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Terry S.
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Payment for Talks

Post by Terry S. »

There is a current thread on this Forum that is entitled "I've been invited to give a talk on cacti at our local school" and a contributor raised the topic of payment for talks. I don't think that any of us would charge for talking to a local school, so I thought it would be interesting to discuss the topic under a separate heading.

First, it is worth pointing out that the BCSS is exceptional in being a society within which it is extremely unusual for speakers at meetings to receive a fee. Furthermore, most of us only charge basic fuel costs to get to meetings rather than the standard rate which is somewhere around 45p per mile. This contrasts with e.g. the Alpine Garden Society where it is actually recommended by the central body that speakers charge a fee; similarly speakers at local horticultural society meetings, WI, etc. all receive fees.

I currently charge a fee of £40 to give a talk (very modest by many standards) but this is waived for branches, etc. of the BCSS. I find that putting together a new Powerpoint can take several months (on and off) involving research, slide-scanning, photoshopping, etc. and travelling to and from a branch can use up a lot of time particularly when one finds the M25 or M3 closed for roadworks on the way home. I think that we tend to operate on a mutuality basis: I give a talk at your branch and you give a talk at mine and all just with basic travel costs. There are always exceptions, I do not attend the Judges' Course and did balk at the suggestion of giving a talk at the course while paying all of my own expenses!

There are one or two branches who seem to take speakers for granted and one of my friends was thinking of compiling a "bad branch list". Perhaps we should give the branches a rating after our visits by filling in an on-line questionnaire in the manner of Trip Advisor? It could work both ways, the branch could do the same for the speaker! When I have travelled a reasonable distance, I do find it very pleasant to have something to eat with a branch member before a talk and also to see their collection.

What are people's views on fees? Would we perhaps appreciate speakers a little more if we had to pay for them?
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DaveW
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Re: Payment for Talks

Post by DaveW »

The problem always is branch finances Terry. The more speakers cost the less months a year a branch can afford an outside speaker and the less bookings speakers will get, therefore the cost of compiling your talk is spread over fewer bookings forcing fees to go up if you don't want to subsidise your talks and then the law of diminishing returns applies. A product can only sell for the price the market will bear. There comes a point where putting up fees actually brings in less cash than cutting them, since you get less bookings.

It really is all about to how rich the society, or your audience is to pay your fees. Also as I said elsewhere organisations like Women's Institutes etc seem to be cash rich and will pay stupidly high speakers fees, as will some garden societies. It basically comes down to how many audience members the cost of the speaker is being divided by to justify the booking.

Many NCSS/BCSS branches have disappeared since I joined in 1961, usually due to declining membership coupled with increased meeting room costs and even the withdrawal of the Per Capita Grant in the early days, which was one eighth of the then subscription to help run the branch.

I can foresee with modern technology and most modern digital projectors being able to run video that travelling speakers will get rarer in future, with their talks simply transferred to video, or digital slides on memory stick, or maybe even given remotely by video link. Film slide talks were more difficult for the society to copy in the past, but digital images do not present the same copying problems, therefore it is now far easier to produce digital talks for hire cheaply to branches to replace a speaker.

As an instance to how times change and what a market will bear. I was speaking to Ken Preston-Mafham some time ago who runs a natural history photo agency. He was saying since digital they can no longer charge anything like as much for their images as in the old film days when they roamed around the world to take them, because since the digital camera the Internet is now awash with microstock agencies selling amateur photos they took on their travels for a nominal amount per image, vastly undercutting the professional picture agencies doing it for a living. Therefore even an established industry can only charge the amount the current market conditions will bear, past costs to obtain their then more expensive film material no longer apply.

Even our branch structure may eventually alter in the distant future, with people teleconferencing by Internet link from home, or even on tablets and smartphones, cutting out the cost of a meeting room, insurance etc.

It really depends what a speaker is aiming to do, just clear expenses, such as travel and the actual cost of compiling a talk, or actually make a profit from it? In some ways it cost more in the past to construct a talk with Kodachrome and processing it at around £8 a 36 exposure roll as I recall, to now using digital cameras where I took 1200 habitat images on a single memory card at little cost since the card can keep being wiped and used again. Unlike film you don't pay for processing the dud frames either, since these are simply wiped.

Perhaps some idea from the society on charges for fuel/vehicle costs per mile would be a good idea for speakers since we should be fair to them. But then you need a discussion as to what, or how much, they should be compensated for their time, or if it is desirable for those on the BCSS Speakers List to be making a significant profit (Lecture Fee) over and above this?

Once you decide terms it is then up to the individual to decide if they want to be a BCSS Speaker or not, or simply restrict themselves to the richer Women's Institutes or Garden Societies. Though I can foresee these going to pre recorded videos or digital slide shows in the future in order to cut costs, therefore maybe the days of the travelling celebrity speaker off the TV gardening program's may be coming to an end too?
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Alexander
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Re: Payment for Talks

Post by Alexander »

I don't think it's in any way shape or form unreasonable to pay an expert to educate people. The audience gets knowledge, experiences, tips and the speaker gets a cup of tea & should be happy for not having to pay for the fuel? Seems strange to me.
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Re: Payment for Talks

Post by D^L »

I don't think the issue here is whether the speaker makes money. More whether we respect the efforts of the people who put in the effort to prepare talks and then come along to present them. My natural inclination is to suggest that it should be the norm to pay more than expenses but, like Dave, I don't think the branches are sturdy enough to afford this and the culture of getting this effort for free is already set.
Regarding the circulation of recordings of presentations etc. The society does have a library of digital talks to borrow. The vast majority of these are more like borrowing slides and a document to read out - rather than recordings.
The effort and expense of creating a recording that is of high enough audio quality and well-enough presented to be enjoyable is large. It has been done: Paul Klaassen did one and there is a film of Gorden Rowley. Both were a lot of work to prepare. There are loads of microphones and cameras available nowadays but the experience of those that have trialed this equipment shows that you need high quality equipment to get a good result.
Cheers
David Lambie
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Re: Payment for Talks

Post by Tina »

the Judges' Course and did balk at the suggestion of giving a talk at the course while paying all of my own expenses!
Yes I have heard the same with regard to the convention, give a talk & pay for the pleasure :lol: .
Does seem wrong when the society has lots of money but it's the branches that don't,
Back top topic we have money for the next 6 years or so , then the branch will be in trouble, ours is a very small branch with only 4 on the committee now.

We tend to offer a collection visit with lunch and overnight accommodation if required.
Then we pay petrol costs, not everyone wants this, some ask for a sum to be given to charity or waive the fee depending on the visit or there circumstances.
Tina

varied collection of succulents and cacti but I especially like Euphorbia's, Ariocarpus and variegated agaves.

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Re: Payment for Talks

Post by PeterW »

My real name is Tony Blair and you should see what I charge for a half hour talk !!
Bought my first cactus in 1957 - Now retired and growing Mexican desert cacti in the sun.
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Re: Payment for Talks

Post by DaveW »

We have to remember that neither our societies editor or officials get paid, and nor do our branch officials. They only get expenses and they put in a lot of time and travelling on our behalf too. Would it be fair on them to treat speakers differently?

The American Society works along different lines and their editor and all their officials get quite well paid in British terms for their time, something most of their members may not realise since their accounts are never published in their Journal for members to see.

Strange to say, though they did not give this information in their journal, around 2013 they did advertise for a replacement American Society Journal Editor in another journal called "Desert Song". The Sterling equivalent below was correct at that time, but obviously the Pound has sunk since 2013 and would now be more :-

"The current contract is for $25,000 per year" (=£16,112.40p per year.)"

No doubt the contract is for more now. (You've got no chance Al, forget it! :grin:)

Not only Tony, but also Cameron and Brown are doing quite nicely out of public speaking too Peter. Probably Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn will be jumping on the bandwagon when they go also :shock:

We now have free journals online so it is quite conceivable we may even in the future have free lectures online any club can download and digitally project for their members. I suppose it's possible the Forum's Travelogues could be modified that way?
Nottingham Branch BCSS. Joined the then NCSS in 1961, Membership number 11944. Cactus only collection.
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Re: Payment for Talks

Post by ralphrmartin »

I suppose it all comes down to "you get what you pay for". and "people don't value what they get for nothing" There is a shortage of speakers (as I know from helping to make up a branch program), and they are not getting younger. While there are still many excellent speakers, I believe a wider range of speakers (and thereby topics too) would attract more members to meetings. If branches were to pay speakers a fair rate for their efforts, then the speakers' list might get longer, and the number of talks offered, and more might therefore turn up to meetings - resulting in more money to pay for the speakers. This certainly seems to work when we have run conventions in the Zone - when we were organising it, we tried to get at least one overseas speaker to pull the crowd in, even if costly.

Quite a few speakers also try to make their trip more worthwhile by selling plants - but that is not going to work out if a branch has just half a dozen members. If speakers charged a flat fee, it might be clearer to branches with small numbers of members that they are expecting a bit much for a speaker to come to talk to a very small audience - or at least, they would be paying for the privilege. There is also perhaps a need to rationalise branches with small numbers.

Ultimately, however, who is going to pay for a cactus talk when you can download YouTube videos on any topic for free? And why go to a meeting when you can do that at home? Plants may be cheaper at branch meetings than on eBay , but that's about it.
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Re: Payment for Talks

Post by D^L »

Raises some interesting questions, like, why do people go to talks. We had a survey recently and one the the prime reasons people came to meetings was social. So I'm not convinced that it is solely a financial calculation, either for the speaker (can't make much money at this) nor for the attendee. When I used to do talks I think that making £20 on plant sales was excellent - but hardly enough to cover wear and tear on the car. Mainly I did it for the fun of it.

However, one potential corollary of this was that we had some young (<30 years old) enthusiastic attendees, new to the hobby who did not come again. They are active online, generating new content and buying plants. However, sitting in a darkened hall with their Grandparents was not a good social event for them.
Cheers
David Lambie
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Re: Payment for Talks

Post by Apicra »

First a correction: From memory, speakers at the BCSS weekend residential Judge's Course are offered travel expenses and charged half-price for the two days.

I don't see that selling plants is much of a benefit to speakers - the profit does not usually give much of a reward for the effort needed to grow, pot & label the small quantities involved. But it is an opportunity to spread more unusual surplus plants around and get them into wider circulation.

I do present talks because I enjoy it. It is a rewarding creative & educational process to pull together pictures, facts & stories into an evening's "info-tainment". I enjoy traveling around the country meeting like-minded people and their plants. Now that I'm retired, I get to see more of the countryside, but even when I was working, I found it rewarding.

Best wishes,
Derek Tribble
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