Yeah. Not.

I go to conferences that ARE community to give back and speak for them for free. But when you've got someone charging hundreds, even thousands of dollars, to participants? They are paying me for my time, my knowledge, and my experience. I'm sure as heck not going to make them tons of money as a “charitable” experience.

I speak at BlogHer for free because that's a community that is one I give back to. But I won't ever speak for free for someone who just wants to profit off of information, experience, and knowledge that it took me years to acquire no matter how passionate I am about what I do.

Sorry, but you missed the mark here 100% in my book Andrew.

Between paid & unpaid speakers, there's also the “free ticket” speakers. For example, SXSW gives a free pass to anyone accepted to speak. What happens? Cheap people flood SXSW with submissions to get the free pass. Honestly, I think SXSW is the single worst event I have ever attended, presentation quality-wise.

I can't tell you how many great opportunities various members of our staff passed up because the gig didn't pay. Travel and Hotel should definitely be paid for, but the speaker should enjoy the opportunity to share his knowledge. If you're not passionate about it, don't do it.

Anything in your backyard (CU Boulder conferences, for example) should almost always be done free of charge. Still, I struggle with encouraging the people I work with to get out there and talk about all the great things they're doing. The answer is always, “my work here is valuable, how much does it pay.” The rewards of meeting other like minded passionate people –to teach and to learn–are huge!

It's an interesting topic. I'm going to bring it up at work today.

@firewallender and @Jeremy both have excellent points. I do think speaking is like any other profession. It's fairly reasonable to expect food and lodging at paid conferences to be covered (even if by hosts as in @Suzanne's example). I also think it takes practice to hone the required skills and caliber of speaker can and should be reflected in compensation and caliber of event.

However, I suspect many speakers see these gigs as opportunities to attract new business or investment, in which case they should shoulder some burden in their own attendance. If we don't pay citizens to find a job, should we pay speakers to woo potential new clients?

So it can happen.

On the other hand, as writers are getting less and less from magazines and book publishing, they being told to make up the financial difference by selling themselves as speakers at conferences. So that's why the push for getting paid to speak.

Totally agree. One joy of paying for something is you totally have the right to likewise fire their arse if they are doing a terrible job. I'd say if you run into these types of speakers, be sure to give feedback (in a kind, constructive criticism sort of way, of course) to the event organizer so they know not to bring those people back.

I'm not against paying spears at all, I'm against the dogpile of every social media consultant demanding payment without bringing things to the table.

That, I think, is my biggest gripe. Go to conferences and the people you see the most not attending anything are the people doing the most amazing things. The content is uninteresting and bland. Public enemy #1 of this is the paid mediocre repeat speaker.

Or so I thought this morning.

Love your last comment. There is room for a lot of types / ways to do a conference. What I like everyone else doesn't… but I have to keep wondering how to make things great

If the audience is really looking for basics, then I think smaller groups are the best way of teaching them… there has to be better ways!