Talent Conference 2025: Wrap-up on a brilliant day

Yesterday we hosted the first Pomona Partners Talent Conference at Manchester’s Malmaison Hotel, and I'm delighted to say it was an enormous success. The afternoon featured interactive educational sessions, designed to help our speakers accelerate growth in their speaking careers. Speakers travelled from across the UK to take part and departed leaving a full set of five star reviews.

Keynote speaker was former BBC business news presenter turned full time professional speaker and executive coach, Penny Haslam. Penny is one of the most popular coaches for our speakers, who rave about the transformative effect she has had on many aspects of their speaking careers. Penny spoke about her own career evolution and provided some key tips for speakers looking to better connect with bookers.

The Pomona team led a series of sessions looking at the three critical components of a speaking career: Proposition, Profile and Performance.

1. Development lead Monika Neall walked speakers through the latest iterations of the Talent Map, our unique self-assessment tool that helps you determine a plan of action to advance your career, and links you to our extensive training library, highlighting the importance of continued development
2. I spoke about the importance of nailing and optimising your Proposition, and how this translates into a content strategy that attracts inbound leads
3. Marketing lead Katharine McNamara and digital marketing consultant Steve Hancock teamed up for a deep dive into search engine optimisation and pay per click advertising for speakers, using live examples from the campaigns Pomona has been running to show how it works and provide incredible clarity on an often-confusing subject

We finished the day with an open mic session, seeing five of our speakers give their elevator pitches in front of their peers and receiving both great validation and valuable feedback. And lots of applause!

After that everyone decamped to North Star Piccadilly for our annual MingleBells event. We hired the venue out for the evening, offering speakers and invited guests Christmas tunes, mulled wine and yakitori skewers - a great combination!

The feedback on the day absolutely speaks for itself with every attendee giving the event the full five stars using our own Feedback Engine:

"What an afternoon of value - the travel from Brum was well worth it. In particular I really enjoyed the proposition focused segments! And open mic - so many lessons"

"A day where the investment in attending was more than matched by the investment Pomona has made. Really looking forward to optimising that investment to the benefit of all"

"Fabulous speaker in Penny. And other presentations were really valuable and useful with practical elements I can immediately implement. Great venue too. Thank you"

"It was good to feel part of the community."

"Great discussions, great mix of information shared. Lots of takeaways"

The Pomona team also learned a lot from the day. The event was such a powerful way to connect with you all, to get to know you face to face, and to share with you information about how we’re working on their behalf, that we’re now thinking about how we can evolve and extend the format in future. We'd love to extend the event and add more keynotes, but we might think about moving the event to a different time of year.

Huge thanks to everyone who came and participated so enthusiastically. We all loved the energy in the room and it has really inspired us to keep growing and developing this wonderful community of speakers.