I regularly see complaints about being asked to speak for free at events or doing it ‘for the exposure’. These complaints get a lot of support. People will pitch in and say “You should NEVER speak for free!”

I figured I’d offer a different perspective on things… …why ‘exposure’ can be worth it, and the upside of speaking ‘for free’ .

Why is my perspective worth sharing: because I’m both a paid speaker who refuses to speak for free, and I’m an event organizer asking speaker to… speak for free.

Does that sound like a contradiction?

I created a fake company to play around with spammers, and it is just such a joy to use, and you can use it too.

A thread:

I receive an email from a scammer/spammer. Like this: I reply with this standard text:

I read a list of airplane travel tips somewhere and they were all boring and obvious, so here are a few I learned that might be useful: If I travel to a different time zone I start adjusting to it a few days before. Example: time difference with NY is 6 hours so when I go there I go to bed 2 hours later 2 days before, and 4 hours later the day before, then arrive with only 2 extra hours to adjust to.