Rules for posting comments on CBC.ca
Photo By: slimmer_jimmer. Remixed under Creative Commons License.
I love reading comments and these days there is no end to the ridiculous comments people make on online forums. These thoughts do not reflect my personal opinions, but did make me laugh. I found this hilarious list of "Rules for posting to CBC Forums" on a CBC forum:
1. Be partisan - ignore what is actually going on and base all comments on who's doing it. Anything Tories or cops do is automatically Bad; if Harper gives $10B for renewable energy, it's obviously part of his secret agenda to make Canada a theocracy.
2a. Everything is a plot. Every news event has been orchestrated to divert attention from something else. Ignore the fact that none of these ‘diversions’ ever work.
2b. The govt can suborn every civil servant, judge, cop and reporter to their ends. Every day. Twice on Sunday.
3. Forum posters have more education, expertise and knowledge than a 747 full of Nobel Laureates. No matter what the topic, experts are *always* wrong. (And generally working for The New World Order.)
4a. Facts are passé. Being able to produce real evidence is far less important than impassioned rhetoric and flaming accusations.
4b. If you simply must produce evidence, quotes from sites that themselves give no proof are ideal. They avoid being labeled as a ‘tool of the MSM’. Or something.
5. Personal attacks show your intelligence. Terms like ‘Harpo’, ‘sheeple’ and ‘Lieberals’ are clever, not stale or juvenile. Accusing Ignatieff of stupidity is fair and contributes a lot to the forum.
6. CBC is biased against both left and the right at the same time.
7. Everybody knows that there are hundreds of govt spies skewing voting results. Complain a lot about that.
8. All evil stems from Harper, USA, Israel and Business. All of it, including hangnails. Proof is unnecessary.
9. Spelling and grammar are stuffy affections. Semi-literate rants are far better, especially if ALL IN CAPITALS and with multiple exclamation marks!!!!
10. Logic is for sissies.
11. If somebody disagrees with you, they're clearly rednecks
Freelancing, Speaking and Why Facebook is Better
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| From: ToothpasteforDinner.com |
Kemp Edmonds
"I am no longer taking on unpaid speaking gigs. I apologize for that. I would accept an invitation to speak if a Charitable donation ($50+) was made to the charity of your groups choice. I am sorry that I am unable to come as a free speaker."
...
What are your thoughts on this idea?
Is this the end of Social Media?
"[The end of social media is a] very silly prediction IMHO. The buzzword, sure, will eventually fall out of fashion so that the pundits and conference-circuit "experts" have a newer, hotter term to bandy about and explain. But the concepts behind social media, social computing, whatever you want to call it, go back to the 60s, exploded in the early 70s, and will be around on the Net as long as there is a Net. I suspect ten years, twenty, fifty years from now, the applications that collectively comprise "social media" will have exploded beyond present-day imagination, although how they explode can be fairly well guessed at given an extrapolation of trends."
- Brainstorms
I would like to leave you with a video of a 100 year-old woman with her first computer, the iPad.
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The minimum donation is $50 for a 30-45 minute talk. For groups with little to no funding what do you think of this format? The idea isn't to help the speaker but to ensure that the audience understands that these things aren't free.
Matt has a point, but if you go that route, tracking is everything. See what groups give you the highest ROI and stick to that demographic. Otherwise, it's your time down the drain - which is the last place it should be.
Jeremy, that video is hilarious. I love the part how he compares the high end restaurant to the taco shack. Beef is beef? ha!
As for the video, if I ever teach a freelance course, that's the first thing I'm showing my students.
If you feel strong enough about your product, charge it up. 50$ is not a lot of money especially if a bunch of people are going.
And it really depends on the event too - for example if they just want Jeremy to photograph a random party and he'd "get exposure to potential clients", then it's not so great, but if the event is actually about how to take good photos, then that could actually turn into some great results after everyone there realizes how much better it would be to just have Jeremy do it for them in the end. That's worked well for me with talking about how people can make their own web videos.
I see too many people speaking for little or no money at events where participants pay $500+ to get in. That's a serious problem. It's one thing if you have a vested interest in the event or if you're selling something at the event or your talk will boost sales, but if you're speaking for free and someone else is raking in dough on your talents you are doing yourself and every other speaker out there a disservice ('you' being anyone, not Kemp Edmonds Esq.).
A $50 charitable fee for open talks at non-paid events should be fine and will weed away the less serious people. But for big events it's not enough.
@MattsMedia I don't want it to seem like I am there to pitch anything or drive them into a funnel. Although I will provide information about courses afterwards: one info slide + handout.
@JeremyLim Great advice and thanks for the laughs.
@ Corey I think we had this conversation about your work about 2 years ago or so. I learned alot then too. This is a small group of entrepreneurs and not a money making machine requesting I come and speak.
@JLate Layers is my currency of choice as well!
@JoshRimer I agree with you. Sometimes it challenging when others are profiting off of something that you contribute for free when it costs you heaps of time.
@Mor10 Thanks for the advice and support for my position. For big events I agree it's not enough.
The value of a speaking engagement or opportunity should never be determined by the compensation one gets. There should be better more relevant markers for determining whether one should accept the free speaking engagement.
I do agree that if the event is charging people to come to the event, then speakers should be compensated, that does not have to be money.
There's much more to be said on this topic, I would error on the side of caution when using money as the deciding factor to speak for free.
I drove to Seattle a few months ago just to see and meet this guy, his talk is 3 hours long and as @MattsMedia and @JoshRimer mentioned you have to have other strategies...
Quote from @MattsMedia "I'd say get as many speaking gigs as possible and pitch them on your class at the end."
During this guy's presentation he promotes his books, his seminars and his coaching services. His name is Brad Sugars and he is the founder of Action Coach.
Not once did I hear a sale pitch though and he only gave real life examples and then got the audience to say "mmmm isn't that interesting" we must have said that line 20X.
All that being said this guy is doing his own show, but he started out somewhere, most likely talking to as many gigs as he could. (I will ask him)
Would I talk if someone was trying to scoop me...nope
@KempEdmonds I love your idea of charging a nominal fee ($5) at the door with 100% of proceeds going to a charitable organization. If 100 show that is $500...awesome, I might even implement it for my July meetup.
Sorry i missed your meetup last night @JoshRimer I look forward to seeing pics and hearing about it.
You can ration these out over the year so you always have one available for those low-budget, high exposure opportunities that make sense.
The fact is that a lot of big money gigs come about as a result of someone having seen you speak for free. Also, if there's no real budget for a speaker, there can be lots of other benefits you can negotiate such as book sales, donation to Kiva, camera crew, promotional exposure, video testimonials recorded at the event, live webcast, referrals etc. etc.
It will always make sense to do "free" on occasion, and you can judge each situation as it comes. Your instinct to "always get something" for your services is bang-on though.
PS. I was in a speaker line-up a while ago where the $10K keynote was doing a freebie to help out an old schoolmate. Cheers..
Also, search out organizations like the Vancouver Board of Trade etc. that have people in the audience that can actually pay you for your services. I do stuff with them and other associations at a reduced rate because there's 10's or even 100's of thousands of dollars of spin off.
Too many organizations want free seminars and their audience is full of people who can't hire you or expect more stuff for free.
Have done some work for charitable donation as well which helps out in spades later. :)