Should speakers get an honorarium? Comped conference fees? Airfare and hotel? Nada? The whole topic of how and if speakers get paid is a recurring theme among some folks who speak at industry events and meeting planners. Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine represents one side of the story with this rant about being offered a “special one-day registration rate” as recompense for being on a panel at an association show:

What incredible nerve. Though it may be worth the price of admission to see me sitting on the same panel with Roger Simon of PJ media, I nonetheless had a patented Jarvis conniption.

We as panelists come as their trained monkeys to give these conference organizers the only damned content they have and they expect us to pay for the bananas? Well, peel this!

It’s time for panelists everywhere to unionize, to rise up and form the International Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Amalgamated Blatherers, Local 1. We demand free nametags — with ribbons. We demand good bottled water on the table. We demand decent swag briefcases made of real fabric or leather, no plastic. And we demand a cut of the gate.

But Hugh at Gaping Void says it’s worth his while to speak for free, because of the indirect payback he gets:

I don’t charge for speaking. Sometimes I’ll get them to pay for the hotel and the plane fare. I figure every time I go to one of these things, it’ll lead to something else down the line- a paid gig, an English Cut sale, whatever.

It’s up to every person to decide for themselves, of course, but if someone was asking me to actually pay to provide content for their meeting, well, as someone who makes a living being paid to provide content, I think I’d just say no. Then again, I’m no speaker.

Tis the season for many to go through the agony and the ecstacy of the annual performance review. So few of these are done in a really productive way, and, it seems, a lot are downright awful. If you want to vent about a review, or just revel in knowing how much worse it could be, check out worstreview.com, where readers can post their horror stories and comment on other people’s experiences. It may not help you get that raise, but catharsis is always a good thing. The worst one yet, in my opinion, is poor Don’s story:

It was early February and the deadline for the performance reviews for the prior year was just passed. I had not had mine, not surprising in HR.

I happened to be entering the men’s bathroom at the same time as my boss. Standing side by side at adjacent urinals, he remarks that he hadn’t had a chance to go over my review with me but now was as good a time as any. The sum of the conversation was that I’d had a good year, he was pleased as were the senior managers who worked with me.

All of this was bad enough (and a bit humiliating since we were not alone in there) but the summation was really priceless. Walking away from the urinal, he told me to “keep it up” in the new year…

In retrospect, I was again reminded why there should be no big surprises during the performance review. I can only imagine if my attention had been distracted at a key moment because of either a very good or a very bad surprise.

P.S.: We didn’t shake hands after the review, in case you were wondering.

One other thing this site did for me is to make me really appreciate how good I have it.