Looks like this is the hot topic of the day. Well, it’s better than arguing over what “RIA” stands for. 🙂 Actually, Tink and I just had a long conversation about this the other day, and are on the same page.
Personally, I think that speakers should minimally be reimbursed for their travel and hotel arrangements. If a conference is in the business of making money, there is no way that they should even think of asking speakers to cover their own expenses. As I said on Peter Elst’s blog, it’s like holding a concert, booking musicians, asking them to play for free and cover their own expenses. The speakers are the content of the conference. This is the reason people are paying money for their tickets. So even if you are a not-for-profit event, you should at least consider speaker expenses part of the conference expenses, as much so as the audio and video crew, paying for the space, etc.
I think that most speakers would agree to speak for free, as long as their expenses are paid. In fact, FiTC works this way, and I’ve never heard a complaint. I actually asked John Davey to not pay me for speaking at Flash on the Beach, but he wouldn’t hear of it. I think it’s pretty amazing that speakers will speak for free, and even more so that many even pay their way to the conference, as well as their hotels.
The 360Flex survey I think is a little skewed. You are basically asking attendees, “do you want to pay the same price and get what you usually get, or do you want to pay the same price and get less than what you usually get, or do you want to pay more, and get what you usually get?” Asking attendees whether or not they think speakers should be paid seems kind of odd. Asking them to give up free food so that speakers can be paid, hmmm.
This gets into the whole “food at conference” question, that Tink and I talked a lot about. How about this for a survey question: “Would you rather pay the usual price and get free food, or pay $500 less and buy your own food?” Personally, I go to a conference to see the speakers and hang out with people. I don’t go for the food and don’t expect to be fed. This post was pretty enlightening:
https://www.360conferences.com/360flex/2007/09/360flex-recap-money-transparency.html
I did some math.
Attendee registrations: $ 83,000.
At $360 a head, this seems to indicate that there were about 230 attendees.
Food: $94,000
94k divided by 230 is $408 per head for food! And they paid $360 to get in.
Even if there were 360 attendees, that’s still $261 per person for food. Basically, you are running an expensive restaurant with some Flex speakers as entertainment.
Now, I’ve never been to a 360Flex, and I don’t mean to pick on them, and everyone says they are great events. I’m just talking logistics. I’d like to see some of the $94k go towards reimbursing speakers. But now that’s a hard sell, because to do that, you’re going to have to take the free food out of the mouths of the attendees, and give them nothing to replace it other than the warm feeling they get knowing that their beloved speakers got a free plane ride and hotel.
At one conference a while back, I forget which, but a few of us jokingly were talking about creating a “conference speakers’ bill of rights”. I still consider that a joke, and don’t mean to suggest that someone go ahead and do that, but I think things would change if more speakers asked for expenses. If conferences know that they can get speakers for free, that will just never enter the budget. If they consider it an expense, it will get covered. The fact that conferences like FiTC and Flash on the Beach manage to be fantastic conferences, at an affordable price range, pay speaker expenses, and still make a profit, means that anyone can do it.
Another example is MAX which only paid for “inspire speakers” air fare and hotel. “Regular” speakers just got hotel. Prior to this year, speakers got nothing. But then they go and spend a half a million dollars on a party. If speakers demanded coverage, perhaps they’d have to cut it down to a quarter-million-dollar party, which would be ok with me.
OK, a bit of a rambling rant, and now I’m bored. So that’s all you get. Bye.