There’s been a movement around #payToSpeak conferences on Twitter and elsewhere, that is conferences where the speaker essentially ends up paying to speak there (travel expenses, time put into the talk, time not working when being at the conference etc.). I think that speakers should be paid, or they at least shouldn’t be going negative in budget to speak at a conference. Here’s my experience:
I was taught asking someone how much money they made was a rude question. You just don’t do it along with talking about politics and religion and a myriad of other somewhat taboo things. But why? Equal pay day wasn’t that long ago and a contribution to the reason that women don’t get paid as much is because we don’t know that we aren’t…so let’s talk about it! I got the motivation from this great article by Ellen Pao. Check that out for more ideas.
I’m very excited to announce the #WomenInAgile workshop – The Changing Face of Agile at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA this summer! This is an event long in the making, started by great women who came before me and hopefully will be continued by other strong women’s voices in the future until the event is no longer needed.
Isn’t the Internet great? It’s a gateway to find information and promote yourself and your business. It’s also a great portal for cyber bullies and trolls to hide behind and unhinge the aforementioned business building. As with everything though, there is never a positive without a negative and it’s really what can be learned and how to move forward.
Words are very important to me. Obviously, I’m a blogger. I write a plethora of emails, debate constantly about writing a book, write presentations and articles, and have written more papers than I care to think about. I also pay very close attention to word choice in speaking and obsess about implied meaning. You can tell a lot about what a person really thinks by the words they choose.
