We had our first (annual?) speaker idol contest at our user group this week and it went great. I was a judge in a few of the Tech*Ed speaker idols in the past so I knew the ropes and just followed what the pros did at our user group. I did not realize, but that experience really made a difference since ours went off with out any major problems.
Mark Feedman who runs a few (awesome) User Groups up in Stamford, CT was at our meeting and took great notes since he wants to do it at his groups. He came up with a valuable resource for User Groups (and Speakers) wanting to do this event. Read it here.