One of the trickiest and most time-consuming aspects of producing these conferences is assembling the speaker slate. All of the conferences that I’ve worked on have emphasized recruiting speakers from outside the host community, but inevitably a question like “if this is Big Omaha why aren’t there any Omaha founders speaking?” comes up. It’s a logical question and there are several answers. Here’s my take on why it’s important to invite speakers from other cities to speak at local startup conferences.