The speaking circuit has no entry requirement. That is a problem for the organiser holding the budget and the risk, and it is fixable by doing the unglamorous part.
Booking a speaker is an act of trust performed at a distance. You are told about credentials you cannot see, for a talk that has not happened yet, in front of an audience whose afternoon you are responsible for.
The usual answer is a roster and a promise. Ours is duller: we check each speaker individually, before they go on the list, and we say plainly that we have done it.
Two more things follow from that. Pricing is stated up front, at a flat and published commission, because a rate you have to ask for is a rate that varies by how much the seller thinks you will pay. And half the roster comes from outside the usual circuit, because a bureau that only books the already-famous is a directory, not a service.
None of this is clever. It is just the work that the word "verified" is supposed to stand for.
