How to become a Conference Speaker

UPDATE: From the comments: Elisa Camahort answers! (See below.)

One of the best ideas to emerge from the smash hit conference Blogher was Mary Hodder's suggestion that we keep a list of women willing to speak at conferences. So often a male-dominated blog confab will be followed up with a blogosphere conversation asking "where were all the women speakers?" And so often the response is "we couldn't find any."

There are many books for freelance writers on how to write winning query letters, for job seekers on how to write great cover letters, for aspiring authors on writing winning book proposals.

Anyone out there have tips on how to write a winning conference speaking proposal? All you panelists out there - were you recruited to speak at a conference, or did you apply and persist until you were finally approved? Any tips for first-time conference speakers, how to perform well and be asked to speak in the future?

UPDATE: In the comments, Elisa Camahort shares the surprising variety of avenues the blogHer speakers came to speak last Saturday:

"I've been mulling over the idea of compiling a matrix of all of our BlogHer speakers and how we came upon them. Some of them volunteered themselves. Some were suggested by people who commented on the blog or emailed us. Some were our Advisory Board members, who are a pack of brilliant, opinionated women. Some were blogging about BlogHer, which we found via ego-feeds, and we thought we'd just reach out and ask them to put their money where their mouth was! Some were just bloggers we were reading and admired."

Comments

[Elisa Camahort]

Hi: Mary's speaker wiki is already up:
https://www.socialtext.net/speakers/index.cgi

I've been mulling over the idea of compiling a matrix of all of our BlogHer speakers and how we came upon them. Some of them volunteered themselves. Some were suggested by people who commented on the blog or emailed us. Some were our Advisory Board members, who are a pack of brilliant, opinionated women. Some were blogging about BlogHer, which we found via ego-feeds, and we thought we'd just reach out and ask them to put their money where their mouth was! Some were just bloggers we were reading and admired.

[Elisa Camahort]

So I did that little spreadsheet about how we found our speakers and posted about it over at BlogHer if you're interested.
http://www.blogher.org