Broken conferences

February 15, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis

Dave Winer now has a series of posts exposing how much companies pay to deliver keynotes at conferences. Gee, I thought it should be the other way around” speakers worthy anything get paid to speak. If the companies are going to pay to speak, maybe we should be paid to listen. Timeshares do it, why shouldn’t conferences?

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  • http://hyku.com/blog/ Josh Hallett

    When I read Dave’s post I thought back to the FireFox NYTimes ad. A group should all pitch in and ‘buy’ a keynote to deliver a real message.

  • http://www.gapingvoid.com hugh macleod

    Les Blogs 1.0 was open source. Everybody including speakers paid the same i.e. 100 Euros.

    I never charge for speaking, but often they’ll pay for airfare and hotel.

  • http://geistbear.blogware.com Thomas

    A former boss said the big and easy money was open a trade association and run at a conference. Then collect attendee fees, sponsor fees and sit back while other people provide the content for the program.

    (yes a slight oversimplification, but not by much)

  • http://www.bourland.com Andrew Bourland

    Actually, it’s not that bad of an idea to put together an audience of highly influential people who are compensated in some way to be there, and then to parade before them speakers who would benefit greatly from having a 45 minute opportunity to put their best foot forward with the.

    I think this has actually been done by iMedia, who regularly fly in media buyers to swank locations, treat them like rock stars, while publishers and networks pay through the nose to have a private audience with them.

    Andy

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  • http://www.buytimeshareshere.com Ted

    Simply put, I would agree with Andrew Bourland and Jeff Jarvis. If the speakers would pay the attendees, it goes without saying that possibly they not only would show up, but their attention span might even increase. Net result, possibly more sales, and greater recognition and fame for the speaker or speakers!