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 🇨🇦