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Ask HN: How do you feel about conferences charging speakers for talk?

12 points by sidcool ↗ HN
I recently had a bitter sweet experience where the conference organizers charged a hefty fees for speaking. They were already charging the attendees (quite a lot!). Although my employer was ready to pay for me, I thought it was not fair of them to charge external speakers.

What has your experience been? Do you approve/disapprove?

20 comments

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herbst
I would expect that those conferences are rather huge advertisment events than fun and learning events with a little ads on the site.
braythwayt
The same way that I feel about "Industry Analysts" charging you to read a report that describes clients who paid to be in the report.

If you don't know why certain kinds of companies gladly participate in this fairly obvious type of grift, you have no business playing the game.

See also: Paying money to be in some kind of dog-and-pony show or hackathon in the hope that investors attending the event get interested in maybe setting something up to discuss who else is funding you and whether they might want to follow-on.

al2o3cr
Sounds less like a conference and more like a scam - see also the fake "journals" that will publish literally anything (including vaguely science-flavored Markov-chain nonsense) if you pay the "processing fees".
doppioslash
You do all the work for the talk, you are the content of the conference, and they want you to pay to speak as well?

I think that's a very bad deal.

davismwfl
To me this just screams scam, I personally wouldn't want to attend a conference where speakers are paying to participate because likely it will just be more of one big marketing experience controlled by people that paid to get their content up there. We get enough of that through the sponsors and booths at a conference, the speakers should be presenting balanced talks on specific subjects.

Traditionally (from my experience), speakers are invited or apply based on a topic and are not asked to pay any fees. The conference costs are covered by the conference attendees, sponsors and booth fees.

chrisseaton
As far as I know, all the major conferences in our field charge you to attend if you are speaking, so I don't understand what everyone is saying in this thread.

I've spoken at many conferences and at all of them I've needed to buy a full-price ticket (or my employer did). RubyConf was one exception I can think of.

braythwayt
I don't know what your field is, but every conference that has ever invited me to speak has offered me free attendance, with most willing to also cover my accommodation and airfare from Canada.

I include in this list conferences like NDC Oslo/London/Sydney, Øredev, Nordic Ruby, and Baruco.

chrisseaton
My field is programming languages.

I think any conference run by the ACM charges speakers, unless they're keynoting.

braythwayt
> any conference run by the ACM charges speakers, unless they're keynoting

I can believe that. As a sidenote: What a weird world we live in, where accredited professionals pay to speak, while dilettantes are paid.

giaour
Conferences where academics present original research tend to charge speakers admittance. "Programming conferences," where speakers are essentially teaching 1-hour classes, tend to cover the ticket, hotel, and transportation for presenters.

Source: I presented research at a few humanities conferences in my previous career and have presented talks at several PHP conferences in my present career.

davismwfl
So I have spoken at quite a number of conferences over the years in 3 different fields, pure coding/tech, 911 pre-hospital and entrepreneur/small business. I have never paid for entry to the conference or show (when speaking), and only in the smallest case did I pay my airfare and hotel. And in one other case I did pay my airfare. In both of the cases where I had out of pocket expenses they were small, highly specialized conferences where it was worth it to me to be there. I have a number of contacts that are speaking fairly regularly at conferences and none of them are paying to speak, and most aren't keynoting either.

I also wouldn't disagree with you or say you are wrong that some conferences are charging speakers entry to the conference, but frankly, I would view them skeptically. To me it is the totally wrong incentive for a speaker to pay to present.

chrisseaton
I think it's better for speakers to pay, because then it creates an atmosphere of everyone coming together to share their work, speakers and attendees together on the same level, and everyone sharing the costs of the conference.

If you think about conferences as a product sold to attendees, it makes sense for speakers not to pay. If you think about conferences as a community platform which everyone pays to run and is to everyone's benefit, which I think is a better way to do things, it does make sense for them to pay.

At some conferences almost everyone is attending is also speaking, so obviously you need to charge speakers in that case.

davismwfl
I'd agree with you if everyone was basically speaking then there is really no issue with speakers paying too. But I generally view conferences as places we go to learn new things, hear from people that are doing something interesting, or learning from those that lead the way in some direction (good or bad).

But to your point, I went to a conference a number of years ago where Microsoft was the host, it was regional and fairly limited attendance from what I remember. There were people from Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft and other companies there but everyone was very focused and it was a fairly small overall group. I could see everyone paying to attend that one as it was really interactive, very few "speaking" presentations, more workshops. It was awesome honestly, and I'd pay to participate in that type of conference in a heart beat regardless of any role I had.

[dead] stevep2007
Experts should be paid - marketeers should pay
dmethvin
The only time I have heard of that is when sponsors buy a slot to pitch their product or service. Was that your situation?

In most conferences that are not marketing-oriented, the speakers are the product being sold to the attendees. Many conferences pay the speaker's expenses for travel, and may even pay them some speaking fee.

If you are a speaker being offered a fee to speak, however, be very careful about overseas conferences. People have been turned away at the border because the officials may see the money being paid as a job.

sidcool
Nop. We have no service/product to pitch. We have a talk to deliver on an open source technology. We have no financial interests. We have already delivered the talk for free twice before at other conferences.
AznHisoka
The same way I feel about potential employers giving candidates a take home exam.

I don't like it but could care less what they choose to do. I just don't participate.

brudgers
If there is disclosure to all potentially effected parties, I don't see an issue. In many cases, companies are already subsidizing tech conference speakers when speaking at conferences is part of an employee's work and done on company time...and plenty of tech talks include a "we're hiring" mention.

To me, a tech industry conference isn't really a scientific symposium. A lot of content is infotaiment.

Good luck.

Walkman
So it's not really a conference but a huge commercial you pay for, because only companies will make talks and not the open source hacker guy working on something cool and wanting to share it with you only for the joy. I would not attend a conference like that.
Geekette
I wouldn't participate in any conference that charges me to speak. In your scenario, not only do you provide free labour in preparing content and incur travel expenses, they also charge you? Nope. Even if paid by your company, conferences where you pay to speak are inevitably lower quality because the real agenda is advertisement, not content driven.

I expect any conference I speak at to provide at least free entry, if not travel expenses. This expectation appears to be the norm in several industries.