All the we-pay-noone to participate is very weird in 2022 when information technology industries are potentially among the wealthiest. And particularly when the events are non-free-admission.
This is not an industry conference. This is a hacker conference, by the community, for the community. Many people involved are students, who really benefit from the admission prices being as low as they are, and the cool projects you see around the assembly area are so cool because they are from tinkerers, people with time (which is often mutually exclusive with money), people who do cool stuff.
Paying the speakers would increase ticket prices (though not by much), create a "why do they get paid when everybody volunteers" effect that would discourage volunteers, and ultimately likely lower the quality of the conference.
They make pretty clear that if travel costs are really an issue, they'll find a solution.
Disclaimer: runs free events, where organizers are volunteers, in which we're still trying to find sponsorship money for small speaker honorariums.
While I'm grateful to ccc organizers and understand that things are sometimes clearer and easier without the distorting effects of money...
I think defaulting to offering an honorarium to speakers is really healthy. The cultural baseline can easily be set to that any "financially comfortable" speakers donate it straight back without collecting, while only those who need it, keep it.
Why? Because speakers with many areas of expertise cannot afford to spend time speaking for free. Some really rad people can, but just saying that many cannot. And while it's maybe not a big deal if there's narrow representation of ppl volunteering at the ticket booth, there is a larger loss of possibility when cash-poor types of speakers can't afford to show up.
Speakers are the bringers of ideas, and who speaks affects the intellectual space that an event creates. And it might be said that creating that intellectual space is the main point of an event. The other motivation is maybe creating a new relational space, new relationships between people that tend to be fostered and grown around the feeding trough of presentation content.
So the "intellectual" is about "what gets broadcast" and "relational" is more about "who gets enticed to attend", and "which ideas fuck and make new ideas in the conversations between those attendees". All of the above flows from the speakers, and so I'd argue that it's more important to use the powerful magic of money to help certain speakers show up.
I think the sweet spot for starting to experiment with honoraria is: low enough to be a bit insulting to those who would be driven by the money, but high enough to meaningfully cover some costs for someone just trying to get by :)
I understand your point but the Congress is not really a typical conference where ideas flow from speakers to attendees.
Instead everyone is expected to contribute ideas (and even physically as a volunteers)
The talks are actually only a part of the whole things and the main track talks (for which this CFP is for I assume) are only a part of the talks (the rest are organized by assemblies)
It's very different to usual IT conf, even compared to FOSDEM.
(Not part of the orga, this is only my understanding as an attendee)
Volunteering is a very tricky and shady business. If it was not - we’d all be volunteering and getting paid without tax. There’s a reason for some limits in volunteering laws whenever they exist in a country.
I bet the same people running this whole thing are also very well paid techies. Not sure about the volunteers though.
And third, not last, the fact something is run by volunteers does not change it’s nature - it is still a business thing. Some expenses are paid for and eventually all the subcontractors are paid while the volunteers are not. Not fair at all.
Actually, there aren't really subcontractors. There _is_ a registered company called CCC Veranstaltungs Gmbh (CCC Events Inc.) which more-or-less owns a lot of the equipment (sound stages, lighting, ...) and nominally rents the venues and such, so that if the conference goes bust, there's a legal entity that can go bankrupt instead of individuals, but that's about it.
Food stalls are not hired by the CCCV GmbH, they pay to be there (and in turn get to dictate their prices), video streaming and such is handled by FEM e.V. (a non-profit that specializes in this kinda stuff) and is not paid (except for expenses, I think, but I don't have insights into that part of the finances) and truck drivers and such are actually volunteers.
"The people running this thing" are also volunteers. They do get a bit of money as an exchange for having to take unpaid vacations way in advance of the event for organizing stuff, but it's a far cry from "well paid". It's more of a "here's enough to not go broke on rent and food".
The whole thing is purposefully built like that.
There is 0 interest in having people on stage that do it for the money. Instead it is about people that deeply care about a topic and want to share knowledge, ideas etc with others.
It is not a regular IT conference. It is not a business thing.
I can see how from the outside you’d think that way. Hacker events are very different to big corporate conferences, and don’t intuitively make sense in a world where almost everything that happens is being done so someone can make a buck.
Everyone involved is a volunteer, or at the very most making significantly less money than they could running events of a similar scale in the real world, and they’re all doing it because there’s not really anything quite like these events outside of them. There’s a distinctly anarchic feeling to them, with a great many things that just organically happen because someone thought it would be fun, and then it got totally out of hand because other people latched on to it as well. The Chaos Post is a prime example of this, a postal service which is effectively a bunch of nerds cosplaying a worldwide postal service - I’ve known of people who addressed postcards to themselves, but at a future event on another continent, and they got delivered intact.
I know very well what a hacker event is and how it unfolds. Been on stage on few, helped as volunteer on some. IMHO - Generally this all manifest in a very similar manner to some communist movement. I’m not saying that it is bad to contribute to some idea, not even saying communism is bad. I’m just saying that there’s certain amount of hypocrisy in this scenario, you can downvote me as much as u want, doesn’t change the fact.
It is one thing to throw a party for 20friends and another to have FOSDEM sized gig. Such events are not presented in open ground in some forest by people shouting loud (been to such also, although for music). So they have cost - for venue, internet, electricity, screens, typically some food, drinks etc. As a presenter I have a cost for flight, accommodation, food, etc.
Someone pays the bill. Not for profit still has bills to pay. If you don’t pay deeds with cash, there’s some other value exchanged.
So why not support these people who contribute? What’s wrong with that, sorry I’m not getting it. Besides students very often participate by moving boxes between rooms, because for jobs that require responsible actions one needs an expert. Being a student I’d rather want to participate in something that actually teaches me something, but at the end the best I can hope for is to get to know some famous folks. But I can also do it as a visitor, right?
