6
May

Comment Challenge Day 6 - Engage Another Commenter

   Posted by: Greg Schwartz   in Bloggery, Professional Development

I’ve been actively contributing to a discussion over on Meredith Farkas’ blog regarding conferences that requires speakers to pay conference registration fees. My first two comments were tossed out to the group at large, but in my third remark, I was responding specifically to the previous comment, which dovetails nicely with today’s commenting task.

In today’s challenge, we are encouraged to engage another commenter in discussion. The suggestion is to elaborate our points and then leave the commenter (and other participants in the discussion) with a question. I often elaborate my points by asking questions and did so here.

Thus far, no response from the original commenter. Meredith has already commented on one of my previous comments, so I don’t necessarily expect her to weigh in on this particular piece of this discussion. It is, after all, just one comment amongst thirty.

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7 comments so far

Sue Waters
 1 

Look I haven’t had a chance to catch on everything cause I’m still trying to catch up on where you all are at in the Challenge but it must have been some debate on her post. 33 comments is excellent. Do you think you can help me out with a quick summary?

May 7th, 2008 at 7:16 am
Greg
 2 

Sure, Sue. Happy to oblige. The basics are that it is not uncommon for state library associations (and other conference organizers) to make speakers incur the costs of registration for the conference. The back and forth in the comments largely deals with the tension between the thin margins for the conference organizers and the undervaluation of speakers. I’m on the side of fighting against undervaluation. One person suggested that there should be a distinction drawn between speakers who would get value out of conference (i.e., those in the profession) vs. those who wouldn’t. My comment was that this is a grey area and how can you decide whether I would get value out of a conference or not. The whole conversation is interesting and one that comes up every year or so, in some form or another. We’ll be talking about it on my show tonight: http://uncontrolledvocabulary.com

May 7th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Sue Waters
 3 

Okay I’ve gone back and had a quick read of the original post.

My thoughts are if you have put in a submission to present at a conference sorry but that is the way it goes — nothing personal but you have to cover the costs. Unfortunately it’s unrealistic to expect conferences to cover all cost of presenters (mind you saying that our large State Conference does pay the registration of all presenters — though only one presenter per session if there is more than one. So probably gets back to the size of the conference).

However if you are asked to present at a conference then they should be contributing towards costs (travel, accommodation, registration etc).

Which is the reason why I don’t go to conference because anywhere from here (Perth Western Australia) is a minimum of $1000 traveling costs.

May 7th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Greg
 4 

Sue, I don’t think submitting a presentation proposal is tantamount to “I’m willing to not only cover all the expenses to get there, but I’m also willing to pay an additional fee to be allowed in the building, even though I’m actually providing the content for this conference.”

I’m not talking about, or expecting, the conference to cover all costs. (Well, actually, I am now, but I’m at a different stage in my presenting career.) I just don’t think it’s right that I should have to pay to attend an event where I am the content. What if we all agreed we weren’t going to accept those terms? There’d be no conference.

For pete’s sake, the speaker is already agreeing to speak for free! Conference organizers should be grateful for that. Charging them at the door is insulting.

There should be some meaningful incentive for people to share information. I don’t believe “whuffie” or reputation or whatever is enough. That’s undervaluing ourselves (a systemic profession-wide problem) and I, for one, am done doing that. Free (or at least heavily-discounted, but really, free) registration for the conference is a start. Still too little, in my honest opinion, but at least it’s something.

May 7th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Greg
 5 

Can you tell I feel strongly about this?

Another issue, which comes up in the comments on Meredith’s post, is the lack of transparency that surrounds speaking arrangements in general. This is something a few of us are interested in changing and I think it will have an impact on scenarios like this one.

May 7th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Sue Waters
 6 

Yes I can tell that you feel strongly about this :) and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. We don’t get that many conferences here, and due to isolation I don’t submit to present - so it isn’t a topic that I’ve thought a lot about except to say if they ask you to present they should be covering all costs.

Now normal workshops I do have opinions on. I frequently get ask to run workshops and often get caught out. Stupidly I say yes then they tell me all the fine detail. My response now is no — until you tell me every fine detail.

May 8th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Greg
 7 

@Sue - I think that’s a good policy. If you don’t know what you’re getting into before you agree, it’s hard to blame anyone except yourself.

May 8th, 2008 at 8:26 am

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