Possible Conference Speaking Sponsorships -- 2011

Question

We're evaluating the feasibility of sponsoring a member of the gaming community to speak at a conference in 2011.

Speaking is a relatively big "ask", so this needs to be planned many months in advance. Let's get started!

We'd like the community to establish where ...

What relevant gaming conferences are coming up in 2011 that have open speaker slots or calls for papers?

... and then who.

Which members of the community are strongly interested in being sponsored by Stack Exchange, Inc to speak at one of the above conferences in 2011?

To be clear, the speaker is free talk about anything he or she wants so long as it would be roughly on topic for this site -- with a quick acknowledgement of support from Stack Exchange and a mention of the community here.

Answer 1

Gaming.SE is targeted towards gaming consumers, so most of the big-name conferences (E3) won't really capture our audience (or even allow them in the door). PAX, on the other hand, seems to be much more consumer-oriented, and the bulk of those who attend are regular people who are passionate about a wide variety of games, rather than mostly journalists (speaking from zero experience).

The upcoming PAX is in Seattle on August 26-28, and they are accepting panel and speaker submissions until June 14

Welcome to the PAX panel submission process! We are looking for over 90 hours of quality content to educate and entertain the audience of PAX. If accepted you and your participants will receive a complimentary Speaker Pass for PAX Prime 2011. Good luck!

However, their links seem to be a bit off, where they ask "Which of the following describes your situation?", then only pose one answer, which may not (or may) be ideal for Gaming.SE: "I want to submit a new panel".