speakerstrail vs LinkedIn
The professional network everyone already uses, and the baseline everyone compares against.
Model: General network · 1205 speakers and 39 conferences in the speakerstrail dataset
Side by side
Who is listed
- Everyone. It is not a speaker directory.
- speakerstrail
- People who appeared on a published conference agenda.
Who pays
- Nobody, for this use.
- speakerstrail
- Organizers and agencies, eventually.
What you can check
- Whatever someone wrote about themselves, plus your own reading of it.
- speakerstrail
- The agenda URL per talk. Third-party evidence, not a self-reported profile.
How LinkedIn is used for speaker sourcing today
Most agencies and organizers start on LinkedIn. Search by topic, read profiles, look at activity, check mutual connections. It works — at about a day per shortlist, and with no way to filter on when someone last actually spoke or whether they ever spoke at all.
The problem is not that LinkedIn is bad at this. The problem is that it was never built for this. "Speaker at conferences" is a self-reported tag, and there is no mechanism to verify it beyond reading the profile carefully.
What a purpose-built directory adds
Three filters LinkedIn cannot offer: topic (from the agenda, not from what someone calls themselves), the country they spoke in (the event’s country, not the person’s), and when they last spoke (a date, not a claim).
And one thing LinkedIn structurally cannot offer: a source link per talk. When someone says "I spoke at KubeCon", the link to the KubeCon agenda naming them is one click away. On LinkedIn, that claim is the endpoint — verifying it is your afternoon.
Where we stop
LinkedIn carries professional context — career history, connections, endorsements, activity. We carry conference appearances and nothing else.
LinkedIn is also where you reach people. We have no messaging, no connection requests and almost no contact details. When you have found the right person in our directory, you will probably reach out to them on LinkedIn.
Where each is stronger
- Everyone is on it — universal professional network
- Professional context: career, connections, activity
- Messaging and direct outreach
speakerstrail
- Filters: topic, country, recency — from agendas, not profiles
- Per-talk source links — verify in one click
- Minutes instead of a day per shortlist
Ready to shortlist?
You have just read how this directory differs from LinkedIn. If cross-platform, agenda-verified records are what you need — 1205 speakers, each carrying the source link that proves it — the beta is open. We let agencies in ten at a time. Free, no card.