You Told Us. We Listened. Here's How SLP Summit Topics Actually Get Chosen.
Every year, the same question floats through the Summit community: "How do you decide what to cover and who will present?" The answer starts with you!
July 2026 | SLP Summit Retrospective Series
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Every year, the same question floats through the Summit community: "How do you decide what to cover and who will present?"
The answer starts with you!
The Problem We Were Trying to Solve
When Lisa Kathman, Sarah Bevier, and Marisha Metz built the first SLP Summit, they weren't working from a content calendar. They were working from frustration.
Professional development in speech-language pathology had a pattern: heavy on theory, light on application, and almost completely disconnected from the realities of a school-based caseload. You could spend $500 on an all-day workshop, travel away from your family, sit through hours of research-backed content, and walk away still wondering: but what do I actually do on Monday?
"I just need you to tell me what to do tomorrow," Marisha put it plainly.
That one sentence became the north star for how SLP Summit approaches topic selection. If a course can't answer the Monday morning question, what does this look like in practice, for real kids, in a real setting? It's not the right fit.
The Voices That Actually Shape the Lineup
Here's what might surprise you: a significant portion of SLP Summit's content direction comes directly from the people attending it.
Chat threads during live sessions are a goldmine. When hundreds of SLPs in the same virtual room start asking the same question, flagging the same challenge, or lighting up about the same topic, the SLP Summit team notices. Those conversations become the seeds for future courses.
Survey data matters, too. Feedback after each SLP Summit, including what resonated, what was missing, and what you wish had gone deeper, gets read carefully. Patterns across thousands of responses point clearly toward what the SLP community actually needs versus what might look good on a lineup at first glance.
Then there are the presenters themselves. Practitioners who reach out because they've developed something that's working. Clinicians who've solved a problem in their own therapy room and want to share it. People who may not have a huge platform but have something real to say. SLP Summit has always championed those voices because having something worth sharing matters more than having a PhD or a big following.
"Don't discount yourself because you don't have a business, and you don't have a PhD, and you're not doing research," Lisa shared. "You have a lot to share."
Breadth Is a Feature, Not an Accident
One of the things Shontaye hears most from SLP Summit attendees is how much they appreciate the range. A single SLP Summit might feature content on AAC, fluency, literacy, social communication, IEP writing, culturally responsive practice, and supporting students with complex needs - across early childhood through high school.
That's by design.
SLPs don't always have the luxury of specializing in just one thing - especially in schools. Your caseload is almost certainly a mix of ages, diagnoses, communication profiles, and family situations. The SLP Summit lineup is built to reflect that reality, to give you something you can use whether you're working with a kindergartner who's just starting to communicate or a teenager who needs support transitioning out of school services.
What the Last Nine Years Have Taught Us
Topic selection has gotten more nuanced over time, not less. The SLP Summit team has learned that the most memorable courses aren't always about the hottest topic of the moment. They're about the right topic, meeting the right presenter, meeting the right audience at the right time.
That's harder to predict than a content calendar. But it's also what makes a course land differently than anything else you've attended.
Some of the most impactful sessions in SLP Summit history weren't the ones anyone saw coming. They were the ones that answered a question SLPs didn't even know they were carrying — until a presenter gave them the language to name it.
That's what we're always trying to find. And we're grateful you keep helping us look.
If you've been wanting to present at an SLP Summit, now is a great time to reach out. Whether you have a full course concept or a resource you wish more people could utilize, we'd love to hear from you. SLP Summit begins live July 27, 2026. Don't forget to register and tell a friend!
