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!

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.

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).

Maybe a bit harsh but true!

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.

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

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.

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.