiting cohere.for.ai

👏 introduce your guest

🎤 moderate any questions from the audience

*establish with your guest in advance if they want to take questions throughout the presentation, or leave them until the end.

🗒️ be prepared with questions of your own in case the attendees are slow to participate

Take the call in a quiet environment with few audio and visual distractions.

Post-Event

🙌 Thank you note: After the event, send a thank you email to the guest within 1-2 days. Include specific feedback (eg. something they said that stuck out to you, a positive comment you saw on Discord in ref to the talk, etc.)

⚱️Post-event artifacts: These can include slides, event recordings, or notes taken by a lead or attendee during the event that include any relevant links that were shared. We save these to our shared google drive and post them here, on the Resource Guide mini-site. You can then share a link to the mini-site on Discord in a post that highlights any key takeaways or learnings. *If a recording was taken, Brittawnya will upload it to our shared google drive and let you know when it's ready. It will be up to you to further share it.

📽️ Recordings: When it makes sense to do so, Brittawnya will prepare and release recordings to YouTube YouTube videos are up within 1 week of the event (often sooner), though podcasts are often not released for some weeks. These are then shared publically via our social media channels. Be in touch if you have any questions about this.

Additional Considerations for Public events

🗓️ Public events should be scheduled with at least 2-3 weeks' notice so we have time to promote the event.

💻 We will typically use Zoom Webinars or Zoom Meetings to host public events, depending on the functionality required. Make sure your zoom software is up to date (please let us know if you will need to join via browser)