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[drstarsky]

Suppose you are organizing a conference and you'd like a couple of people to be both an invited speaker and a member of the Advisory Committee (whose task is mainly to suggest names for invited speakers). Would this look weird?  I have seen it before but not often. I have even seen a conference in which the list of invited speakers and the advisory committee were almost identical, and I thought it looked slightly pathetic.

[tuxedo_cat]

Shouldn't your primary concern be about properly networking with your invited speakers and other members of the Advisory Committee?  Instead of whether the organization of the conference might hypothetically look "pathetic" to . . . whom, exactly?  It seems like you already have a good sense of what's acceptable (a little overlap) and what looks weird or unprofessional (AC = all speakers).

[drstarsky]

I'm not sure whether I trust my sense of what's acceptable. I haven't put together the committee yet and I'm considering as potential members two scholars that I'd like to also be invited speakers, hence the question.

[tuxedo_cat]

I'm not sure whether I trust my sense of what's acceptable. I haven't put together the committee yet and I'm considering as potential members two scholars that I'd like to also be invited speakers, hence the question.

I don't think people really pay a ton of attention to this dimension of conference planning unless . . . it somehow borders on unethical questions regarding funding.  Are all the invited speakers getting a nice speaker's fee?  If so, then you are correct that you don't want them on the AC. 

In that case, you can invite them, and then just informally ask for their advice about other speakers they would recommend for the program.  From a networking standpoint, that's probably also a good approach.

[drstarsky]

Thanks for the perspective. I think I'll go ahead and invite one or two people to both give talks and be on the committe.