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.
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".