If you are a regular visitor to the SpeakerNet website you may notice changes to the ‘region’ filter when browsing for speakers.

Prior to the change, speakers were able to specify the region of the country in which they were willing to speak, for example, “South West”.

Whilst this created a simple to manage list, it didn’t work well for speakers or speaker finders that were near the edges of the region. A speaker in Gloucester might be quite happy to give talks in Hereford but might not appear in the search when the speaker finder searches for West Midlands.

Now, we have introduced counties (or Scottish Regions) inside the previous regions, and furthermore the speaker, using the previous example could select Gloucestershire AND Hereford which was not previously possible.

From the point of view of someone looking for a likely speaker, you can start with a search which is specific to your area, and then later expand the search if you cannot find a suitable speaker.

There is a new popup window that allows you to ‘drill down’ to the region you want to search. You don’t need to drill down all the way, it is possible to just select for instance, West Midlands and have all the counties in that region automatically selected.

This feature is introduced at the end of February 2024 and it may take some time for speakers to adjust their regions so in the short term it may be necessary for you to expand the search area.

Alternatively, the map view can give you a simple view of nearby speakers, irrespective of what region they have indicated.

We hope the new filters give both you and the speaker a better experience, but feel free to use the contact form to send any feedback.