
Ask HN: How do you feel about conferences charging speakers for talk? - sidcool
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.<p>What has your experience been?  Do you approve&#x2F;disapprove?
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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.

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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.

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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.

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chrisseaton
My field is programming languages.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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".

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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.

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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.

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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.

