Harald Wagener
Cat HicksI have been invited to but turned down 3 conferences talks already this year because they're told me it's new policy to not cover speaker travel under the assumption that your tech employer will cover it. I own my own small business as a researcher and my wife is an academic teaching professor, so I cannot ask my household to absorb that. I just want to generally observe that we are filtering the voices we're going to be able to hear from, with all this contraction
I will figure out a path to my own sharing of work, but it is sad to me to feel there is this intellectual community you need to have a FAANG credit card to be part of. That's just not how it should work and we will see the consequences of these structures quickly in who gets to be on stage. This isn't a call out of any single organization, I'm always really honored to be thought of, but it's hard for me to understand how you can sell $1000 tickets on our content and not support creators
I'm fine -- I more share this because I worry for the younger people around me who don't have my platform and audience but deserve it just as much.
Conversely I think very well of the organizations who have maintained their intentionality on this, which if you look back at my last year of public talks you can be assured every one of them was an organization that thought about supporting the creators they invited.
Thommy@grimalkina I hate how tech conferences act like the only thing that exists are big companies with travel budgets. Even when they have token "indie" or small business discounts, everything else about it is designed around excluding those they know they can't extract much money from. And frankly, it makes the conferences way less interesting! It's of course their loss if you're not doing a talk for them.
@thomasjwebb I know! Same with academic conferences, who have zero acknowledgment of applied researchers and assume every one of us has some limitless corporate budget, when in fact so many applied researchers are fighting constant uphill battles to advocate on behalf of the people whose data they work on, and could be a really valuable voice to inform otherwise detached academics
cognitively accessible math@thomasjwebb @grimalkina Education conferences, too. Vendors talkin' to admins at school districts and the sessions about learning are pretty much a side thing. (If they cared, they'd get those recorded and broadcast and shared for free.)
NatalyaD@grimalkina I see a lot of very small not-for-profit organisations covering travel/costs and ensuring speakers get at least an honorarium payment. So if they can do it, so can the large corporates.
I work in professional services in a uni and the way we effectively piss and moan and obstruct to avoid paying for stuff appals me. We're always angling for freebies or trying to get free this or that from small people/orgs, but we'll pay the big people/orgs loadsa cash...
@grimalkina I remember being asked to speak at a pay-to-attend event on disability and they didn't want to pay my travel even when I explained I'd lost my paid-job for disablism reasons so I was unfunded.
It took a lot of pushing back to get them to give me £50 to pay for my trainfare and busfare and I stayed with a friend nearby...
Their tickets weren't expensive but could have been £10 more (or higher for corp rate) each and covered all speaker's costs properly too. Those are CHOICES.
Shadedlady@NatalyaD it's insulting tbh
@Shadedlady Yep and pretty much what I told them. I said being a deafness focused conference, ostensibly wanting to foreground deaf voices, they should be paying for people's travel and costs even if not paying for their time.
It was by professionals for professionals. It really showed. Shame cos it was a great event and most attenders could have paid a bit more via workplaces to attend and covered costs properly!
Raul Portales@grimalkina travel expenses is a minimum! Most of us are/were not even charging speaker's fees.
I get that running a conference is expensive, but so are quality speakers.
Not fair for people starting, you can't expect people to run sessions "for visibility" or "exposure".
wink@Sh41 I think that's something completely different and I personally disagree. I much prefer the flawed person giving their first or second talk over "professional" speakers who just do their yearly tour in their ecosystem of choice. Sure, some are just better speakers, but at least for tech conferences I'm not there to be entertained but to learn about niche and useful stuff. Not "oh what am I gonna try to talk this year as they will book me anyway?" @grimalkina
@wink @grimalkina I see your point, but I think flawed / niche speakers also deserve to get paid, at the very least travel expenses.
@Sh41 Yeah my point was that travel expenses should be par for the course, but speaker pay (not reimbursement), while it is fine of course, is a separate topic. I know not everyone can just take vacation days off but I've seen people of actual small community conferences that don't cost thousands, but 100 bucks, catch flak for not paying speakers. @grimalkina
@wink @grimalkina back when I was speaking at conferences, I only ever got travel expenses 🤷♀️
But I think we can and should do better. Community based conferences, sure, can feed from the community, but bigger conferences should pay.
The problem is that bigger conferences pay only a few speakers, and the rest get paid in "exposure".
But I think we can and should do better. Community based conferences, sure, can feed from the community, but bigger conferences should pay.
The problem is that bigger conferences pay only a few speakers, and the rest get paid in "exposure".
Dan Sugalski@grimalkina Good grief. I'm happy to go on record saying any conference charging a thousand dollars a ticket should 100% cover speaker's travel expenses. This isn't some university club running a little gaming con, at those prices it's a full-on business. Under capitalism we trade money for goods and/or services, and speaking is a service. They absolutely should pay.
@wordshaper I really appreciate you saying so, I felt nervous writing this wondering if I was somehow out of step with the culture here. But it's a huge energy and time away from family expenditure and speakers' creative work is then a significant piece of event marketing!
@grimalkina Yeah. I did conference talks and tutorial sessions back in the day. They were all open source conferences so somewhat low-budget and it was OK for sessions I *volunteered* for to be paid by comping entrance. (I suspect for
For sessions where the con *asked* me to give the talk, or special talks like tutorials? The assumption was always "I am generating revenue for you, you're paying travel and hotel and entrance".
@grimalkina I never did talks at regular cons so I can't say what I would've done, but these days I absolutely wouldn't go talk at one of those without compensation, even if I were already going.
There also used to be a feeling of "you're doing it as marketing for your consulting job!" which... yeah, that worked for low budget cons but those days are *long* gone -- if they're asking you to dance on stage they're asking for work, and work should be properly paid for.
Charles A-M@grimalkina @wordshaper Your message was very important. A lot of attendees at my company's conference are academics with budgets but some are self-employed professionals and I plan to bring up this point the next time the speaker reimbursement policy comes up.
@Centretowner @wordshaper how lovely, thank you for taking action!
Human 3500@wordshaper The state of capitalism we are in right now will have the conference charge both the attendees and the speakers while getting the venue for free. That is a business in 2026.
Doing things so that everyone benefits is socialism and we all know the (wildly wrong) opinions on that. @grimalkina
The Doctor@grimalkina Or a certification. I've only been to RSA once, but the only interesting talks were restricted to people registered to get CISSP continuing education credits.
Or Black Hat in general.
Chris Petrilli@grimalkina that should come with travel and an honorarium.
Juliette@grimalkina Whenever a conference asks me to cover my own costs, I ask them two simple questions:
Do you pay the caterers who serve lunch during the conference ?
Do you think people attend the conference for the food or for the content presented on the stage ?
Stacey Cornelius 🇨🇦
Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏Edit for clarity: this is a criticism of conference organizers, and most certainly not directed at Cat or her choices.
And yet over the past year I've "attended" three conferences without leaving my desk, featuring several presenters who also did not leave their desks.
I would be turning such invitations down on the basis of carbon emissions alone. Yes I know the in-person experience is superior, but I'm not willing to sacrifice future generations for that.
@alan I have always prioritized events that have virtual options, but as someone who works from home and intentionally does not commute every day of my life that was the biggest climate impact I could make and by far outweighs the much, much smaller impact of my occasional travel. I am very comfortable with my choices and in fact proud of them, and they had financial consequences for me. Please do not make assumptions about what I prioritize or unfounded accusations about the value of this work
@alan please note too that for several years I have asked instead of speaker fees for orgs to make donations to local education groups, and arranged for multiple events to sponsor student attendees, several of whom have gotten jobs at these events. I don't usually like to post much about this but just because you are criticizing the morality of my choices, some useful context.
Reginald@grimalkina 🙏🏽
When my children were young, we ate thanks to the modest royalties from a few books like JavaScript Allongé. I spoke at and MC'd many conferences. I certainly wouldn't have gone anywhere without conferences paying for my travel and accommodation.
Thank you for advocating for this basic decency: A conference speaker should not be a corporate shill. A quality conference ensures this basic independence by funding its content, and that is the just path forward.
Julian Schwarzenbach@raganwald @grimalkina Suppliers/ vendors have marketing budgets that can cover costs for one of their team to attend/ present at conferences.
Experts are often in small consultancies/ microbusinesses/ academia etc. who do not have such deep pockets.
Typically, vendor pitches/ presentations are all sales spiel and deadly dull. The interesting presentations are generally from experts/ end users etc. If conference organisers just go to vendor led presentations, their reputation will soon decline and hit the commercial viability of the conference
Experts are often in small consultancies/ microbusinesses/ academia etc. who do not have such deep pockets.
Typically, vendor pitches/ presentations are all sales spiel and deadly dull. The interesting presentations are generally from experts/ end users etc. If conference organisers just go to vendor led presentations, their reputation will soon decline and hit the commercial viability of the conference
mks@grimalkina That’s very not cool.
Back when I was organizing a regular meetup, we didn’t have the funds to pay a speaker honorarium but we always covered travel, accommodation, and food. I can’t imagine asking someone to prepare a talk, take days for travel, and *also* have to pay their own way!
Adrian Segar@grimalkina, I have written a ton about the trend towards not paying or even reimbursing conference presenters. Fifteen years ago, it was normal for me to be paid my workshop fee plus expense reimbursement. These days, it's a rarity.
Here's my latest post on the topic: "Compensating presenters and 'women’s work'".
https://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/event-professionals/2026/01/compensating-presenters/
Ken Butler@grimalkina This is a failure of *logic*. If you as a conference organizer want to benefit from having a great speaker at your conference, you as a conference organizer need to pay what it takes.
adingbatponder 
👾@grimalkina Why not go and ask the audience for travel donations on the way out? Or pass round a hat during the talk? Or flash up a bank account number? Seems a terrible shame not to go. But surely the travel time is what costs? Or ask the conference to have a ride share site? Or rent a mule? Or do it via video link? Or charge them more for the talk and pay for travel that way?
Steve Loughran@grimalkina I've spoken at a conf way back whose police was very much "small independent speaker: we pay you to speak". Corporate minion speaker: we will let you in for free. I think that's a good policy
Kevin Karhan 
@grimalkina #NameThemBlameThem because I think everyone should refuse to speak and refuse to attend classist priced "conferences" when even community events can do this very basic courtesy
https://infosec.space/@kkarhan/116263385722739537
https://infosec.space/@kkarhan/116263385722739537
Kevin Karhan :verified: (@[email protected])
@[email protected] @[email protected] +1 If Chaos Communication Congress with it's at-cost pricing can help speakers whenever needed then conferences charging 3-4 digits can book some double doom and plane tickets... https://infosec.space/@kkarhan/116263379310052948
Chris Wu 🪐@grimalkina I gave my first conference talk in October at @SwiftLeeds and am feeling so thankful that was not the case in my scenario. Like you said, covering expenses opens up the floor to so many other people.
@MuseumShuffle @SwiftLeeds good for you, congratulations!
@grimalkina thank you! It was such an adventure.
There is a heck of lot of climbing people pulling up the ladder behind them in tech, yes.
Ben Ramsey@grimalkina @inthehands I’d love for you to share your work in a keynote presentation at a PHP programming language conference. Conferences in the PHP community are among the few (among programming language conferences) who still cover speaker travel, hotel, and conference ticket. (There are no stipends or per diems, but lunch is provided, and there’s usually some kind of food in the evenings.)
I’d be happy to make some introductions, if you're interested.
@ramsey @inthehands how kind of you to think of me. When my schedule allows I love to keynote -- folks can check out some previous keynotes here and reach out anytime. For a conference especially led by a technical community (rather than internal company talk), I typically do not expect a stipend: https://www.drcathicks.com/speaking
Sasha 
@grimalkina @ramsey @inthehands If it's the International PHP Conference I can highly recommend it. Not only because I have talks there from time to time. It's my "home conference" (since I think 2000), I will have a talk this year too (about working with people in times of change). It's a very welcoming community.
And I also can highly recommend Cat. She's the leading researcher in her field (which you probably know 
) and I've seen her speak and she's a great person. We met shortly at a LeadDev conference.
If it's about another PHP conference I can't recommend it because I've never been to another one 
Carina C. Zona@grimalkina you are right, and moreover it's not just who is heard that becomes constrained but also which topics. If someone can only speak if their employer covers travel and lodging, then the only topics that can be submitted are ones that serve the company's sales and PR agenda. Conferences are tedious when they are just a series of marketing talks. Nobody wants to attend that. They'll still buy an a ticket, on company credit card, but then treat the trip as an all expenses paid vacation to the host city because engineers are notoriously unwilling to sit through 8 hours of being marketed to.
The whole industry suffers from that loss of knowledge exchange. Travel funding is a diversity issue. But diversity is, as always, valuable because every damn person in the industry benefits from robust exchange of ideas.
Gaëtan Perrault@grimalkina my favorite conference talks are always the people who have independently done or researched or created something awesome and want to share it with the world. My second favorite conference talks are the people who get r&d roles at bigger companies and similarly want to talk about the interesting discoveries & creations. My least favorite conference talks are the thinly veiled sales pitches.
Sadly, most conferences prioritize speaker gigs in the inverse order. It's getting paid first and diversity second.
Their failure to pay your travel fees says more about them than it does about you.
A conference that isn't willing to truly pay somebody like you to show up, is just going to get yet another AI bro to fill a spot. And if they're happy with that, I don't know what we can do to change that 🤷🏻♂️
Jimmy Sjölund 🇸🇪 🇫🇮 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 🇬🇱@grimalkina I even had to turn down a conference where my employer was a sponsor ...