Speaking at a conference isn’t an honour, it’s work
Speaking at a conference is work — and hard work at that — so we should pay people for doing it.
It’s a sad fact that many conferences don’t pay their speakers. The justification is that the honour and exposure are the reward. An organiser who contacted me about speaking at their conference while ago told me that not only wouldn’t they pay me or cover my (trans-Atlantic) travel expenses, they also expected me to buy a ticket to the conference. I’ve heard second hand of speakers being asked to pay to speak.
It stinks. Speaking is work. You need to write the talk, build your slides, practice, take time off from your job, travel to the event, and deliver the thing. Not to mention that the speakers and talks *are* the event. Plus, not paying makes speaking the preserve of privileged people who can afford it.
I’m also on the other side of this as one of the founders of Curio Conference. Last year we had a conundrum because our pay-as-you-like model meant we were on a tiny budget. (One person paid nothing, another £100 — the average was £14.90 per ticket.) We paid the speakers who asked for a fee, but we didn’t pay everyone. It meant we could make the event work financially and as a not-for-profit we didn’t benefit from other people’s labour (we didn’t take a fee or wage as organisers). But I felt unhappy about it then, and I’m even more unhappy about it now.
So this year, we’re paying all our speakers an honorarium and travel expenses (an idea we’ve stolen from another conference — Confab). The plan is to raise the amount of the honorarium each year as the conference becomes more established and our income increases.
We feel good about it, but making the budget work is tough. It’s important to us to keep ticket prices accessible so we can attract a diverse audience. So many people are priced out of going to conferences and we want to offer an alternative. We’re charging £20-£50 per ticket, with free scholarship tickets available on demand — a fraction of what our comparators charge.
Our biggest expense is the speaker fees. We’re making it work by cutting all the fat from the rest of our budget: we chose a low-cost community-oriented venue, there’s no branded t-shirts, tote bags or other swag, the water’s coming from the tap, and my mum’s offered to do the catering (FYI she makes the best flapjacks in the world). We’re happy with this — it’s better for the environment, and we know that good talks and fairness matter most.
I’m not publishing on Medium anymore — if you want to read more of my writing, you’ll find it here: https://lapope.com/thinking/
