…or what is all the fuss about? If there’s one controversial topic in the community its speaker arrangements with regards to covering their expenses for conferences. In the last few years several people have been pretty vocal in expressing their opinion on the issue.
Just to put this into context, I’m not pointing the finger at any particular event or organizer nor am I suggesting that its in any way unethical for a conference to make a profit. I want to put some information out there for those of you that might be wondering how things are handled by various conferences.
The conference that always used to get brought up is Macromedia MAX — they didn’t pay any external speaker for travel, accommodation or expenses. This year with Adobe running the show things have changed somewhat in that everyone got their hotel paid for.
There is however still the issue of ‘inspire’ vs ‘non-inspire’ speakers (Adobe is aware of this and are looking at resolving this for future editions). In an effort to bring the conference closer to the community, various well-known designers and developers were invited to come and speak and do in fact get all expenses reimbursed. There were other perks like not having to use the Adobe template for their session notes and only having to present once.
I have several friends and colleagues that did the inspire track at MAX and I’m not suggesting they shouldn’t have been paid, but I think its fair to say that Adobe recognized they wouldn’t have come if they didn’t get expenses paid.
Other conferences like Flashforward, FITC, Flash on the Beach (a newcomer since last year) do pay for travel and accommodation. One of my favorite conference so far webDU (previously known as MXDU) in Sydney, Australia did not use to pay any expenses. Last year that policy was revised and they started paying hotel accommodation for speakers.
To me speaking at conferences has always been about meeting the community and sharing my ideas. I’ve probably spent well over 20,000 USD of my own money on flights and hotel rooms in the years that I’ve been freelancing just to go and speak at conferences in the USA, Europe and Australia.
I was always happy to do so and its not as if you don’t get anything in return (appreciation, contacts, miles on my frequent traveler card). In all seriousness though, no sane freelancer speaks at five or more conferences a year and I’m currently in the situation where I will need to cut back. Even if expenses get paid you’re away from the job for several days which costs you money.
I’d like to be in the situation where I could just go out to all these conferences to speak and not worry about the backlog of email that is accumulating or finding excuses about why its taken 5 days to send a reply to a client because you’re dealing with crappy wifi. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that — I can’t keep justifying the cost attending all these conferences if it all needs to come out of my own pocket. If I’m spending my time presenting at a conference I do feel that organizers need to do everything in their power to at least contribute towards speakers expenses as a general rule for everyone.
I’ve had people tell me that you ‘get to speak’ at a conference and should be paying for the whole deal including your ticket because you’re just like any other attendee that gets to see the sessions. Well let me tell you — conferences also aren’t always as much fun as they used to be if you’ve seen the same talk over a dozen times. I can mouth along with certain Adobe sessions verbatim… “tragic wand hehe, here comes the internet exploder joke… ooh after effects puppet tool still getting applause, where have these people been?”
This is admittedly a bit of a rant post but I just wanted to put my point across. I love the community and want to be able to do as much as I possibly can but the way things are looking it seems like it’ll have to be less conferences and more blogging.
OK, so where is this all leading up to? The 360Flex team is bringing the conference to Europe and Tom Ortega is looking for feedback from past and future attendees on how to deal with speaker expenses, provide or not provide lunch, what to do with a conference party etc.
If you’ve got a minute please take the time to fill in their survey and let them know your thoughts on the subject:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=yGMLUk_2f4IRYXqoobzijRuQ_3d_3d
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10 Comments
Good points. As an “inspire speaker” myself, yes, I did get all expenses paid, and you are correct that I probably – ok, definitely – would have not gone if I had had to pay.
Personally, I think conferences should always pay for speakers expenses. The speakers are what the conference is all about. That’s the content. That’s why people pay to go. I think that most speakers would agree to speak for free, but don’t want wind up paying money to go speak and make some conference successful. Particularly if the conference is for profit. It’s like holding a concert, getting the musicians to play for free, and making a profit from it.
On the other hand, there seems to be a trend now of conferences providing meals and drinks and expensive parties. For example, MAX Chicago supplied three meals and open bars every day, and I heard Adobe spent half a million on the Chicago MAX party. It was nice, but I think that money could have been better spent elsewhere.
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Good post. I don’t know that you can say with certainty that no external speaker ever got paid to speak for Adobe/Macromedia. Personally, I don’t like the fact that not only do different conferences handle payments differently–but even within one conference they have different policies. I guess it would be nice if it were consistent–but even if it were simply out in the open, it might be better.
I always believe you get a better result if you pay for something–people take it more seriously, and it’s simply more professional. I do welcome the changes in MAX and have to say that not only are they listening but they’re really trying.
Ultimately, however, let’s face it–these conferences are commercial (I was going to say “only about making money”–but that’s not fair) as such you can’t really compare them to, say, academic conferences where people submit papers and speakers are selected based on raw merits. In those sorts of conferences I doubt anyone gets paid.
I take from your post that, yeah, you shouldn’t go to every conference! Scale back… figure out what’s important to you. If the task at hand is to see how many conferences you can do, then go for it.
What I don’t understand is how the quality of a conference often has nothing to do with this. I mean, I’d like to believe that only conferences that do what I think they should do will turn out good–but often it has nothing to do with my advice. Anyway, it’s always an interesting topic I think.
By the way, I spoke at every Macromedia conference from 1996 – 2003 and then, guess what happened in 2004? I got a LOT more out of the conference. I’d still speak again if they’d invite me… but there’s something to be said for being a true attendee.
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Yeah, this is a real tricky issue. I was an INSPIRE speaker in Chicago and Barcelona and, no, I would not have accepted either if my airfare hadn’t been paid (since I lost a lot of consulting days to attend both conferences and now I’m working insane hours trying to make month-end deadlines for clients!).
I speak at a number of conferences each year that pay speaker hotel fees. I speak at a few conferences that don’t. I also attend some conferences, not as a speaker.
Most attendees budget one or maybe two conferences a year. Most speakers end up speaking at three, four, five conferences a year – plus we might attend additional conferences (I like SD West and JavaOne but I’ll never be invited to speak at those!). When you’re speaking, you don’t always get to hang out and go to the sessions you want to attend – and you don’t always get the networking opportunities (both MAXs put speakers in a separate hotel which killed the networking).
I’m on the advisory board for a couple of conferences too. This issue comes up with every conference, every year. It’s a really hard budgetary issue to handle, especially when you want to pull in “names” from overseas because then airfares are a huge issue (the CF community has some big names outside the US that are a huge draw at US conferences but cost is a big, big issue). Organizing a non-US CF conference is an even harder problem for similar reasons.
It’s a bit of a lose-lose situation for everyone involved, to be honest.
As for MAX, the European MAX was *incredible* and I’d definitely consider speaking there next year even if I had to pay my own airfare – but I don’t think I’d speak at MAX North America unless my airfare was paid. Having said that, I’m speaking at Scotch on the Rocks (Edinburgh, June 2008) and paying my own airfare so I don’t know that I’ll actually be able to afford both Scotch and MAX Europe… but we’ll see… assuming they invite me back, of course :)
Thanks for the feedback guys — just to clarify, I was a non-inspire speaker at both MAX Chicago and Barcelona.
I’ve always wanted to have the opportunity to speak at MAX and it basically came down to doing this or just attending Barcelona and paying for my hotel and ticket myself. In essence I got to go to the two events for the price of one, about 800 USD in flights all together. Even though I’d probably have seen a lot more of the conference I think doing both was not a bad choice.
What I guess I’m a bit disappointed at is that those that were so vocal about the principle of not paying speaker expenses were happy to forget all about that when they got paid themselves whereas 3/4 of the speakers where still in (almost) the same boat. That might be putting it a bit too harsh, they helped make MAX successful and its not as if the other speakers did not have a choice.
Personally I only found out what the deal was with ‘inspire’ sessions when I had already signed my speaker contract. I’m not sure what they were thinking in creating this schism between the speakers — its not just about the money, what about the silly matter of those MAX PPT templates. I felt more like an Adobe employee, session content under review and forced to use the corporate identity and present the same session up to four times (in my case twice).
I might have to try going to speak as an actual Adobe employee next time, I’d have my flight, hotel and time away paid. Is any team hiring? ;)
For the Chicago edition with 4000+ attendees, I can’t help but think if they had a limit on the amount of soda’s people could grab during a break, one less ice cream or cut back on the after hours lounges (which almost nobody seemed to use) — everyone could have gotten a couple of hundred bucks to cover their flight.
Ted, MAX team — I know you’re working on this, don’t take it the wrong way but the speaker arrangements this year were suboptimal.
“What I guess I’m a bit disappointed at is that those that were so vocal about the principle of not paying speaker expenses were happy to forget all about that when they got paid themselves whereas 3/4 of the speakers where still in (almost) the same boat. That might be putting it a bit too harsh, they helped make MAX successful and its not as if the other speakers did not have a choice.”
Maybe a bit harsh but true!
I only found out afterward that INSPIRE speakers weren’t required to use the corporate Adobe template. Wish I’d known in advance because Adobe’s PPT templates are an absolute PITA to work with (and always have been).
As for being reviewed, I didn’t upload my slides until the day I presented (bad me!) but I normally don’t submit sessions for review because I tend to keep changing them right up to when I present (I changed my design patterns deck slightly between Chicago and Barcelona). When I presented at MAX Anaheim, I was only given just over a week’s notice to create the preso so that didn’t get reviewed either. I think I presented twice at Anaheim. I’m not sure Adobe’s big push on having INSPIRE sessions be “one-off” really helped attendance. Most of my talks at CFUNITED seem to get repeated (in 2006 I presented three talks and two were repeated on Saturday).
CFUNITED makes timely submission of materials a criteria for getting your hotel covered which seems like a good compromise – if I recall correctly, only about half the speakers actually get their rooms paid for because they other half don’t turn in material on time…
I didn’t mention it in my first comment but when I completed the 360flex survey, I said I think speakers should get their rooms paid at the very least (hopefully my position on that was obvious from my comments).
It’s definately tougher for smaller conferences, and indeed those outside of the US. As the organiser for Scotch on the Rocks, we typically have to rely on non-UK based speakers and finding ways to cover at least one of the costs is very difficult.
Even with UK based speakers we have to cover costs. What makes it more difficult is that some speakers not only ask for their expenses, but also a fee. This makes them untouchable and we simply have to say “thanks, but no thanks”
As Sean says, he is paying his flights to Scotch, and we are going to cover his hotel. If we meet all expectations, we will also refund Sean’s flights, but we need the sponsorship and a full house to do so.
This conference malarky is hard work.
Good job Andy — I continue to be amazed at these smaller community run conferences and truth be told they often turn out to be the better than a lot of bigger commercial events.
Even though they’re working with almost zero budget most consider helping to compensate for speaker expenses as important — its very different from companies that do indeed have the money or could budget it in if they showed some good will but simply don’t because they don’t *have* to.
Keep up the good work, hope to make it out to Scotch on the Rocks for the next edition!