Thread by @swardley

X : How much do you charge for speaking?
Me : I don't. But the company I work for (I'm a full time employee paid to research) might. My entire personal speaking fee for the last decade (about 500 talks) is £0.00 ... I don't speak for money, I speak to help spread mapping.

X : Can you speak at my conference?
Me : Maybe. It depends upon a lot of factors e.g. how much speaking I'm already doing, client work (which actually pays the company's bills) and how much it impacts research time.

X : Why does your company charge?
Me : It's a simple braking mechanism. When there isn't a good reason to speak (i.e. benefit fo research / other goals) or when the workload is high then we charge. It's a judgement call we make internally on a case by case basis ...

... even then, we might decide that we simply don't want to speak at an event because of many reasons including past experience or lack of diversity or some other concern.

X : What about the prestige of speaking?
Me : You mean, what about the hard work and effort that goes into speaking? It's a delight to be invited but it's a lot of work / physically exhausting.

X : But speaking is a good marketing opportunity.
Me : I feel those awful words of "prestigious conference" are just around the corner. If speaking is solely about marketing then the term "sales pitch" might be more apt.