Speaker Compensation

Many events want speakers to show up without any compensation and give freely of your time, effort, knowledge, and expertise. Is it right? Is it wrong?

I am going to break it down from my viewpoint as someone who has been out there for many years speaking, teaching, and sharing what’s in my head to thousands of people all over the world, both in person and online.

One fundamental tenet: never pay an event to speak. In the music world, we call that “pay to play.” I am not talking about travel or associated costs; this is paying them to give you a speaking slot.

Should Speakers Get Paid?

With rare exceptions, the answer is yes.

Do I occasionally speak for free? Yes – at user groups or true community events such as a Data or SQL Saturday. These events are run by local organizations that often struggle to get sponsors for pizza for in person meetings. Demanding a speaker fee generally does not fit the business model. However, if you have funds … call me.

Time and Effort

Prep time is the cost of doing business as a speaker. Whether it is a single presentation or a full day workshop, a great deal of effort is required to make that session excellent. Demos, the deck, labs – it’s all time consuming. Factoring in “hourly rates,” most speakers never recoup prep time. Is it possible? Sure, but it’s rare.

What Should Compensation Look Like?

Compensation isn’t swag. I don’t need tchotchkes or clothing, nor would I use a Starbucks gift card. Skip the speaker dinner. I would rather see events put that money towards some form of actual monetary compensation. That or give any surplus made from attendee/sponsor fees to a local charity/cause.

For actual speaker compensation, below is what I would love to see.

Smaller, Local Events

This would be a user group meeting or a SQL or Data Saturday type of event. These types of events are usually free to attendees and funded through vendors/sponsors and at most, charge attendees for lunch to cover costs. Paying someone to come in from afar is usually a pipe dream. If you speak at one of these events, chances are it’s at no cost to the organizer. If you cannot accept that, do not speak there.

That said, always pay precon speakers for events like SQL or Data Saturdays. The lion’s share of earnings from that paid session should go to that person. If you as an organizer are going to take costs off the top, tell the speaker up front because it affects their bottom line. Not disclosing that is shady.

Bigger Events

These would be the SQLBits, PASS Summits, and VMware Explores of the world. Most of these events are not community-run or -based events. They are often run by larg(er) for profit corporations.

All sessions, regular or full day pre/postcons should be paid especially if you are not an employee of the vendor running the show … even if they try to disguise it as a community event, it’s not. Conference entrance fees should also be a given, not a benefit.

While things are improving at some events, the needle has not moved much. I’m going to break this down into three categories: hotel, and travel costs, and speaker fees.

Hotel

Events should cover at least one night of hotel per session – especially if doing a pre/postcon. Add one additional night on the front or back end. Unless the event is local to me, I must fly in and get settled. I will always get in the day before, so there is one night, the precon is the next day. Finishing at 5 PM means I probably cannot get home that night so that is two days.

Now, if I am traversing time zones and need time to adjust for a day or two before, it’d be nice for an event to cover that part as well. That has never happened unless it was built into a massive flat fee for everything. Chances are I eat that cost 9/10 times.

There are times when a hotel was offered to me. I chose to stay elsewhere. I did not expect equivalent cash compensation since I turned down their benefit. Similarly, if I accept a hotel benefit and want a room upgrade, I should have to pay for that.

Airfare/Train/General Travel

Some sort of travel stipend would be welcome. PASS Summit used to do this for precon speakers. It was not a large amount, but it helped. Even if a stipend was generous, if you have fancy tastes in restaurants, that’s on you. If you have special needs (health or otherwise) that require a higher class of airfare, that’s a tall order for an event to shell out in many cases due to cost. If they are paying for airfare, the speaker paying the difference between a normal ticket and the more expensive one seems like a reasonable compromise.

Outside of a handful of events, an event has never paid my airfare (or train). That would be lovely if it happened. Traveling a long distance is a commitment. I know conferences like Bits love people traveling there to speak and appreciate us, but they’d never be able to hold a conference if they paid us all to show up (unless they charged attendees ridiculous amounts of money).

Speaking Fees

Many speaker contracts talk about the conference owning your materials and/or distributing a recorded version of the session which they can monetize in perpetuity. Sometimes they have clauses which prevent you from giving the same talk elsewhere for a period of time. Are you OK with either of those? Read speaker contracts before signing them. Request changes if necessary and whatever you do, don’t sign them if you don’t agree to the terms.

Here is how I see things breaking down: regular sessions and then the full day workshops/sessions that take place before or after the main event.

Regular Sessions

These are the shorter sessions (20, 45, 60, 90 minutes). These garner more of an honorarium/token fee. Some conferences are now doing this which is progress. If you find a conference paying big money for a short session, let me know. If you are flying halfway around the world for $200 and a 90 minute session, is it worth it? Maybe, maybe not.

Preconference and Postconference Sessions

This is where the money is … potentially. There are three essential models:

Flat fee
Base + incentives
Per attendee

Flat Fees

Flat fees are easy. You like the number, or you don’t; there are no surprises. The number has a hard ceiling but often these types of conferences in my experience pay decently. Expenses may or may not be included as part of the flat fee.

Base + Incentives

Having a base amount means all speakers get X. That levels the playing field. The incentives are where this changes. Historically, this has been based on attendance (beyond Z attendees, you get Y per person in addition to the base). This is great until you have a single speaker who draws 75% of the attendees. Every other speaker, and the event, loses when this happens. You could argue the others should have picked a better topic/promoted/whatever. That is another topic for another day.

What Bits chose to do starting in 2024 is have a tiered model. A Training Day speaker is paid a base fee. Then if you draw more attendees, you get more compensation. It is based on total attendee numbers, not an additional amount per person. The fee is capped at a maximum £5000 ($6,159.75 at today’s exchange rate which is good for one day’s work) for more than 100 attendees. If a speaker has 200 attendees, that speaker gets the same amount as someone who has 101. I get why that sucks to some, but since Bits is now looking at paying regular speakers, a relative distribution of wealth seems ok.

There are also “tricks” to get people to show up which skew numbers – especially pre/postcons. Giving away freebies is tried-and-true and to me, unethical. It also creates an unfair advantage and is why most conferences ban promotions during any kind of session.

These first two models usually guarantee that I can afford to speak, and my travel expenses are covered. Anything else is “profit” (and I mean that very loosely).

Per Attendee

Paying speakers only per attendee with zero guarantees is awful. I did that once – 0 stars in the Yelp review. No minimum? Hard pass.

Never Speak for Expo$ure Buck$

What are expo$ure buck$? Any time someone asks you to speak for free and usually adds some hooey around the exposure you will receive. Four benefits cut and paste from an e-mail Big Data Conference Europe 2023 sent to me:

Promotion as a speaker via our website, social media marketing, and email marketing
Personal discount codes
Networking opportunities with other speakers, sponsors, and attendees
An invitation to participate as a guest of honor in the next year’s edition

They offered no monetary compensation for a full day workshop, either. 90 minute session or eight hours? It’s the same.

I know what you’re thinking – those benefits are too good to be true, amiright?

Everything in this section applies to work, too. If you’re a consultant, don’t give away the proverbial farm on a scoping pre-sales call. Some potential customers will try; bless their hearts.

TL;DR

As speakers, we all need to keep reminding organizers we have value. Without us, they would not have an event. Some events are worth speaking at for free or low fees as I noted earlier, but that is a decision you need to make for yourself.

A big part of speaking is about giving back and educating. People helped me along the way, and I try to do the same. That does not mean you cannot make some money doing it. I am always humbled when years later someone comes up to me at a conference and tells me how one of my sessions helped them. THAT is why I spend hours on presentations.

What do you think – should speakers be paid? If so, what do you think is fair? If not, why? Have any other thoughts on this topic? Chime in below.

January 12, 2023

Logs Do Not Care About Your Feelings or Emotions

I spend a lot of time looking at logs. Over the years, I analyze more Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC), Windows Event, and SQL Server logs than most.

That said, I want to address something I run into from time to time. For whatever reason, people seem to think what logs say is a personal attack on them, their skills, and/or something adjacent. Let me explain.

Log Fundamentals

I always say this: “If you are reading cluster logs, you are in a bad place.” One could argue reading any log, especially on a frequent basis, means you are not where you want to be. Logs are not light summer beach reading.

Proactive monitoring often uses logs to pop up events or information. Monitoring must be tailored to your day-to-day IT requirements. Trawling through multiple logs and correlating events to determine why your AG is down is a vastly different exercise than just seeing if your CPU spikes.

A log’s job is to document what is going on for a particular widget and often includes associated things. For example, a WSFC’s log contains information about networking as it relates to the WSFC. The WSFC log does not measure network performance from the various WMI counters but it may inspire you to go look there if an issue is seen.

Log Findings

Whenever I troubleshoot issues, often part of that exercise is to report findings. Sometimes that is a call, other times a summarized e-mail. For others, it is a detailed report that not only covers the “why”, but also how to mitigate or improve the situation. In other words, it depends.

As with most things, there are good and bad ways to convey a message. Unfortunately, the baby can be very ugly even in the best of scenarios. In those situations, there is no (easy) way to sugar coat that message. The core problem is that once human beings are involved, feelings and emotions come along for the ride. Deliver findings in a humane way – leading with “you suck at your job” is not going to help matters. If your findings are meant to hurt others, rethink your position because karma comes back around.

Information presented in a log has no opinion nor is said information alternate facts. Hopefully, the log output does not contain the words “you are a moron” or “you suck” (if so, find better vendors). Some AI aside that is probably in the works somewhere (hello robot overlords!), when a log documents that the server lost connectivity to the network, that’s all it is saying.

A problem documented in a log is not a referendum on your job as an administrator or your skills. It is most likely an indicator that something must be addressed. The widget and its log do not know why the network dropped out from underneath at a given moment. Knowing the network drop happened and its timeframe points you in a direction to resolve the issue. That may mean correlating other logs and their events. After that you may investigate if this was transient/one time or something that has happened multiple times. Let the information lead you on a treasure hunt.

If any of the above resonates with you, here’s how you can address this unique challenge.

What Can You Do?

First, don’t be defensive. Many companies have walls and divisions that exist between groups or organizations. This phenomenon often leads to finger pointing in times of crisis. Chances are if you are in a server down situation, multiple people/groups will need to work together to resolve the issue. Put egos and agendas aside. Never make others jump through hoops to prove “it’s not my problem”. Everyone is on the same team – Team <insert name of company here>.

Second, remember troubleshooting is a logical exercise. You start with logs or a set of assumptions and you either prove them true or false based on the data you have. Sometimes people know right away what an issue is. This is because they have either seen it before or they have years of experience that quickly rules out noise. Do not dismiss instinct; it is a very real thing.

Example One

DBAs are often the default blame acceptors since the problem will show up in SQL Server first even if it started somewhere else in the chain. If an Always On Availability Group (AG) goes down because the underlying network drops out, it’s not SQL Server nor the WSFC or Pacemaker’s fault. The network team will most likely need to investigate what is happening and resolve the situation.

Example Two

DBAs often must go out of their way to prove performance problems (physical or virtual) are not things like a query issue. Of course, performance problems manifest themselves in SQL Server, but what is the actual cause? For example, a noisy neighbor on a virtualization host can impact another VM. The problem shows up in SQL Server, but it is something the virtualization administrator will probably need to address in some way – not the DBA. Work together, not with two middle fingers held high by each camp.

Summary

When it’s time to look at what the logs tell us, have an open mind. Sometimes it’s not our problem and we can breathe a sigh of relief. Other times the spotlight is directly shining on you. Both are ok. Deal with it and move on. Making it personal is not a winning scenario.

Have you encountered situations like this? Chime in below.

February 16, 2021

Technical Debt – The (Not So) Silent Crisis

Here in the USA, many are experiencing unprecedented winter weather. For example, parts of Texas are without power and heat and experiencing blackouts. A big focus of what I do for customers – business continuity – has to account for things like the power going down. A few years ago California had rolling blackouts in the summertime. Austin tried that in this 2021 storm – and stop me if you’ve heard this before – the plan did not work since what happened isn’t what they expected. From this Austin-American Statesman article:

Austin Energy’s plan was to rotate the outages, meaning more neighborhoods would’ve shared the no-electricity burden for the entire city, for a period not to exceed 40 minutes. But the rotation was not possible, Sargent said, because it would have disrupted service for those critical operations.

There is a reason I strongly recommend testing all continuity plans. For IT folks, you do not just want your servers literally powering off. If that happens, pray you experience no data corruption. How are your backups? Test them recently?

Having said that, the Houston Chronicle wrote a damning article. Here’s the part I want to focus on:

“The ERCOT grid has collapsed in exactly the same manner as the old Soviet Union,” said Hirs. “It limped along on underinvestment and neglect until it finally broke under predictable circumstances.

“For more than a decade, generators have not been able to charge what it costs them to produce electricity,” said Hirs. “If you don’t make a return on your money, how can you keep it up? It’s like not taking care of your car. If you don’t change the oil and tires, you can’t expect your car to be ready to evacuate, let alone get you to work.”

Some of what is happening in Texas is not only due to Mother Nature but also partially because of technical debt. Old, aging infrastructure eventually buckles and sometimes fails. Technical debt is not just an IT problem. Real life examples such as this bring the concept front and center.

Kicking the proverbial can down the road and saying things like “We’ll worry about that later, it’s fine now” is often what makes the end results so painful. Neglect increases risk whether it is intentional or not. Max and I help customers so these big leaps incur less risk and pain including managing external dependencies.

Look at your company if you are a FTE or your customers if a consultant. How many applications and servers have not been even looked at because they “just work” and “it/they is/are fine”? Budget is always a concern, but to paraphrase the old adage, you will pay now or pay later. Paying later is often more expensive. Insert your own scenario or question here but answer this:

What is the actual cost if that system/application/server fails or is unavailable? I bet it is more than if things had been dealt with all along or right from the start. You can sometimes avoid a quadruple bypass.

For those of you affected by this weather, my heart goes out to you. Stay safe and warm. Even though we are in the midst of a pandemic, please check in with neighbors and loved ones.

We must be prepared both in life and in business to handle both the expected and unexpected which also means managing your technical debt. This is what we help our customers do every day at SQLHA, so if you want to ensure your business can not only be resilient but also in a good place to manage handle technical debt, contact us today.

February 1, 2021

Making Lemonade Out of Lemons

The last time I did any appreciable travel pre-COVID-19 was late January 2020. I went down to NYC for a customer meeting. My next trip was supposed to be SQLBits in the UK in March which never happened for obvious reasons. For the better part of the past 20 years, I’ve flown 50 – 100,000 miles per year. Some people I know fly more than that. There are two ways I could have handled the sudden and enforced change in my life: look at it as a problem and be miserable or lean into it and make something of it.

At first, I must be honest and say I was bummed and missed being out there. What I came to realize is that this past year has become a blessing in disguise. Let me explain.

Nearly 20 years on the road does things to your life – both good and bad. There were stretches I was home and sometimes travel came in spurts, but I didn’t earn lifetime status with American Airlines and Marriott because I am a homebody.

What I realized quickly in my forced “staycation” is that I was weary. All those years on the road which came to a sudden halt was like getting off a treadmill still running at full speed. I needed a reset both mentally and physically. Just as COVID was kicking in, I was dealing with a hand issue that was not only hampering my ability to type (affecting work) but also made it hard to play bass. I also realized I had a backlog of projects and other things personally and professionally that were long neglected for one reason or another.

For example, I’ve never worked in an office when at home. I not only set one up, but I figured out a lot of stuff which will influence some exciting things I will announce in the upcoming months. I just never had dedicated time to deal with setting one up when I was home a few days here, maybe a week or two there. Even when I was home, I was working all the time or trying to squeeze one more rehearsal in because I may not be able to play for weeks on end. I didn’t allow myself to slow down. I had to cram something into every moment. That’s normal until it isn’t.

A big silver lining is that 2020 was a busy year for SQLHA. I basically didn’t have downtime all year and just this past week was the first one I took a breath. I am VERY thankful for the work as I know some were not. We have great customers (why aren’t you one? contact us today ;)). I never take it for granted.

Even with being busy, I made myself a priority. I not only feel the best physically I have in years but also rejuvenated. Part of that rejuvenation is being inspired. For example, before these two recent blog posts, I realized I hadn’t written one in nearly six months. I just wasn’t feeling it.

Did 2020 suck in many ways? You bet. It was not all sunshine and roses. I’ll just say this: I certainly have more salt than pepper in my hair after 2020.

Realistically I probably won’t be hitting the road in any meaningful way until later in 2021 or early 2022 since vaccines are just rolling out. Most countries are closed for visitors. Even travel here in the US is iffy to me at the moment. I’m going to continue making lemonade out of lemons by checking items off the aforementioned list of backlogged projects. I know I can’t tackle them all at once, but it feels good to be making forward progress. I am also making sure I give myself some time, too. Self-care matters. You’re no good to anyone if you’re exhausted.

When the time comes, I’ll be grateful to be out and about again and am looking forward to seeing all of you outside of a screen. I know one thing for sure: I will appreciate it that much more. Until then, stay safe and healthy.

January 28, 2021

Closing in on 30 Years in the Database World

It was the fall of 1991. I applied for and landed a quality assurance internship at SQL Solutions in Burlington, MA which was located at 8 New England Executive Park right next to the Burlington Mall. SQL Solutions was purchased by Sybase not long after. I kept that internship through the end of graduation in 1994 and there’s no question it literally set up the rest of my professional career.

I always find it interesting how one thing, one event, one interaction can sometimes change the course of your life – good or bad. I’ve been on both sides of that.

I always went home in the summertime, but when back in MA for college, I was at Sybase twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday if memory serves me correctly). Two of the people I worked closely with and were my direct supervisors were women I still have the utmost respect for today. I’ve never seen gender, color of someone’s skin, religion, etc., as a problem then or now. No one should. I learned a lot in those two years, and I am forever thankful to everyone I worked with at Sybase. In fact, one of the people I met I wound up playing years later in various jazz ensembles (he’s a guitar player). Small world.

Part of me thought I’d land a permanent job at Sybase, but that wasn’t meant to be, and I believe things worked out how they should have. The skills I acquired in those two years gave me the foundation to land my first job post-college doing QA using FoxPro (then Visual FoxPro) for a company that did medical software. In reality, it set me up for life since I’m still tinkering with databases today.

In a harbinger of things to come, I once got in trouble in that job because I automated part of what I was supposed to do using Visual Basic and Excel macros. The results were predictable, so why would I eyeball that? Let a process tell me if it was good or bad. Was I DevOps before DevOps was cool? (kidding here, folks) That little “stunt” landed me on a PIP which I survived but it taught me a valuable lesson.

I can see why automating rubbed some the wrong way – here’s this young upstart at the tender age of maybe 23 trying to tell us how to do our job. I was just trying to free my time up to be more efficient and save my time for the stuff that needed my attention. It’s funny how automation and other things are commonplace now but were not then.

The events of the past year when we’ve all been stuck at home has given us time to reflect and see how we want or need to move forward and improve. I have always looked forward, but that doesn’t mean you can’t look to the past for inspiration. I look fondly on the early years of my career. In some ways I’ve come so far, but in others, I haven’t gone very far at all. I think I found my calling early if I wasn’t going to be a full-time musician but I marched to the beat of my own drummer and I’d like to think I still do to a degree. I’m certainly older. Wiser and smarter? I hope so. Better filter? Those who know me will have varying opinions here.

I’d like to think my success to date has outweighed my failures and shortcomings. I’m a work in progress. We all are. This is why even 30 years in, I try my best to learn and do new things knowing in some cases it will be difficult or I may be ahead of the curve.

A recent interview with Tomo Fujita by Mary Spender struck a huge chord with me. Paraphrasing what Tomo said at one point is this: teachers are not better than students and can learn from them even though they are still helping the student. This one quote stuck with me: “(A) teacher is just a great student.” Fast forward to about 8:37 if you want to see that interaction. It’s such a good interview where even if you are not a musician, you can apply a lot of what Tomo says to your life beyond that little bit.

I’m no longer that early 20-something but I learn something from all of my customers and students (including anyone who attends a webinar, etc.). I may not be the smartest person in the room and I’m totally fine with that but I’m at the proverbial table for a reason and it’s not just my boyish good looks and charm (laugh – it’s a joke). I’ll never try to be all things to all people; it’s impossible. I know my limitations. I can only attempt be the best me I can be at any given moment.

That 20-something also couldn’t have imagined one internship would one day allow him to travel the world and speak to, work with, and teach thousands of people. There are very few things as humbling when people tell you how you’ve inspired them or helped them and it made an impact.

Learn from your mistakes. Learn from every experience – good or bad. Learn from those around you. You never know what may shape and spark things to come … and remember to give back.

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