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Are conference speakers paid ? How do you keep earning money when giving talks all the time ? Do they pay the airfare and accommodation ? Does their work spo

by tezza 9y ago

Are conference speakers paid ? How do you keep earning money when giving talks all the time ? Do they pay the airfare and accommodation ? Does their work sponsor them or do they take personal holiday ?

pulse7 9y ago
Usually the employer sponsors everything (time, flight and hotel) and this is then partially marketing partially education.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > Usually the employer sponsors everything (time, flight and hotel) If you're lucky. When I speak at conferences, there are always some speakers who are there entirely on their own time and money (aside from whatever portion of travel expenses the conference picks up).
amouat 9y ago
It's unusual to be paid to give a talk, unless it's a keynote or the organisers know that your name (or your organisation's name) will sell more tickets. Keynote speakers with a big reputation can get paid a lot of money for ~ 1 hours work. It's fairly common for airfare and accommodation to be paid. If you're talking about something work related, your company will likely be happy for you to do it on work time because of the exposure (and may well be willing to cover airfare/accommodation if the conference doesn't)
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > Keynote speakers with a big reputation can get paid a lot of money for ~ 1 hours work. They might only be speaking for an hour, but I can assure you that giving a talk worthy of that slot and money takes a lot more than a single hour to prepare, even for the most experienced public speakers. You may be able to get away with that once or twice, but it's unlikely you'd be invited back to speak for any paying slot after that. By itself, conference speaking is not going to be a good source of income for anyone at any level of experience. When you factor in the preparation time, it's always going to come out to far less than you'd be able to charge for hourly contracting (or even salaried work). The value in speaking at conferences comes from the ability to use the platform to deliver a message and to build your reputation (yours and your company's).
  - amouat 9y ago
    I agree it can take a long time to prepare a keynote worthy talk. However, it certainly can be lucrative, take a look at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1167682/Blair-worlds-best-paid-speaker-pocketing-364-000-just-hours-work.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1167682/Blair-worlds... (apologies for linking a Daily Hate article). Note that a lot of keynote speakers will be asked to talk because of something they've done (e.g. NASA astronauts) and will be able to reuse at the same talk multiple times (or at least part of it). Having said all that, I never meant to imply it was unfair that keynote speakers are paid or that they shouldn't be.
chimeracoder 9y ago
It depends on the conference. I've spoken at a lot of conferences. This is my experience, both from my own presentations and from chatting with other speakers: Very few conferences pay speakers - even keynote speakers. The exceptions seem to be conferences explicitly organized around a particular proprietary technology, and sponsored fully by the company that makes that technology. Most community-organized conferences or conferences around a particular language or piece of software do not. I only know of one exception to that rule. Some will, however, cover your hotel and airfare. You may have to ask for this, and they may only cover it if your company does not already. (Airfare may be capped, or may be limited to people traveling from the same country/continent). As for whether work sponsors your or not, it depends entirely on your company and their relationship with speaking. I've been pretty lucky - even though I'm not in a role that explicitly requires speaking as part of my responsibilities[0], I don't have to use my vacation time when speaking at conferences. Not all companies take this same approach, though. > How do you keep earning money when giving talks all the time ? This is the main reason why I feel that all conferences should pay speakers, even a small amount. Preparing properly for a talk takes a lot of time, and providing speakers some share of the proceeds from a conference is a way of offsetting the amount of time it takes to prepare and give a good talk. If more conferences paid speakers, the quality of talks would go up dramatically. However, I only know of one community-organized conference that pays speakers a share of the proceeds. [0] ie, "Developer Advocate"
- ValentineC 9y ago
  > This is the main reason why I feel that all conferences should pay speakers, even a small amount. Preparing properly for a talk takes a lot of time, and providing speakers some share of the proceeds from a conference is a way of offsetting the amount of time it takes to prepare and give a good talk. I've organised a few conferences covering different languages and platforms, and there's two things which prevent organisers from giving more than a token sum to speakers. 1) Most of the "proceeds" from a conference come from an abundance of sponsorship for that year. For the community-organised, non-profit conferences I've been involved in, the per-attendee cost is often much more than what we charge for tickets. (This also depends on the overall sentiment within the organising team. Personally, I'm for charging as high as reasonably possible and offering scholarships and discounts where needed.) 2) The sponsorship climate changes every year, depending on the marketing budget of the various local companies, and the conferences that are taking place in that year. It's very important for conference organisers to maintain a healthy balance for the next year, if only to cover the large deposits that we have to put down for the various vendors.
hynek 9y ago
[author of linked article here] Depends! At PyCon US/EuroPython everybody pays by default and the money goes towards financial aid so as many people as possible can attend. As a speaker, you can also apply for finaid of course. The bet is basically that people that are able to attend today are the speakers of tomorrow. And anecdotally, it’s working out quite fine! I let my employer pay my way to PyCon US and EuroPython because I’d attend anyway. PyCon ZA is special, because it’s in Cape Town and I like to surf so I pay myself. :) Other than that, if a conference wants me as a speaker, they have to pay for my travels and accommodation. I’m also a diva and ask for SkyTeam flights which at least gives me indirect benefits (status miles + segments towards my status). I don’t have to take personal holidays because I work at a small company and being able to exchange myself professionally with other peers is critical to my growth as an employee. All that said, you speak because you enjoy the experience. I also got to see Japan, Russia, Ukraine, … all places I wouldn’t have gotten to see! To make a living with it you’ve got to be famous/influential already.
- ValentineC 9y ago
  > At PyCon US/EuroPython everybody pays by default and the money goes towards financial aid so as many people as possible can attend. As a speaker, you can also apply for finaid of course. Just to add on — here's the rationale behind it: http://jessenoller.com/blog/2011/05/25/pycon-everybody-pays http://jessenoller.com/blog/2011/05/25/pycon-everybody-pays
masklinn 9y ago
> Are conference speakers paid ? They may be sponsored (by the conf, the employer or a conf sponsor) e.g. have their transportation and lodgings paid or reimbursed, but AFAIK mostly not, at least for "community" conferences. In fact specifically for the first conference TFA talks about (PyCon US) everybody pays up to and including the conference chair: https://us.pycon.org/2017/registration/ https://us.pycon.org/2017/registration/ but attendees (especially but not solely speakers and tutorial presenters) can apply for financial aid, financed by both sponsors and entry tickets: https://us.pycon.org/2017/financial-assistance/ https://us.pycon.org/2017/financial-assistance/
raesene6 9y ago
I've done a reasonable number of talks for conferences/seminars. The only times I got paid in the past was when I was approached by specific companies to do a talk for them. Sometimes you'll get travel covered and generally you get into the conference for free. Luckily in my case my current employer is happy to cover travel/accommodation/time for speaking at relevant conferences and some time to help with talk preparation as well.
BjoernKW 9y ago
Given the answers regarding payment, which are in line with what I already assumed to be the case, I'm wondering how many speakers make a sustainable living. Many of those I know are consultants or freelancers, i.e. there's no employer to cover the expenses and no revenue is generated while they're doing speaking gigs. While the marketing value of being a high-profile, sought-after speaker and expert certainly can't be underestimated, when speaking at a conference most of the time you aren't exactly speaking in front of your target audience in terms of marketing but in front of fellow designers, developers, you name it ... Giving a talk at an event certainly is a great personal experience and a tremendous personal growth opportunity. However, I can't help but wonder if for a self-employed consultant regularly doing speaking gigs really pays off business-wise. Perhaps someone with personal experience in that area could shed some light on that?
- Lukasa 9y ago
  I can't speak to consultants, but as an experienced conference speaker I can tell you that it vastly improves my employability. I cannot stress enough how much some modicum of "fame" in a community greases the wheels of employment. You don't need to be at the Guido van Rossum level of famous to get this benefit: just being known and respected by enough of the "right people" helps enormously. Software engineers often underestimate how much of our industry is built on "who respects you". If respected people trust you to know what you're talking about and to do good work, it makes it much easier to find good jobs and get well paid. (For those who hate public speaking, similar benefits accrue to those who write great blogs or notable, innovative OSS projects.)
- ghaff 9y ago
  Some consultants do speaking gigs as a way to increase visibility and gain clients. However, when I was an industry analyst, I rarely did speaking if I wasn't being paid for it. In general, we didn't find that travel and speaking "for the exposure" was a good use of time and money.
Fifer82 9y ago
It seems you don't get paid really. Why on earth would anyone do it?? I'd want a fat wedge of notes, or I would rather spend the preparation time outdoors or watching paint dry.
- izacus 9y ago
  Because it's fun. Because it feels good to talk about your work with several (hundred) people. Even if you only care about hoarding money, conference talks easily add a multiplier to your future income.
  - wainstead 9y ago
    And like teaching, nothing immerses you in a subject like having to give a talk on it.
- jrauser 9y ago
  I write my talks mostly because I want them to exist. Why does an artist make art?
idlewords 9y ago
For keynotes and single-track tech conferences, my experience is you get free airfare and accommodation, plus an honorarium ranging from nothing to $2K. The most I ever got paid was $5K for a 15 minute talk at an O'Reilly big data conference, but that was an outlier. For a conference like Webstock (in New Zealand), the free travel to the wrong side of the planet can be worth thousands of dollars, and is part of the draw for many speakers.
- lemming 9y ago
  ...the free travel to the wrong side of the planet... We prefer to think of it as the other side of the planet, especially recently.
  - idlewords 9y ago
    Yeah, but look at how all the other continents are avoiding you! There's something there...
sotojuan 9y ago
I got paid for speaking at Empex this month because I already lived in NYC. Otherwise you got travel taken care of.
saryant 9y ago
I've never gotten paid directly for speaking at a conference. The boost to my resume, however, has helped me more than double my income over the last three years. I've always been able to get my employer to cover airfare and hotels. It's good marketing for them too.
AndrewKemendo 9y ago
Frequent speaker here. It depends on the conference and depends on the speaker, but generally 90% of speakers at technical or trade conferences are not paid or compensated in any way. At software conferences it's typically that the speaker will be going to the conference anyway paid for by their employer. For in-demand speakers travel and lodging, and generally catered food at event dinners/lunches etc..., will be paid for at a minimum. Highly recognized professional full time speakers will charge a speaking fee between 5-10k, with the top celebrity names commanding significant sums. It's an entire industry, but as with everything most of the real money goes to the top 5%.

by tezza 9y ago

pulse7 9y ago

Usually the employer sponsors everything (time, flight and hotel) and this is then partially marketing partially education.

chimeracoder 9y ago
> Usually the employer sponsors everything (time, flight and hotel) If you're lucky. When I speak at conferences, there are always some speakers who are there entirely on their own time and money (aside from whatever portion of travel expenses the conference picks up).

amouat 9y ago

It's unusual to be paid to give a talk, unless it's a keynote or the organisers know that your name (or your organisation's name) will sell more tickets. Keynote speakers with a big reputation can get paid a lot of money for ~ 1 hours work. It's fairly common for airfare and accommodation to be paid. If you're talking about something work related, your company will likely be happy for you to do it on work time because of the exposure (and may well be willing to cover airfare/accommodation if the conference doesn't)

chimeracoder 9y ago
> Keynote speakers with a big reputation can get paid a lot of money for ~ 1 hours work. They might only be speaking for an hour, but I can assure you that giving a talk worthy of that slot and money takes a lot more than a single hour to prepare, even for the most experienced public speakers. You may be able to get away with that once or twice, but it's unlikely you'd be invited back to speak for any paying slot after that. By itself, conference speaking is not going to be a good source of income for anyone at any level of experience. When you factor in the preparation time, it's always going to come out to far less than you'd be able to charge for hourly contracting (or even salaried work). The value in speaking at conferences comes from the ability to use the platform to deliver a message and to build your reputation (yours and your company's).
- amouat 9y ago
  I agree it can take a long time to prepare a keynote worthy talk. However, it certainly can be lucrative, take a look at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1167682/Blair-worlds-best-paid-speaker-pocketing-364-000-just-hours-work.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1167682/Blair-worlds... (apologies for linking a Daily Hate article). Note that a lot of keynote speakers will be asked to talk because of something they've done (e.g. NASA astronauts) and will be able to reuse at the same talk multiple times (or at least part of it). Having said all that, I never meant to imply it was unfair that keynote speakers are paid or that they shouldn't be.

chimeracoder 9y ago

It depends on the conference. I've spoken at a lot of conferences. This is my experience, both from my own presentations and from chatting with other speakers: Very few conferences pay speakers - even keynote speakers. The exceptions seem to be conferences explicitly organized around a particular proprietary technology, and sponsored fully by the company that makes that technology. Most community-organized conferences or conferences around a particular language or piece of software do not. I only know of one exception to that rule. Some will, however, cover your hotel and airfare. You may have to ask for this, and they may only cover it if your company does not already. (Airfare may be capped, or may be limited to people traveling from the same country/continent). As for whether work sponsors your or not, it depends entirely on your company and their relationship with speaking. I've been pretty lucky - even though I'm not in a role that explicitly requires speaking as part of my responsibilities[0], I don't have to use my vacation time when speaking at conferences. Not all companies take this same approach, though. > How do you keep earning money when giving talks all the time ? This is the main reason why I feel that all conferences should pay speakers, even a small amount. Preparing properly for a talk takes a lot of time, and providing speakers some share of the proceeds from a conference is a way of offsetting the amount of time it takes to prepare and give a good talk. If more conferences paid speakers, the quality of talks would go up dramatically. However, I only know of one community-organized conference that pays speakers a share of the proceeds. [0] ie, "Developer Advocate"

ValentineC 9y ago
> This is the main reason why I feel that all conferences should pay speakers, even a small amount. Preparing properly for a talk takes a lot of time, and providing speakers some share of the proceeds from a conference is a way of offsetting the amount of time it takes to prepare and give a good talk. I've organised a few conferences covering different languages and platforms, and there's two things which prevent organisers from giving more than a token sum to speakers. 1) Most of the "proceeds" from a conference come from an abundance of sponsorship for that year. For the community-organised, non-profit conferences I've been involved in, the per-attendee cost is often much more than what we charge for tickets. (This also depends on the overall sentiment within the organising team. Personally, I'm for charging as high as reasonably possible and offering scholarships and discounts where needed.) 2) The sponsorship climate changes every year, depending on the marketing budget of the various local companies, and the conferences that are taking place in that year. It's very important for conference organisers to maintain a healthy balance for the next year, if only to cover the large deposits that we have to put down for the various vendors.

hynek 9y ago

[author of linked article here] Depends! At PyCon US/EuroPython everybody pays by default and the money goes towards financial aid so as many people as possible can attend. As a speaker, you can also apply for finaid of course. The bet is basically that people that are able to attend today are the speakers of tomorrow. And anecdotally, it’s working out quite fine! I let my employer pay my way to PyCon US and EuroPython because I’d attend anyway. PyCon ZA is special, because it’s in Cape Town and I like to surf so I pay myself. :) Other than that, if a conference wants me as a speaker, they have to pay for my travels and accommodation. I’m also a diva and ask for SkyTeam flights which at least gives me indirect benefits (status miles + segments towards my status). I don’t have to take personal holidays because I work at a small company and being able to exchange myself professionally with other peers is critical to my growth as an employee. All that said, you speak because you enjoy the experience. I also got to see Japan, Russia, Ukraine, … all places I wouldn’t have gotten to see! To make a living with it you’ve got to be famous/influential already.

ValentineC 9y ago
> At PyCon US/EuroPython everybody pays by default and the money goes towards financial aid so as many people as possible can attend. As a speaker, you can also apply for finaid of course. Just to add on — here's the rationale behind it: http://jessenoller.com/blog/2011/05/25/pycon-everybody-pays http://jessenoller.com/blog/2011/05/25/pycon-everybody-pays

masklinn 9y ago

> Are conference speakers paid ? They may be sponsored (by the conf, the employer or a conf sponsor) e.g. have their transportation and lodgings paid or reimbursed, but AFAIK mostly not, at least for "community" conferences. In fact specifically for the first conference TFA talks about (PyCon US) everybody pays up to and including the conference chair: https://us.pycon.org/2017/registration/ https://us.pycon.org/2017/registration/ but attendees (especially but not solely speakers and tutorial presenters) can apply for financial aid, financed by both sponsors and entry tickets: https://us.pycon.org/2017/financial-assistance/ https://us.pycon.org/2017/financial-assistance/

raesene6 9y ago

I've done a reasonable number of talks for conferences/seminars. The only times I got paid in the past was when I was approached by specific companies to do a talk for them. Sometimes you'll get travel covered and generally you get into the conference for free. Luckily in my case my current employer is happy to cover travel/accommodation/time for speaking at relevant conferences and some time to help with talk preparation as well.

BjoernKW 9y ago

Given the answers regarding payment, which are in line with what I already assumed to be the case, I'm wondering how many speakers make a sustainable living. Many of those I know are consultants or freelancers, i.e. there's no employer to cover the expenses and no revenue is generated while they're doing speaking gigs. While the marketing value of being a high-profile, sought-after speaker and expert certainly can't be underestimated, when speaking at a conference most of the time you aren't exactly speaking in front of your target audience in terms of marketing but in front of fellow designers, developers, you name it ... Giving a talk at an event certainly is a great personal experience and a tremendous personal growth opportunity. However, I can't help but wonder if for a self-employed consultant regularly doing speaking gigs really pays off business-wise. Perhaps someone with personal experience in that area could shed some light on that?

Lukasa 9y ago
I can't speak to consultants, but as an experienced conference speaker I can tell you that it vastly improves my employability. I cannot stress enough how much some modicum of "fame" in a community greases the wheels of employment. You don't need to be at the Guido van Rossum level of famous to get this benefit: just being known and respected by enough of the "right people" helps enormously. Software engineers often underestimate how much of our industry is built on "who respects you". If respected people trust you to know what you're talking about and to do good work, it makes it much easier to find good jobs and get well paid. (For those who hate public speaking, similar benefits accrue to those who write great blogs or notable, innovative OSS projects.)
ghaff 9y ago
Some consultants do speaking gigs as a way to increase visibility and gain clients. However, when I was an industry analyst, I rarely did speaking if I wasn't being paid for it. In general, we didn't find that travel and speaking "for the exposure" was a good use of time and money.

Fifer82 9y ago

It seems you don't get paid really. Why on earth would anyone do it?? I'd want a fat wedge of notes, or I would rather spend the preparation time outdoors or watching paint dry.

izacus 9y ago
Because it's fun. Because it feels good to talk about your work with several (hundred) people. Even if you only care about hoarding money, conference talks easily add a multiplier to your future income.
- wainstead 9y ago
  And like teaching, nothing immerses you in a subject like having to give a talk on it.
jrauser 9y ago
I write my talks mostly because I want them to exist. Why does an artist make art?

idlewords 9y ago

For keynotes and single-track tech conferences, my experience is you get free airfare and accommodation, plus an honorarium ranging from nothing to $2K. The most I ever got paid was $5K for a 15 minute talk at an O'Reilly big data conference, but that was an outlier. For a conference like Webstock (in New Zealand), the free travel to the wrong side of the planet can be worth thousands of dollars, and is part of the draw for many speakers.

lemming 9y ago
...the free travel to the wrong side of the planet... We prefer to think of it as the other side of the planet, especially recently.
- idlewords 9y ago
  Yeah, but look at how all the other continents are avoiding you! There's something there...

sotojuan 9y ago

I got paid for speaking at Empex this month because I already lived in NYC. Otherwise you got travel taken care of.

saryant 9y ago

I've never gotten paid directly for speaking at a conference. The boost to my resume, however, has helped me more than double my income over the last three years. I've always been able to get my employer to cover airfare and hotels. It's good marketing for them too.

AndrewKemendo 9y ago

Frequent speaker here. It depends on the conference and depends on the speaker, but generally 90% of speakers at technical or trade conferences are not paid or compensated in any way. At software conferences it's typically that the speaker will be going to the conference anyway paid for by their employer. For in-demand speakers travel and lodging, and generally catered food at event dinners/lunches etc..., will be paid for at a minimum. Highly recognized professional full time speakers will charge a speaking fee between 5-10k, with the top celebrity names commanding significant sums. It's an entire industry, but as with everything most of the real money goes to the top 5%.