Kent Beck on why he charges for JUnitMax
threeriversinstitute.org
threeriversinstitute.org
At RailsConf this year, I heard that the non-keynote speakers weren't paid and weren't having their accommodation costs covered either. This might be entirely untrue (?) but I heard it more than once. If true, this decision seems to have come at the expense of paying people like Tim Ferriss to espouse truisms at big-bucks-per-hour instead.
I certainly hope that programming heroes like Kent aren't being left high and dry because the money is going on pointless eye and mind candy at some of these conferences..
I've helped organize a couple [small Perl workshops](http://www.frozen-perl.org) where we charged $20/40 for the early bird rate.
At that cost, we really barely covered the workshop costs (venue & food mostly) with some additional sponsorship. There was no way we could afford to pay speakers at all. People come to support the Perl community and because it's fun.
OSCON, OTOH, pays airfare, one hotel night, and $500 per tutorial to tutorial speakers. But for "regular session" speakers, they just get in free. Of course, OSCON costs $1740 with tutorials, and speaker can attend tutorials, so it's not like you're getting nothing!
I would assume ORA did something similar for RailsConf. If you think the conference is worth what they're charging, then free admission is a significant value.
ApacheCon is a bit odd. When I spoke there way back in 2000 they paid airfare, hotel, and something extra for all speakers. They can do that because it costs about the same as OSCON but they have less than half as many tracks.
So each conference has a different value proposition for speakers and attendees. Personally, I love the small community conferences, and will happily pay out of pocket to go speak at them, because it's fun.
I'm totally bewildered over the fact that a high-dollar conference run by O'Reilly does less for speakers than small regional conferences like GoRuCo.
Seems there are many different conference cultures. Speakers and attendees need to decide which of these they want to support.
I've spoken at many Ruby conferences. I've only been paid once. The usual renumeration was free or discounted admission. That was fine; the early conferences were small, semi-chaotic, and they weren't assembled as a business proposition or marketing event. Now, though, there are a range of true grass-roots events and flat-out for-profit ventures.
I think I see the value proposition for each of these, but prefer to a) avoid the "conference as business" event (both as a speaker and attendee), and b) do what I can to support the local grass-roots events. Basically, throw my time and money into the things I want to see more of.
No free video released after the conf? Sorry, not interested. Hosting a pricey and seat-restricted event? Sorry; that's not a culture I want to encourage.
When people decide to participate in these things, consideration needs to go into more than just, "Will I see some good talks?"
We can create a better conference culture by thoughtful, selective support.
"Value" from the standpoint of markets is not the same as "actual benefit." I'm not sure you can really measure the latter. If you try, you start living Zen parables.
Let's take Adult Friend Finder as an example. It has "value" according to the market. We know because it makes money. But the vast majority of its users probably don't get what they think is the "actual benefit" they would've wanted. But is even that an actual benefit? I now have a relationship with mutual respect, love, and trust. I now see the goal of Adult Friend Finder as a trap. The opportunity cost and risk of disease involved with finding casual sex makes it seem less of a "benefit" to me.
It's like that story of the farmer and good luck/bad luck. http://www.timesquotidian.com/2009/04/17/good-luck-bad-luck/
So where does this leave economics? There's still all of the game theory, but the need for a more sophisticated outlook on human motivation is acknowledged by the field.
We're idly considering where we might go if we return to the US, and that area is not a bad one for some things. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that it's not a great place for high tech (even Eugene, much larger, is a pretty sleepy place from that point of view).
Price it like every other desktop dev tool on the planet: one off purchase + with minor version upgrades + optional annual maintenance. Look at other established players in the java dev tool market. Copy their pricing models.
Even though it's cheap I wouldn't consider it because of the pricing model you are using. It just feels wrong.
As I said above: human beings don't use logic when assigning "value."
Humans are creatures of habit. But it turns out that using habits and generalizations saves a lot of time and effort. Therefore it is logical to use them - even if their application in a specific situation sometimes leads to illogical decisions. There's different levels of systems.
If I insisted on being paid (as I have in the past) they would have said, “Good-bye”.
Before forming an opinion, or recommending a solution, I need to get clear on the situation: He's insisted on payment in the past, but he believes this time they'll say "Goodbye". But he didn't ask them... so, it seems he's imagining getting knocked back, without checking out the reality. Is that what he's saying?
"Technical skills make a technical success, but business skills make a business success" - business skills being about how to make your product "easy to buy". For example, a higher price can make it easier to buy, especially if it fits into a category of products that the organization is used to buying - and in the way they are used to buying them. It's part of "positioning" it in the customer's mind. This is all simply seeing it from the customer's point of view. These things don't directly improve your product, but they do help to communicate it to other people, which is also intrinsically worthwhile.
The economy is bad and perhaps also comp sci is finally ending its multi-decade growth phase. There's always a place for anyone who creates value, but perhaps the days of "it's raining soup grab yourself a bucket" are over, and a different strategy is needed (Disclaimer: this is a guess. I'm not yet sufficiently deluded to think I can predict the future).
More generally, I think I have had exactly your dilemma (and still do). I don't have a solution, but perhaps some camaraderie. It's the philosophy of doing whatever does the most good. It feels good (and I think it is good). I believe that if you create value, someone will work out how to pay you. It's a wonderfully inspiring and freeing philosophy - and it makes me feel happier and feel like a pure, innocent person. Also, people want to help you. And for me, it was also inspired by Bucky (his epiphany by the lake - which some spoilsport pedant has apparently debunked as the exact place for it, claiming it's more like a constructed founder's story. Anyway).
The disillusionment for me was in open source: for a developer tool I wrote, people took the help I provided, but didn't give anything back [1] . I did have sales [2], but because there was no pressure to pay, huge organizations would take 3 months to pay [3]. I really hated waiting for the other shoe to drop [4].
Today, I believe that if I create value, it is OK for me keep some of that value. This seems to be right and true... but it doesn't make me happy, and it isn't inspiring or freeing.
I'm currently working on a patentable enterprise developer tool, that I plan to initially sell at a high price to large organizations. As the tool becomes more general, I will lower the price, until eventually it is cheap enough for anyone to afford. I think this is good, and sensible... but it also makes me feel a little sick at heart. So I don't know the answer, but hopefully I've offered some camaraderie. Do let me know if you work out an answer! :-)
[1] which is part of the open source deal - I just didn't like it
[2] dual licensing, like Ghostscript
[3] to be fair: everyone who said they'd buy it, did eventually buy it
[4] I'd much prefer they didn't tell me they were going to buy it,
so I didn't have to worry for 3 months.I'm not asking anyone else to fix this for me. It's my responsibility to find my place in this new market in a way that let's me contribute and benefit. I'm glad to know my observations aren't just loony (or at least that I have company).
Alternatively, though it is also distasteful from a "give away and trust" perspective, you could overfill the talk with teasers and upsells -- that is, to speak to a larger audience uncompensated, it will necessarily be more a sales pitch than open conversation. ("I can answer that question on a 2-day consulting contract." "I cover that in my low-priced video series.")
Or, the condition for them videotaping could be you get a copy, they can't offer it on the open net, and you have the right to use/sell the video elsewhere. (This might get gummed up in their legal process and thus be a de facto 'no deal', but it's another way to propose splitting up the gains from your talk.)
So while there's always a point you may have to withhold your full output, there could also be other zones of agreement. While a Bigco can be obliviously greedy in some dimensions, in other dimensions they don't mind throwing off value others capture.
But, somewhat as with musicians, there may be a lot more people who would like to follow this path than the market needs -- meaning the financial appreciation will be spread pretty thin.