We’re so excited for you decided to join us on our journey to publish our upcoming book, Present Yourself. One of the great things about launching via Kickstarter is that our community (that’s you!) is involved from the beginning. We’ll be sharing every step with you all as we fund, build, and publish the book — starting with a little background.

Our very own origin story

Present Yourself is a public speaking book on a mission to encourage more individuals to share their ideas, stories, and expertise. We believe everyone’s voice needs to be heard — especially those we don’t hear from enough.

For those of you familiar with our work at Women Talk Design, you might recognize the name of “Present Yourself” -It’s what we call our 8-week online public speaking course. If you are just hearing all of this for the first time, let’s go back to the beginning.

We’ve been running Present Yourself programs in some form or another for 5 years. In the fall of 2017, we ran the very first Present Yourself workshop. The idea for the workshop came from the research that interns Jennifer Kim and Melissa Kim were conducting around why there aren’t more women speaking at conferences.

One of 7 reasons they identified was lack of speaking experience. At this same time, Women Talk Design founder Christina Wodtke was running a GoFundMe campaign for Women Talk Design to pay for Jennifer and Melissa’s internship. There was a lot of momentum and folks wanted to help, so Christina made one of the funding levels a public speaking workshop. The goal: help women and nonbinary folks feel more confident public speaking so that they raise their hand for opportunities and we can change the ratio of whose voices we hear on stage.

We spent a full weekend teaching speakers how to go from an idea to a talk. Public speaking coaches warned us it was too much to fit into one weekend but we believed that getting folks to create a short talk in just two days, however quick and messy the process was, could be transformative.

The energy of the group was contagious and we received such positive feedback. Here’s what one alumna shared in her feedback survey:

“This workshop has gotten me exponentially closer to a goal I have had for nearly a decade. I can’t believe I am walking away with a solid concept, outline, and a new community of support. Thank you!”

Since then, we’ve hosted the Present Yourself workshop in cities throughout the US, facilitated it internally for corporations, and adapted it so we could teach it online. We’ve learned so much over the years working with hundreds of new and experienced speakers and dozens of instructors. And now we’re putting it all into a book because we believe the content is too important not to share more widely.

Thanks again for being here. Each week, in addition to shedding insight into our book journey, we’ll share a little bit about what Present Yourself is all about.

A piece of Present Yourself: What’s your why?

We just shared our reasons for creating Present Yourself and touched on why we’re turning it into a book. A big part of the Present Yourself program (in all of its iterations) is honing in on the why behind how you share your voice and what you choose to talk about. Take some time to write down all of the reasons you want to share your voice. Then, circle the one that matters to you most *right now*. Use this as a jumping off point to determine what you want to share, who you want to share it with, and where you’ll share it.

Milestone Marker

This week, we’ve been working with a designer from our community — Laneen — to create a visual identity for the book’s Kickstarter launching next month. While we’re staying close to the Women Talk Design brand (for now) we’re excited to give the book its own special touch. Keep an eye on our social media and this newsletter to spot the extras!

Sign up to get future updates delivered to your inbox. And please help us spread the word!

Book Update: How Present Yourself Started was originally published in Women Talk Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We held our first #WTDSpeakerStories with Alana Washington and she shared some great stories and advice from her journey as a speaker. Here’s a recap on what Alana said about getting started as a speaker, how her experience curating talks has informed her speaking, and what keeps her motivated.

As part of our Women Talk Design Speaker Stories series, we’re interviewing a Women Talk Design speaker every week about their journeys and experiences. We talk to speakers who are just getting started, speakers who have had their fair share of speaking mishaps, speakers writing books, and speakers curating events. At the end, we offer an opportunity for folks from the WTD community to ask their own questions and connect with each other. Visit our events page for more information about the series and RSVP for our next event.

Alana Washington is a design leader, strategist, and researcher with over a decade of experience in the field. She has delivered upwards of 25 talks on topics including data, business design, diversity & inclusion, and storytelling, including most recently the opening keynote for SF Design Week. In addition to her role leading design operations at Uber Freight, she’s currently a conference curator for the Design Operations Summit that’s coming up later this year.

Here is what Alana had to say:

“…the magic really happens when I start actually involving people in my process.”

Just as becoming a better speaker comes from practice, Alana talked about how crafting a better talk comes from iteration and collaboration. She highlighted the way her friends and family help her prepare for a talk and how she views each future event as an exciting opportunity to improve.

“My walls probably, much to my husband’s chagrin, start to look like a beautiful mind with post-it notes everywhere. And that’s one thing that I have done since the very beginning of designing.”

Alana highlights the importance of getting away from your computer when working through an idea as well as putting some boundaries around your process.

“I might do a little bit of research but then I set a deadline for myself and say, ‘This is the cutoff point at the end of the day.’ I could follow threads forever but that will drive me mad. And so I set a cutoff point, I close my computer and I really go analog with it and I give myself an opportunity to just go wild and crazy and just jot down post-it notes and proliferate. And then at a certain point, I do set actual timers for myself and then start to add some order to it.”

Alana also suggests getting other people involved in the process of forming your talk, referring to putting together a talk as “a collaborative activity.”

“And honestly, the magic really happens when I start actually involving people in my process. And that first or second time is so embarrassing to run through but then that’s where the magic happens. If I’m being honest with you, no talk is 100% mine. It benefits from the tapestry of people giving feedback and editing and sharing.”

“When you see Brene Brown on Netflix and this beautiful scripted show, know that she has spent hours rehearsing that, and she has spent hours iterating on it and she has a board of advisors. She talks openly about how much she runs things by her husband and friends and like, crafts that talk over time.”

For Alana, each talk builds iteratively. She talked about accepting speaking opportunities and new chances to continue the growth of your talk and the importance of recognizing perfection as a false horizon.

“And the only way to get better at it is to just practice. And you can work through with your friends head-on like, worst case scenarios and realize that the chance of those things actually happening is relatively low.”

“Now instead of feeling like, ‘Oh, you know, that was not so great and I wish that I could do something differently in the future.’ I’m actually excited about the iteration process and excited about the ability to rev on that talk and realize that it was a moment in time but it can continue to grow into something different.”

Alana shared a ton of great advice, not just about crafting a talk, but also about finding the courage to start speaking, asking for compensation, and highlighting more diverse voices.

On advice for getting started as a speaker:

Alana’s top advice for getting started is to get started. She talked about how everyone comes with a unique story to tell and the best way to get better at telling it is practice.

“It’s a muscle, it’s a learned skill, it is a thing that you practice and get better at. And so, lean into whatever the first opportunity is to just get started….nobody has your unique worldview, nobody has exactly your way of thinking about the world and thus, nobody has heard the talk that you have yet to give. And so, just get started. Just, you know, show up to lightning talk events, show up to opportunities, reach out to folks who are interested in helping craft stories and ideas with you.”

On gaining momentum and using success:

“Between getting to curate for UX week…all the way through Women Talk Design events, I feel like there’s this tipping point that happened where then people started to reach out to me to ask for me to come and speak. And now it’s kind of exciting because people are able to reach out and I’m able to assess like does that make sense does it not.”

As a speaker and curator focused on how to improve the world around her, Alana also mentioned how achieving more success herself has allowed her to move forward in that goal.

“Even more exciting is being able to raise other people’s hands and attach them to opportunities if they don’t make sense for me.”

On asking for compensation as a speaker:

Alana talked about the balance of finding your footing as a speaker while also understanding when you have the experience and you need to start advocating for yourself.

“You may do a couple of events and think of them as training for yourself where you might not actually collect a fee. And then there’s this tipping point that happens where you have done your first stage talk or your first conference talk. And I think that what’s awesome about belonging to [the Women Talk Design] community is you are connected with a group of speakers where you can start to talk about ‘How much should I be asking?’ And I will say on the curation side there is a delicate balance between needing to pay for facilities and lighting and all of these different things and that math of getting people to pay for speakers and then paying folks who come and speak. But I do think that once you do those first couple of talks, start asking for payment or start asking what they offer.”

“I’ve witnessed how sometimes people get invited to speak and never even ask if compensation is provided. The curator is fully prepared to pay and the speaker just doesn’t know that that’s even offered.”

Advice for curators on highlighting a diverse group of voices

“I have noticed, in the spheres that I’ve been in, I’ve been a bit of a newcomer. And I do get the sense that, before my joining, there was very much this, you know, comfy cozy network of designers and they would just tap the shoulders of their friends who they know do good content. And that’s why you would see kind of the same people showing up at conferences year over year. And so it’s very much been my M.O. to reach out to folks who I know are thinking on something tough or interesting or gritty and might just need to bounce an idea off of somebody to form it into a talk or form it into a workshop. So I take my job as a curator incredibly seriously.”

“One thing that I really appreciate about the Rosenfeld summit is…you’re given coaching support and subject matter experts support as you are advancing towards the date of your talk. And I think that that’s how all curation boards should work and it was certainly how I worked on UX Week.”

Later, in response to a question, Alana dove deeper into the issue of diversity in curation.

“I feel like until conferences start to also center the challenges of the world and not just pretend as though nothing is wrong, they won’t attract [marginalized communities, including mine]. I don’t have the time. Like when we look at something like the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and we think about safety and security as being that very bottom rung, until I have that for my community, I really can’t navel-gaze with you at a conference. And so my recommendation has been, again, to diversify the curation boards, but also take stances as conferences themselves and give us opportunities to work on the problems of the world and the problems of our work simultaneously.”

We’re grateful to Alana for sharing her experiences and advice. For everything Alana had to say on getting started, fighting imposter syndrome, and some tactics for speakers adjusting their talks to the virtual world, watch the full talk.

Thank you to AdobeXD for sponsoring this event series!

Alana Washington shares her advice for crafting talks was originally published in Women Talk Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Women Talk Design is on a mission to see a more diverse group of speakers on stage. We elevate women and nonbinary speakers and their talks, empower event organizers with resources to design more inclusive events, and host events, facilitate trainings, and cultivate community for new and developing speakers.

On April 16th, we hosted a Couch Cushion Conversation on Getting Paid to Speak. We’re recapping some of the excellent advice speakers Denise Jacobs & Christina Wodtke shared on how to ask for money, how to calculate your speaker fee, and why it’s so important we ask to get paid.

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Tell us about the first time you asked for money.

Denise: “[When I started speaking] I didn’t realize at the time that you could get paid to speak. I spoke for 3 years — and I spoke a lot. But, I wasn’t asking for any money. I did get offered to get paid to speak [one time] and kind of went into a tizzy about how much to ask. It just seemed like a blip when the organizer said, ‘How much do you want to get paid?’. It didn’t register with me that that was something I should be asking for regularly.

At the end of 2012, I was talking to a friend of mine, Whitney Hess, and she said ‘Wait a minute, you’re not getting paid? Girl, you need to be getting paid. You’re in demand, people are asking for you. You need to be getting paid.’”

Christina: “I have to admit that I’ve always struggled with asking [for money]. You know that book, Women Don’t Ask. It’s been an ongoing problem through most of my life — less now. The great thing about getting over 50 is you give less f***s.

Basically, the first time anyone asked me how much I cost — I didn’t learn until later that was not a question you should ever answer — was around salary. Luckily around salary negotiations, I learned when someone says, ‘Well, what was your last salary?’ to say, ‘You know, I’m not sure that’s exactly relevant. That was a different situation. What I’m thinking about here is the entire package. I’d love to know what you’re thinking about as an offer and I can let you know if that’s what I’m looking for.’ And I used to play this game with HR to see who would give a number first.”

“At one point, when I was at Myspace a new head of HR came in and said, ‘Christina, I’m embarrassed to tell you this but I don’t think it’s morally correct to let you keep going. You should not be making $175K, you should be making $250K because everyone else [at your level] is making that.’ I will always be grateful that he told me. But, I was so mad. It gave me quite an attitude about getting paid.”

At what point should you start asking to get paid to speak?

Denise: “Now. When I started speaking, I was operating under the misconception that at some point in time, when I got ‘good enough’, people would start offering to pay me. That’s when my friend Whitney said, ‘No. You get paid when you start asking to get paid.’

The reason you get paid to speak is because you have all of this expertise you are imparting. You’ve got expertise, you’re doing research, you’re doing preparation, and you may be going somewhere. It’s a lot. That’s what they are paying you for. They aren’t paying you for the hour on stage, or the 2-hour workshop or the full day workshop…they are paying you for everything that came before that. And that has value. You wouldn’t start a job with someone saying, ‘Well, you never worked in this job before and you don’t get paid until you’ve worked here a certain amount of time.’ That’s not how it works. And that’s not how it should work with speaking either.”

Christina: “It’s really hard for women to get to the place where they are comfortable asking for money. Sometimes you have to play a game with yourself: ‘Well, how long have I been doing this work? I have a unique point of view. Writing a new talk takes forever…’

Do the math. For example, if you think about what you’re being paid now, plus all of the other bits, your health insurance, etc. — you can start coming up with a day rate. And then you start thinking, ‘Well, I’m going to spend 2 weeks or 4 weeks or more [crafting the talk, plus] the time traveling, etc.’ After a while you do the math, you start to think, ‘I’m worth $15K a day.’”

“You have to have faith in yourself. If you don’t have faith in yourself, maybe do a couple of community things to get your feet under you and get comfortable on the stage. At Women Talk Design, we say ‘community builds resiliency’. Find a community, they’ll help guide you. We take care of each other and that can be the secret to success.”

How do you calculate your speaker fee?

Denise: “[At first,] I came up for a number and when people were asking me to speak I’d say, ‘I’d love to. This is how much it will cost.’ The first couple of times, people were like, ‘We can’t pay that.’ and I said, ‘OK, have a nice conference.’ Then I got invited to keynote a conference. I was having a conversation with the organizers and I was super excited and I had my number in my head. They said, ‘We’ll give you a conference pass and a hotel room and we’ll fly you and we’d like to know what your honorarium fee is.’ And I’m thinking I’m all cool and stuff and I say, ‘Well, you know usually — usually, meaning I’ve never done this before — in situations like this when I come and do a keynote and close out and I’m going to create a new keynote for you… my fee is $3,000.’ And as soon as I could hear the enthusiasm in their voices, I knew it was too low. That they were expecting $10K, $20K…they weren’t expecting the number I gave them.

I was distraught about this. I thought, ‘I can’t believe I just undercut myself’. So, I talked to a friend who does keynote speaking and she was like, ‘You need to be charging $10K.’ She coached me to get comfortable saying ‘I cost $10K.’

Fast forward two months, I’m going to deliver another keynote, the organizer says, ‘OK, how much do you cost?’ And I think, ‘Ok, I’m trained. I’ve been doing mental pushups. I’m ready.’ And I say, ‘$10K.’. And she immediately said OK, and I thought, ‘Wait, that was too easy.’

So, it’s a moving target. You need to come up with your number and get comfortable saying the number. Know for some people it’s going to be too high and for some people it’s going to be too low. You have to figure out your number and you have to stick with it.”

“One of the ways I recommend people choose a number, is to pick a number and probably double it. Start at least at $1,500 or $2,000 and work your way up from there.”

Christina: “I learned when I was consulting that every time someone says yes quickly — like Denise — you need to raise your price the next time someone calls you. And I kept raising it and raising it and raising it until someone said, ‘I don’t know, I need to go back and ask.’ That’s the sweet spot.

Right now, a couple of things have raised my price. A book will increase how much money you can ask for, and it has also improved my salary. The other thing that has increased by price is teaching at Stanford — it’s a big name. So I went from $10K/day to $25K/day if I do a workshop or workshop and a talk. My talks tend to be a little less but not a lot less, especially if there is travel involved. That’s the other thing everyone forgets. Taking two days to get to Tel Aviv is not the same as driving to San Jose. I always differentiate on travel.

Also consider, what number would make you not resent the organizer? Picture the whole thing — I’m going to drive to SFO, I’m going to pay for long-term parking, I’m going to be in that airport again, I’m going to have to fly, I’m going to have to give the talk, I’m going to have to go to dinners — I’m an introvert, even though no one ever believes that. I would not feel good unless they give $10K. And if they give me $5K I’m going to resent them and I just don’t want to do that.”

“I also have 6 things that help me decide whether or not I’m going to give a talk and this might also affect if I’m willing to do it for less.

1. Right Price — are they paying the number I like to be paid?
2. Right People to Reach — sometimes I want to reach a new audience, like a business audience. As soon as you break into a new group, other people will hire you.
3. Right Talk — I’m tired of talking about OKRs, but I love teaching drawing.
4. Right Location — I would love to talk in Bangkok.
5. Right Effort — How hard is it going to be? I’ll say yes to free Q&As but not to something I’ll have to prepare.
6. Right Values — Does the conferences organizer values mirror mine? For some organizations, you cannot pay me enough. There’s no number to [work for someone] I hate.”

Ask around.

Denise: “Talk to other colleagues who are in a similar professional level and have been speaking for the same amount of time. And, this is what I always like to tell women, other people of color, and anyone from a marginalized group: ‘Ask yourself WWAWGD: What would a white guy do?’ If you were a white guy, how much value would you give yourself?”

“You probably know folks. Ask them. ‘Do you do any speaking? Do you get paid for it? Would you be willing to share with me what your process is and what your speaker fee is? I’m working on this and I’m asking different people to get an idea so I can see where to place myself because I know that my expertise has values and I know I should be compensated for it.’”

Christina: “Asking is so critical. Ask for advice. People are surprisingly kind.”

Consider where you are speaking.

Christina: “Also consider, It’s not just you, it’s where you’re speaking. For example, UX conferences pay way less. If you think about it, it makes sense because a lot of designers in companies don’t control their budget, or have a very small budget. So, you’ll see UX conferences for keynoting, it’s often like $5K which is small. Product conferences pay a bit better. HR conferences pay pretty well. A lot of it is the audience as well. Corporate is the sweet spot. Companies have a lot of money.

I’ll be speaking one week for $5K for a friend of mine who is doing a UX conference and the next week I’ll fly to Texas for $25K for a one day (for a company). So it’s not just you, it’s also them. Add a zero to the end if it’s a company.”

Denise: “There’s a difference [between events]. Here’s an example: If you’re in tech at a conference like WordCamp, it is usually done by a local WordPress group. They are doing the conference for the community in that area. The ticket price is not particularly high because they are trying to make it accessible to more people. At a conference like that, depending on how much sponsor money they get, they most likely will not be paying any of the speakers. It’s a good opportunity for exposure or an opportunity for you to practice your craft.

My experience is that most conferences make their money because of the sponsorships they get from companies, unless they are very high-end conferences that they are charging a lot of money for the ticket. So you can look at the sponsors.

There are also professional associations. Typically have budget. Depending on the association they will typically budget for speakers.

Then, there are corporate conferences. They pay a lot of money for a lot of the speakers they have come in.

So, in terms of where the money is, it’s a spectrum.”

“When you’re having a conversation about speaking, there is nothing wrong with asking, ‘Do you have budget for speakers?’ There is nothing wrong with sharing your speaking fee. If they say no, you can go from there, but there is nothing wrong with asking.”

How do you calculate a speaker fee for virtual events?

Denise: “Just because you’re going virtual, doesn’t mean there’s no value. You still have to prepare. You have to prepare more in some ways because you have to worry about your lighting and your sound and your own tech. You have to figure out if you’re going to screenshare. You have to dress for it. You have to manage all of these things you might not have to manage in person. And you are still imparting your expertise. I cannot stress this enough. You’re storytelling, you’re teaching, you’re coaching. Don’t let people’s expectation of ‘it’s virtual so there’s less value’ stay with you. Go in thinking, ‘there’s actually equal if not more value, and here’s why.’ Stand in your value. Know that what you have to share is important — the information, the skills, the expertise, and your experience and your perspective are all incredibly valuable.”

Christina: “I have a Bay Area price and I charge the same for virtual. I tack on more money for transit.”

How do you start the conversation about getting paid with an event organizer?

Denise: “Like I said, at first I wasn’t having that conversation at all. So, part of my problem was that when I started speaking, I was under the impression that once I was ‘good enough’ people would start to offer me money. Then, I had my conversation with Whitney Hess and she was like, “‘You get paid when you ask for money. You don’t get paid when you don’t ask for money.’ So, take that: You get paid when you ask for money.

I recommend a book called, Exactly What to Say, by Phil Jones. He has ‘magic words’ to phrase things so you end up getting the responses and answers that you want.”

“When people say, ‘I would like for you to come speak at our conference.’ here is the structure of my conversation that usually follows: ‘So great, I want to hear about it…Tell me about the size of the audience.’ (That’s important) ‘Tell me about what you are trying to do. Does the conference have a theme? What do you want me to do?’

If people are not clear about whether they want me to keynote or not, I typically will say, ‘So, did you want me to be the opening keynote or closing keynote?’ This presumes I’m coming in knowing what my value is. I know that I am a better speaker as an opening or closing keynote.

Then, I’ll say, ‘When I’m the opening keynote, here’s what I do…’ If I have had any time to prep, I will sometimes go to the site to see how much the ticket prices are. So then you can start to see how much money they are going to be potentially making from this event. Then, I’ll ask, ‘What’s your budget for speakers?’ or ‘What is your budget for the keynote speakers?’ Once they share that, I’ll say ‘My fee is this amount.’ And if it’s more than the amount they said, you can first ask, ‘Why don’t you go and check to see what you can do and come back to me.’

Sometimes when it is a community event, I say, ‘Here’s my community rate.’ Or, ‘Here’s my list of other things I would like in terms of compensation since you can’t accommodate the fee.’ Like, if it’s in a cool place, ask for a companion ticket to take a friend or parent or partner. One conference in Greece paid for an extra week of hotel for me to vacation afterward. You can ask for media interviews. You can ask for VIP dinners with their sponsors. You can ask for access to their mailing list. You can ask for things that will help you further along your business. Even if you’re doing this as a side hustle, it is a business. You do need to eat and you do need to keep the lights on. That’s how I like to structure the conversation.”

“The other thing you can do is ask, how much budget do you have for the whole conference?”

“Here’s another tip: Research who is speaking at the conference now and who has spoken at the conference in the past. If you see people you know in your industry — and you know those people wouldn’t get on stage without getting paid — then you know this conference most likely has budget for speakers.”

Christina: “When someone reaches out and asks me if I want to speak, I suck at asking for what I want so I often send a [prepared email] (inspired by Ethan Marcotte). I ask, ‘How do you plan to compensate your speakers?’ Even if I get paid, I don’t want to be part of something that’s screwing over other people. I put in my occasional exceptions. I want to know about their audience. I give them the talks that are trivial for me to do. I do charge extra if I have to give a new talk.

If we are going to do it, the second piece of information I share is inspired by Karen McGrane. It hits questions to help you know what you’re walking into.

I keep my speaking stuff in one Google Drive. I have a spreadsheet to track who is supposed to be paying me. Even good people will forget to pay you. I have my letter to the organizer. I have my bios and my decks and my talk descriptions. I like to have a bunch of different bios — a short one, one for storytelling talks, a long one, a teaching one — because I’m often reaching out to different audiences. I also have my speaker sheet. When someone reaches out to me, my assistant sends this and it has my rates. And people see my rates and they disappear. And I want people to disappear because I teach full time and I only want to do it if it’s financially viable.”

If you’re the one asking an event organizer to speak, how do you then ask to be paid?

Christina: “When I reach out, I usually say, ‘I don’t know if you know but I’m giving a lot of talks on this topic and I think I’d be a great fit. If you think so too and you’re comfortable with my rate, then it would be great to do this.’ If I’m asking someone who is making money off of a conference — and I know some people who will pay for their entire year of work off organizing one conference — your rate is your rate.”

Denise: “You may be responding to calls for papers, but if you see an event and do research, and you know other people who have spoken there. I recommend that you reach out to those people who spoke at the event and find out if they were able to get paid or not. And then ask them to put you in touch with the organizer. Once you do that, you come in at a higher level of value than if you are just part of the cattle call of papers.”

If you ask for money, will you risk losing the opportunity?

Christina: “Why are you worried you might lose it? You have to ask yourself why you are nervous about losing the opportunity? Are you nervous someone might not ask you again? If one person asked you, I bet there are more people coming your way. You’re just on your upswing. You really have to ask yourself why you are worried about it. The worst thing that can happen is the resentment. It’s just not worth it. Getting really comfortable with saying no is the answer. If someone offers you something, and if you know what it’s value is to you, you can ask for what you want. When they say they are not going to do it you can say, ‘That’s really fine, and let me know if anything changes.’”

Is it worth working with an agent?

Denise: “It is, but typically agents will only work with speakers who already have work. If you are breaking into speaking, in my experience, agents may not want to work with you. But if you have a New York Times bestseller book or a high position at a well-known company [they might]. But, if you’re starting out, learn the ropes of the business before you try to hire someone to do something for you when you aren’t quite sure what you’d have them do.”

Christina: “I had one Speaker Bureau that worked with me. The good news is you can name a ridiculously high price and they’ll just mark me up on top of that. But I got sent to a group that wasn’t ready for me. I gave the same talk I give everywhere but in a very masculine industry, in a very male room, and got bad reviews. I don’t like that between. I’d rather have an assistant than an agent because I can make sure I’ll get paid what I want and I can make sure it will be an audience I’ll be successful for. Same with book agents though. I self publish because I like money.”

How can I find speaking opportunities?

Denise: “I am always on the lookout for conferences. If I see that someone I know is speaking at a conference (maybe on Twitter), I’ll take a screenshot or the URL and add them to a spreadsheet. I have a spreadsheet of conferences I’d like to speak at or investigate. In the spreadsheet I have: the name of the conference, the URL of the conference, the organizer’s name and contact information, the dates of the conference, and the location of the conference.

When I first started speaking, I was like a hawk on Twitter. I would take everything that I saw the people I knew in the industry who were doing similar work [speaking at], and I’d put their conferences on there.

If they had a call for papers (CFP), I’d put the dates in the spreadsheet and sort it by that. And I’d add reminders in my calendars to work on the submission. I made it so that it just became a regular thing. I was always looking for stuff and I had a very organized way to get it. I would put it in the same place every time and I would regularly go through and start applying for things like a job.

Once I started speaking at more conferences and I started knowing more speakers who spoke at conferences, which started working even better.

An application to a CFP sometimes gets tens and hundreds of people submitting. If you know a speaker who has spoken at an event you want to speak at and you have a decent relationship with them, reach out to that person and ask them to introduce you to the organizer. It’s the same thing as a job. If you know someone who has a connection, you’re better off than just sending something through the website.”

Does having a book help you get more speaking gigs?

Christina: “When I wrote my first book, Information Architecture for the Web, it did get me some work and it did mean I had a lot of material to make slides, but it was kind of pointless. As I dug in, I felt like every time I talked to a conference organizer they said ‘Oh, we’ll help you sell books.’ And when I spoke to publishers they said, ‘Oh, we’ll help you get speaking gigs.’ And I thought, ‘Where is the money in this equation?’ So I decided to get paid for both. I went over to self-publishing and then I started charging for talks. And to be honest, I feel like everyone would like to get something for free and I’m done.”

Denise: “My first book was called The CSS Detective Guide and part of the reason I wrote that book was so I could start speaking. I had a friend who said, ‘Everyone I know who is a speaker has a book.’ What ended up happening through the process of writing the book, by the time I was done with it — even though I hadn’t changed as a speaker myself because I already had the instruction background from teaching — I felt more confident going to conferences saying, ‘Hey, I can talk about this because I’m an expert because I have a book about it.’ So, I don’t think necessarily a book makes you more valuable to people — I think it does to some degree — but I think it can help you sit in your expertise…because your attitude is different about yourself, people will treat you differently.”

If you have a video of your talk online, is that like giving away your work?

Denise: “A lot of times conferences will record your talk and put it on the web. And that is actually very helpful for you. Without event organizers being able to see what you do, they are not going to know.

Speaking is one of those things — it’s this ethereal experience. It’s a thing that happens in this moment in time and then it’s gone. Even if you get a video of it, no one can feel what the room felt like. The video is the next best thing you have for that. As a speaker, if you’re going to be serious about this, at some point in time you might want a speaker reel. The video is gold and the free video you get from other conferences, if it’s well-produced and good quality, it’s invaluable. So that’s another thing to write into your speaker agreement — that you are going to be getting the video from them. Or, even that you can get the raw video so you can use it for your own purposes.

So, it’s not really giving anything away your stuff for free. Most likely, that talk might have been tailored for that audience and you may never give it again in that particular format. Even if you do the exact same content, you might be riffing with the audience or doing stuff that’s never going to happen again. What people want [during a live talk] is the experience of you. The content is important but it’s the content paired with the experience with you that matters.”

Why is it so important to get paid to speak?

Christina: “I have never gone to CHI or Grace Hopper because they charge their speakers. And I just cannot believe that. It’s actually quite upsetting. My feeling is that if you are not paying me for my knowledge and expertise, I literally cannot afford to do it. I’m guessing you [women on the call] are probably home, you’re doing the childcare, you have tons of work, and on top of it someone’s asking you to show up, take the time out, and share your expertise? I get that academic conferences are aimed at professors who get their schools to pay for it. But, it’s still wrong.

I think the part of it that upsets me the very most is that women are denied opportunities to have this networking, have this connection, because all of literature says, women are responsible for the bulk of the childcare, the bulk of the eldercare…I feel like for women, we should be bending over backward to make sure the stage is more fair. We should be paying them. We should be thinking about childcare, which conferences organizers always freak out about. There’s such a blinder on guys about what it takes for us to bring our knowledge there. So, the guys get famous and we don’t and that’s just really upsetting.”

Denise: “That’s part of the reason why you started Women Talk Design. And that’s one of the reasons why I started Rawk the Web. I personally — and all of us — want to see the face of expertise change to reflect who actually has the expertise. It’s not just white men who have expertise. All of us have expertise. We all have different stories to tell and different experiences to share. It’s all relevant.

I want to share a story about why it’s so important for there to be more diverse representation on stage. I went to my very first design conference called Web Visions in Portland in 2005. I went because I used to teach web design and web development, and the books I used were by this woman named Molly Holzschlag. I was a total fangirl and she was speaking at this conference. When I saw her on stage, I had this epiphany. She was on stage and she was making the same kind of jokes that I make and she was teaching the same kind of content that I teach…She got up and spoke for an hour to 200, 500, however many people in the room, and everyone was cheering ‘Molly! Molly! Molly’. I thought, ‘That is exactly what I want to do.’

Matt Mullenweg was at that conference. BJ Fogg, who teaches at Stanford, was at that conference. I didn’t look at them and think, ‘I want to do that. That’s possible.’ But when I saw Molly do that, I thought, ‘This is possible for me.’

So, this is my very emotional plea for you: Understand that you are needed on stage — your expertise, your knowledge, your stories — everything about you. I don’t care if you think you’re an expert. I don’t care if you think you’ve done enough. With anything that you’ve done up until now, you are going to be at least one step ahead of somebody else. And, you’ll be able to help them.”

This conversation was inspired by our first #CouchConvo, where we hosted a discussion on navigating public speaking in the time of COVID-19 and taking your speaking engagements online. One of the big questions that came up during that discussion was, “How do you get paid to speak?” You can check out the write up from that convo here.

You can watch the full recording of the #CouchConvo on Getting Paid to Speak here: Part 1 & Part 2.

A big thank you to Denise Jacobs & Christina Wodtke for sharing their experience and expertise with us!

Get Paid to Speak was originally published in Women Talk Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This article was first published in the Remote Confidence newsletter.

Up until now, I am probably best known for having designed the Fail Whale that appears when Twitter goes down. Coincidentally, it also turns out that I also have a lot to say about failure as a bilingual public speaker.

Our worst fear is often failure. But what if failure was actually a good thing?

“Failure is success in progress,” as Albert Einstein once said. As speakers and as people, we have to be willing to go try things that are hard. Over time, we’ll get comfortable with those things, and we’ll build skills. Speaking publicly is no exception! However, to get good at anything, we must be willing to fail. You can’t do hard things without failing.

In the last 10 years, I have traveled and spoken at international conferences on Design, Creativity & Innovation in front of more than 25,000+ people in live audiences in over 15 countries. But this all started from a spectacular failure back in 2005.

While I was attending university in Sydney, I returned to my hometown Shanghai for the summer holidays. Around the same time, a group of professors from 5 top Australian Universities including the University of Sydney, University of Technology Sydney, University of New South Wales, University of Melbourne, and RMIT University, came to Shanghai to do an education exchange visit during the Shanghai Biennale, the highest-profile contemporary art event in Shanghai and the most established art biennale in China. The Australian Education International advertises in the network that they needed someone to be a Real-Time bilingual translator during the visit. I volunteered. The first day, they had five professors from each school going to a class of more than 500 students, and none of the professors spoke any Chinese. Far worse, none of them had ever been translated before, so they didn’t break their talks into small chunks. They’d say paragraphs at a time (they each had five to eight minutes to speak) and then look at me.

The first time this happened I froze. My mind went completely blank. With more than 500 students’ eyes on me, I was nervous, I barely translated a thing. This went on for a full hour. After the session, I remember I was utterly embarrassed, but the teachers and the coordinator all told me it was okay.

Afterward, I was devastated and upset — — blaming myself for not being capable enough. I felt so bad that I thought I won’t be able to get over it. But my parents did something that helped me. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. This is the first time you are being a real-time translator. You are doing something new.” They said, “And now you are at rock bottom. There is nowhere to go but up. See what you can learn!”

My parents told me it was okay to fail. They gave me permission to fail and I failed spectacularly. But they (and the teachers) made me go back to translate again.

The next day I woke up and did it again with the professors at another university in Shanghai. Every day I got a little better. I was so happy to see the incremental improvements. I was so happy to see how much I had improved by the fifth day. It was an utterly difficult experience, but I definitely came out and felt like a new person.

Recently, Women Talk Design, an organization that elevates brilliant talks by women and non-binary people, invited me to share my unique perspective and lessons learned as a bilingual speaker.

Since I speak both English and Chinese. I started to look for inspiration from the Chinese character for “Failure” which is “败”. And I discovered a new perspective to redefine failure:

The Chinese written character for “Failure” is “败”. It is made up of 2 charcaters：On its left, “贝” meaning “treasure”(originally from the characters “鼎” meaning “expensive chalice”)，On its right, “攵” meaning “hand” holding a “wand or a stick”. So in the ancient days meaning of “败” is more neutral than what it is mean today, it actually means “destroy” — — “毁坏”：There’s no making without breaking. You see, you have to destroy your precious old image of yourself that you hold on so tightly, in order to gain the confidence to create something new.

Embrace failure. It is the death of the old, and the beginning of the new. It can teach you so much. And you’ll look back, years later, and often it will be funny. Like Steve Allen once said: “Tragedy plus time equals comedy”. Years later, you might be able not only to see the valuable lesson you’ve learned but also maybe be able to laugh at yourself. You will also be able to use your failures to inspire and help other people. You’ll be able to share those failures and what you learned from them, as I am sharing now. Your failures might become part of your autobiography.

Know that it’s okay to fail big, and it is also okay to want to achieve big things, and drive. But the one thing I have learned from my life is that great work comes from resilience, and resilience comes rising from failure every failure is a step closer to success.

Don’t be afraid to try, and fail. Embrace your failures. Also remind yourself, if you fail — forgive yourself, be kind to yourself. Then get up, start reinventing yourself, keep rising from your old self, and become a better and new you. And Repeat.

Celebrate your failures. As they are building blocks and focus on perseverance, positive mindset and hard work to achieve what we want in life.

Idea for Action: Think about one of your failures. What can it teach you?
Write down three ideas.

重新定义失败

陆怡颖

迄今为止，我最广为认知的作品之一是设计了Twitter早期的宕机页面 — — 失败鲸（Fail Whale）。作为一个双语演讲者，我对于“失败”，却有一些独到的见解。

在生活和工作中，我们最害怕的往往是失败。但是，塞翁失马，焉知非福。其实失败并不是你想象中那样可怕，说不定它其实是一件好事呢！

爱因斯坦曾经说过：“失败是通向成功的过程。” 我们必须勇于尝试一些困难的事情。随着时间的推移，我们会逐渐适应，从而培养新的技能。演讲也不例外！然而，要想擅长任何事情，我们必须愿意面对和接受失败。所谓，不经历风雨怎么见彩虹，没有人属能随随便便成功。

在过去的10年里，我在全球20多个国家，为25,000多名的现场观众进行了数百场关于设计和创新的演讲，其中包括了 TEDx，Adobe MAX，SXSW 西南偏南，Web Summit和极客公园等大型演讲活动。但这一切要从我在2005年的一次难以忘怀的失败经历说起：

在澳大利亚悉尼上大学期间，放暑假时回到家乡上海。同一时间，来自澳大利亚的五所顶尖大学：悉尼大学、悉尼科技大学、新南威尔士大学、墨尔本大学和皇家墨尔本理工大学的教授们，来沪进行上海双年展期间的教育交流访问。上海双年展是亚洲最受瞩目的当代艺术盛会，也是中国最成熟的艺术双年展。当时，澳大利亚国际教育协会在网络上发布广告，说他们需要有人在访问期间做实时双语翻译。我便自告奋勇主动请缨了。第一天，这五所高校的每位教授会轮流给500多名学生做演讲，所有的教授都不懂中文，而且他们未曾有过和翻译共事的经历，因此没有把自己的演讲分割成小段、便于翻译员现场翻译的意识。他们每人有五到八分钟的演讲时间，其中一位教授一次说很长一段话，然后回头看着我。

面对这种情况，我愣住了，大脑一片空白。现场观众的几百双眼睛看着我，我紧张到几乎什么也没翻译出来。这样糟糕的尴尬场面持续了整整一个小时。记得在课后，教授们和工作人员都表示了他们不介意在翻译过程中出现的尴尬，但我自己却觉得无地自容。

事后，我很伤心难过，责怪自己能力不足。我觉的自己可能无法走出这一莫大失败的阴影。但是，父母的一番话却帮助了我。”不要对自己太苛刻了，这是你第一次做实时翻译。你是在做一件全新的事情。” 他们说，”而且，现在你已经到了谷底。除了向上，没有地方可去了。你现在最需要的是仔细回顾这次失败的过程，并从中这个过程里发现你的不足和需要努力的方向”

我的父母告诉我，虽然我首次面对现场观众的经历一败涂地，他们还是认可我的勇气和努力，并（还有老师）鼓励我作为挑战自我再去翻译一次。

第二天，我和五所高校的教授又去了上海的另一所大学，做了又一次实时翻译。每一天我都会有一点进步。看到渐进式的进步，我很高兴。到了第五天，我发现自己进步了很多，面对几百名现场观众，我能够自如地翻译和交流。虽然第一天彻头彻尾的失败经历，难以忘怀，但通过我之后五天的努力，我是走出了失败的阴影，感觉自己像换了一个人。

当Women Talk Design一个旨在提升女性演讲的组织，近期邀请我分享我作为一名中英双语演讲者的独特视角和经验教训。因此，我开始从中文“Failure”的汉字 “失败”的“败”中寻找灵感。在这个过程中，我发现了一个全新的视角，来重新定义 Failure — — 失败。

中文的“失败”文字为“败”。它由2个字符组成：左侧的“贝”表示“宝物”（甲骨文“败”字，像一只手拿着棍棒击打宝贵的“鼎”；金文把“鼎”旁换成“贝”），右侧的“攵”的意思是“手”握着一根“棍棒”来击打珍贵的“宝物”。因此，在古代，“败”的远古的本意是“毁坏”或者“打破”。正所谓：不破不立 — — 不破除旧的,就不能建立新的。因此，你必须摧毁你珍视的旧形象，才能获得创造新事物的信心。若非如此，你便无法真正地认识和理解失败对学习新技能的重要性。

拥抱失败，它是旧的死亡，也是新的开始。它可以教会你很多东西。而你会在多年后回过头来看，可能还会觉得很好笑。就像史蒂夫-艾伦曾经说过的那样：“悲剧加上时间等于喜剧”。多年以后，你也许不仅能看到自己在失败中学到的宝贵的教训，也许还能笑傲江湖，用自己的失败来激励和帮助别人。就像我现在分享那些失败的经历一样，你可以从自己的失败中吸取的教训。你的失败说不定会成为你自传的一章。

要知道，经历失败无妨，想要做成大事也无妨，贵在有动力，贵在坚持。但我从生活中悟出的一个道理是，任何伟大的事业的成功来自于坚持，而坚持来自于从失败中崛起，每一次新的失败都是离成功更近的一步。

不要害怕尝试，也不要害怕失败。应该重新认识和拥抱失败。同时提醒自己，即使你失败了 — — 请原谅自己，善待自己。然后站起来，开始重塑自己，不断地打破那个旧的自己，你便成为了一个更好的新的自己。

庆祝你失败的经历。因为它们是成功的奠基石，以积极的心态和努力的态度去实现我们的人生目标。

读后感：回想一下属于你的一个失败案例。它能教给你什么？ 写下三个想法。

Redefine Failure as a Bilingual Speaker was originally published in Women Talk Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Women Talk Design is on a mission to see a more diverse group of speakers on stage. We elevate women and nonbinary speakers and their talks, empower event organizers with resources to design more inclusive events, and host events, facilitate trainings, and cultivate community for new and developing speakers.

We hosted our very first #CouchConvo on March 23rd focused on navigating public speaking in the time of COVID-19 and taking your speaking engagements online. We’re recapping some of the excellent advice speakers Margot Bloomstein & Denise Jacobs shared on getting started as a new speaker, honing your craft, making the transition to online, and navigating conversations around compensation.

“You may be panicked personally and thinking all of this opportunity is gone. It is actually that the opportunity is just transformed” — Denise Jacobs

Advice for New Speakers

Offer to be a partner for event organizers.

Denise: “Even though I’m an experienced speaker, I very clearly remember the time that I was not an experienced speaker. One of the things that I did that is still relevant even now is to reach out to conference organizers and say ‘I know you had this scheduled. Do you have any plans to take this virtually? I’d love to be part of this event and if there’s anything I can do to help, please let me know!”

“Make yourself of service. You may have a skill or expertise they need help with. Be a trusted partner to them.”

“Right now this pandemic is teaching us the power of community, the power of being of service, the power of being useful. What can we do for the collective good? It’s helping us step into a place of being more empathetic.”

Use this time for reflection and inspiration. Develop your talk topic.

Margot: “If you’re a new speaker now’s a great time to figure out what your first talk topic will be.”

“Now is also a good time to say, the world is coming out at you fast right now and you need to stay in and nurture yourself, nurture your family, and literally and figuratively shelter in place. That’s an OK place to start or continue your speaking career. Now is a good time to pull out of that race and say, ‘let me find some really good sources of inspiration’.”

“If you get inspired going hiking, don’t feel like you’re going hiking and are not doing what you should be doing. If that’s what you need to do? That’s exactly what you should do because that’s when inspiration will strike.”

Denise: “If you’re a new speaker and you’ve been wanting to talk about something, maybe this is a good time for you to think, ‘Is this what I really want to talk about or is there something else? Is there something else that’s bubbling up now that’s more my truth and more in my wheelhouse of passion and expertise than this thing that I thought I should talk about.”

Reach out to Meetups. Ask people you know to recommend you to events.

Margot: “Start reaching out to local community organizers. Maybe it’s the people that run the local UX meetup, or the small business association is always looking to bring in speakers. Now, they don’t have the budget to bring in speakers. There is no ‘in’ to bring people into anymore. But maybe they are trying to figure out what it means to have an event over Zoom? If you can be that speaker that’s easy to work with and has a somewhat polished first talk to deliver, this is where you can start out.”

“I started speaking professionally about 10 years ago and leading up to my first big talk at SXSW I spoke at local meetups and at the time I said, ‘If you can get me there and put me up at whatever cheap hotel, I’m there.’ And now it’s even easier because we don’t need to say ‘bring me there’. Now it’s just a matter of saying, ‘I can be on Zoom at this time’.”

Denise: “My favorite technique [for finding speaking opportunities] is to get other people who are speakers to introduce you to event organizers at events they’ve spoken at. Find someone you know to connect you with someone they know who runs events.”

Use this time as an opportunity to practice and get better.

Margot: “If you’re just figuring out a talk right now, you can take advantage of doing it over Zoom. As you’re working out the details and getting down your patter, and if you’re developing a script for it, there’s no reason why you can’t have that script on your screen, just under the camera, maybe in a word doc or some free or cheap teleprompter app.”

Denise: “Always be practicing. Think about the presentation in modules. This is a tip that one of my mentors gave me. Make your content modular. Think, ‘how can I do that in this 3 minute bit?’ Don’t try to practice the whole presentation at once. Not at first at least.”

Reframing How We Think About This Time

This is an opportunity to engage with an audience in new ways.

Margot: “When they announced that the conference was going to go virtual, the event organizer reached out and asked, ‘are you still in if we do this?’ and I said ‘oh yeah sign me up’ because to me it seems like another way to engage the audience and to still keep momentum and enthusiasm around the topic.”

Denise: “We have this opportunity to connect in a way we haven’t before. Connect with more people, that’s been the promise of the web from the beginning. We’re forced to do this but it’s great because it’s really making us focus on the connections and the commonalities and the ways in which we can show up and help each other and be of service. This is a great opportunity for us to tap into all of those things and for us to benefit from the relief we get from not having to go someplace.”

This is also a great time for us to be able to recover, take care of ourselves, rest and rejuvenate but still be able to have the connection.”

Remote opportunities create more access.

Margot: “To me, this feels like such a wonderful time to make our events more accessible. Obviously we’re in a horrible situation, but I think and I hope that our events will learn and take great things from this horrible situation. Conferences come with a lot of privilege for both speakers and attendees. You probably need to take time off, you need to travel there, you need to have a budget to travel there. If you have kids you need to figure out the childcare situation. And then you need to set away emotionally from home and your other work. Now, we’re able to change that a little bit.”

“For example, for this event, from the get-go we were saying, ‘let’s do it twice’ because people are going to be busy with maybe homeschooling or they are just trying to focus on work or they are just not in the mindset for this during the day and they want to go out for a hike. And that’s OK. Let’s do it again in the evening. Let’s make this available to parents after they tuck their kids in at night.”

“If your session is recorded, it might go on Youtube where we can easily add captioning. For people that take in information audibly and want to be able to pause it, think about it, take some notes — they can do that. If there are people who are both visual and verbal learners, it’s a lot easier to nurture all of those different learning styles to make our events technically and socially more accessible.”

“I hope the things we learn from online events, we can bring back to our physical events once we’re able to do them again.”

This is a time to hone your craft.

Denise: “From a craft standpoint, as speakers, we need to be constantly building our craft. A lot of times we’re at events without AV, where they aren’t videotaping the event. Unless you video yourself, you are not going to be able to see where it is you can perfect and hone your delivery. We now have this great opportunity that we can potentially capture our talk ourselves or, if it’s in Zoom, record and look back and learn from that to hone our message and hone our delivery. Taking that and having that data and input will help us do what we do even better and serve our audience even better.”

Margot: “Online events and webinars have given me a huge opportunity to work out the details in new talks. Sometimes when I’m working out the details of the talk and I don’t have my padder totally down and I don’t have the facts and figures totally down, I can have my script on the screen, under my camera. I love that I am able to deliver a good high-quality experience for them, even when I’m still working to hone the details.”

Tactical Advice for Presenting Virtually

Make eye contact.

Margot: “Work on eye contact. Make everyone’s windows smaller and physically drag them to be right underneath your camera.”

“The biggest distraction [is] seeing yourself on the monitor. You tend to look at yourself. So, if you can drag yourself to be under your camera, it will look like you’re making eye contact.”

Consider your lighting.

Margot: “Orient yourself so you are facing a window or there is a window off to one side so there is natural light. You don’t need to have a big, fancy, lighting setup. But, if people can see you well, you will look more professional. You will present more professionally.”

Check your sound.

Denise: “Make sure you look good and make sure you sound good.”

Be willing to adapt.

Margot: “Creative, flexible, adjusting on the fly — that’s the name of the game now.”

Denise: “We have to be adaptable and we have to be agile. And if we get feedback for something, we have to be able to work with it.”

Prepare.

Denise: “Preparing for the talk can be one of the most enjoyable parts of the process. For me, when I prepare for a keynote, maybe it’s been a little bit since I’ve dealt with the content and then I really start to really focus on the content and the audience and the event and the theme and how I want to connect with people and really what I want them to feel and do afterward. The preparation is really important for that.”

Build trust.

Margot: “If you are in a position of presenting, now we have to think more about voice, volume, and vulnerability. How we establish a consistent and accessible tone of voice, as well as the vocabulary we’re using. People aren’t necessarily afraid of jargon, but we all like to get smarter at it. We can establish a common vocabulary, by overexplaining a little bit, maybe figuring out new ways to share our ideas, bringing more metaphors into our conversation to explain what’s going on in our work. When thinking about volume, think of the level of detail you are sharing. By vulnerability, I mean how we operationalize vulnerability, how we over-communicate or better communicate our needs…It’s sharing, ‘here’s what I’m going through, here’s what I’m learning.” When the camera gets knocked over and the lightning isn’t great, it’s saying ‘What can I do so you can see me?’.”

Advice for Keeping Your Audience Engaged

Focus on connection.

Denise: “Don’t underestimate your ability to connect with people. If you show up you have good content, you have a way to interact, and build that interactivity in, you will actually connect with people and you will be able to use the medium to have the outcome that you want.”

“For a virtual situation, I make sure that I still have the connection with the audience and try to simulate the same kind of connection with the audience that I would in person. I make sure I look at the camera, make sure I’m still making expressions with my face. I make sure that I’m not using too much monotone and that there’s variation in my voice in delivery. I make sure I bake in engagement and act like I’m with an audience. And I ask for feedback in the chat and the feedback channels so I can realize I am connecting with people.

Break your presentation into smaller chunks.

Margot: “When I’m teaching virtually…I can go about 20 minutes talking and then I want to get them talking. So maybe we break into separate Zoom chats, maybe that’s the point when I say, ‘now tell me about your experience with this topic’ and I get them talking to me. Or, maybe that’s when I break from the slides and then they see my face again and I share an anecdote that’s a little more conversational or on the fly. So I’m switching up my tone of voice every 20 minutes as well.”

Denise: “I recommend the book Brain Rules by John Medina, a top professor at the University of Washington who studies attention. He was one of the top lecturers because he knew what people’s attention spans were and would structure his lectures accordingly. If it was 10–12 minutes, he would start to build up and peak around 9 minutes and then wrap up. He was able to capitalize on people’s natural attention spans.”

Offer guideposts and adapt to different learning styles.

Denise: “Be very clear and sufficient. If you have a list of something, say I have three things: first, second, third. Give people guideposts and places they can attach their attention to so they don’t have to try so hard to follow you.”

Margot: “We can tap into the different ways people learn. This may mean putting more words onto our slides. Let people that are visual learners see the jargon and internalize it as they are hearing an explanation from you. Give them multiple hooks to latch on as we’re introducing more technical topics. We need to translate it to engage people in a more multi-sensory way.”

Keep it low tech.

Margot: “If you can make it more low-tech, do it. That’s what allows our experiences to be more accessible and more democratized to more people. Not everyone is on a high bandwidth connection, a lot of people are on their phones. If they’re using some complex online tool, maybe it’s putting too much of an interface between them and an experience we want them to have.

“For a card sort [exercise I do], I’d rather everyone use the same tool so no one feels like their experiences are lesser. I send out a PDF doc and we do a lot of thinking aloud. They are still having a shared experience. It’s incredibly low-tech and it still works.”

Ask for feedback.

Denise: “If you don’t ask, you don’t get. Ask for responses from people. How are you guys feeling about that? Can I get a clap? Can I get an amen?”

Compensation Considerations

Don’t forget, you are still offering value.

Denise: “One piece of feedback from speaker friends was, ‘Just because it’s virtual doesn’t mean you aren’t delivering the same amount of value.’ Just because you aren’t getting on a plane and staying in a hotel and catching an uber to give the presentation, doesn’t mean that you aren’t delivering the same amount of value. You still have to prep, you still have to show up, you still have to deliver and connect and offer the same content. I would encourage you to go into the conversation standing in your value and make sure you stay strong in that.”

Get creative with your offering.

Margot: “I think there’s an opportunity to approach speaker fees with more flexibility and creativity.”

“I had an event this past week that said, “Now that we’re going virtual, can we lower your rate? I’m sympathetic to where they are. At the same time, I didn’t want to be the only speaker that’s a sap and say ‘yes, let’s cut my rate’, but I also didn’t want to come off as one of the hard ‘nos’. How do I make this a win-win-win situation? I approached them and said, ‘Why don’t we keep the rate the same, but let me do more. Because the one thing I have now is time. What if for the top 50 people or companies that opt-in, each gets 1-hour no-fee of my time. Or, we can offer 50 hour-long mentoring sessions to the first people who opt-in. It’s a chance for me to nurture our industry. The 1:1 time with companies, that’s how I build my pipeline. And if I can help them and I get to hear about all of the thorny challenges they are having? I love that. I did that on the recommendations of other people. They responded with, “The value that you’re adding is so much greater than what we would be subtracting from your fee.”

Get paid to speak.

Margot: “You have your fee and it does not change…until it does. When you’re starting out you do want to figure out different ways to get exposure. Know your worth and sometimes that is expressed through money, sometimes that is expressed through the opportunity to connect with people at that conference, go to a city you’ve never been to before but they will pay for your travel. One conference couldn’t pay my rate but one sponsor was travel-related and could give me an extra plane ticket so my husband could come as well so that was extra value for me.

As a speaker, you are the most valuable part of the conference so see how they are willing to value you and treat you.”

Denise: “In my own personal experience, for at least 2 years I was doing all of my speaking with the belief (very mistaken belief) that once I got good people would start to offer to pay me. I cannot tell you how profoundly incorrect that is. No one is going to give you money unless you ask for it.”

“Your hour talk is the years of experience that came before the moment you got on stage. That’s what they are paying for. The talk is a culmination point. Everything that goes into that informs that you should be getting paid for your experience and knowledge.”

“Think of a number — most likely I say and then double it. And if it’s less than $1500 make it more. Start asking for it. You have to establish your own number and people will follow suit.”

“Trust that what you are doing and the expertise you have and the act of sharing your knowledge is valuable and if you leave with nothing else know that. That value can have a dollar value to it and you deserve to get paid for your expertise.“

Getting paid to speak was such a popular conversation, we decided to bring it back for our next #CouchConvo. Save the date for Thursday, April 16th and keep an eye on @womentalkdesign on Twitter for more announcements.

Watch the full #CouchConvo on “Going Virtual With Your Speaking Engagements”.

A big thank you to Margot Bloomstein & Denise Jacobs for sharing their experience and expertise with us!

Going Virtual with Your Speaking Engagements was originally published in Women Talk Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are in full planning mode for 2020 and we cannot wait to share what we have in store. At the same time, we have been reflecting on this past year and oh, what an incredible year it has been. With the help of local partners, we brought Women Talk Design programming to more cities (Chicago, San Diego, Miami, New York, Singapore, and Paris!), piloted a new offering, and expanded our speaker and organizer community.

It’s been two years since Women Talk Design transformed from existing exclusively as a speaker directory to working on a broader mission of elevating the voices of women and nonbinary folks to ultimately see a more diverse group of speakers on stage. We’re continuing to research the needs of our community, test out new initiatives, expand our programming, gather feedback, and improve our offerings and the ways in which we support our community.

Want to support Women Talk Design’s work? Share this one-pager to get your company involved or help fund a Women Talk Design workshop scholarship.

As we work on plans for 2020, here are a few 2019 highlights we are excited to share.

Trained over 400 new speakers

From spending a couple of hours to explore potential talk topics to joining an intensive 12-hour program hot learn how to craft a talk and deliver with confidence, our workshops helped empower folks in our community get one step closer to their public speaking goals. We worked with speakers just getting started and others looking to brush up on their craft. We opened workshops to the community, partnered with local design meetups, hosted workshops at design weeks, and worked with companies to train their teams. Attendees have had some pretty amazing things to share about their experiences and our trainings will continue to be a key component of our work in 2020.

Help us train more speakers in 2020 by contributing to workshop scholarships and encouraging your employer to hire us!

“Women Talk Design’s weekend workshop was the single most helpful resource for getting my speaking career off the ground! It was an action-packed weekend of intense but fun training, in a very positive and supportive environment.”

“This workshop was the most helpful workshop I’ve ever been to in my freakin’ life”

Hosted over 30 community events across 10 US cities, Singapore, & Paris

Our community events are designed to get more people excited about speaking, help them feel more confident once they start, and give speakers opportunities to practice. In 2019, we continued to partner with local community groups including AIGA, IxDA, Ladies that UX, and others to offer free or low-cost events in various cities around the US. Thanks to Women Talk Design speaker and instructor Tomomi Sasaki, we hosted events in Singapore & Paris. We also hosted our first remote Women Talk: Conferences panel. Watch the video and take away lots of great speaking tips!

Would your company be interested in sponsoring our events? Share this one-pager!

“Loved the speaker line up, thought it was super informative, really appreciated the openness of the speakers.”

Provided over 40 women + nonbinary speakers an opportunity to practice a talk in a safe, supportive audience

Our Lightning Talks events are designed to give speakers the opportunity to practice a talk. Speakers are sometimes delivering a talk for the first time. Other times, they are experienced speakers practicing before an upcoming conference or testing out a new talk idea. The audience is there to learn a little something new, meet new people, and most importantly, cheer the speakers on. Speakers leave with written feedback from audience members so they can keep improving. Expanding these events is a big initiative in 2020. Keep an eye out for updates!

We’re looking for a sponsor to help us expand our event series! Get in touch.

“Last night was transformative! I now have the public speaking bug and will be actively pursuing speaking opportunities.”

Piloted Women Talk Design Circles

As we continue to explore ways in which we could help women and nonbinary folks work toward their speaking goals, we piloted our very first Women Talk Design Circle. Our circles provide a safe and supportive space for folks in our community to have accountability and get feedback as they work toward a specific speaking goal. Our first pilot was a success and we look forward to more Circles in 2020!

We just announced our January Circle. Share the application with someone you think might benefit.

“I know I’ve got all the tools I need from the weekend training, but it’s still so, so intimidating — more than I expected even! — to prepare for a big talk, and I really can’t even imagine having done it without this circle.”

Nearly doubled the Women Talk Design Speaker Directory with over 200 speakers

Our Speaker Directory has been part of Women Talk Design since the beginning. Last October, with the help of Wordpress, we redesigned the platform. As part of the redesign, we wanted to encourage more women and nonbinary speakers to add themselves as speakers to the platform. This year, we’ve almost doubled the number of speakers in our directory, helping us highlight more voices!

Is there a speaker you think we should be featuring? Nominate them.

“Thank you so much. Your support on this really makes a difference for me and I feel so included.”

Engaged 100 event organizers through the Women Talk Design platform

Another key feature in our website redesign was to add the ability for event organizers to create a free account on Women Talk Design. With their accounts, organizers can save speaker profiles and talks to view later, share an open call for proposals with our community, and reach out directly to speakers to invite them to their event. Since January, we’ve had 100 organizers join the platform — representing a variety of events, from large conferences, meetups, companies, and schools.

Know an event organizer who dedicated to hosting more inclusive events? Tell them about Women Talk Design.

“THIS! IS! AWESOME! Were passionate about diversity and have a deep appreciation for what you’re doing!”

Thank you to our incredible community — speakers, organizers, instructors, alumni, partners, supporters, and participants — for an incredible year!

Look out, 2020.

We have some exciting things in store. We’ll share more announcements soon (make sure you are subscribed to our email newsletter!), but you can expect more opportunities to practice speaking, more avenues for speakers to connect and support one another, and lots of opportunities to level up your speaking game. Event organizers, more resources and opportunities to engage with our speakers coming your way.

Want to get involved?

If you’re curious about how you can engage with Women Talk Design, we pinned this tweet with a few suggestions.

We started a GoFundMe campaign so you can directly contribute to our Speaking Workshop scholarship fund. Help more women and nonbinary folks get access to our workshops by contributing.

We’re also actively looking for corporate partners who are dedicated to elevating the voices of women and nonbinary folks in design and tech to support our 2020 initiatives. Sponsor an event series, help us host our very first speaker gatherings, and hire us to train your team to become more confident public speakers. Here is a one-pager you can share with the decision-makers at your organization. Are you the person we should be talking to? Reach out directly to danielle@womentalkdesign.com.

Here’s to elevating more women and nonbinary voices and getting a more diverse group of speakers on stage in 2020!

Reflecting on 2019 as we prepare for 2020 was originally published in Women Talk Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“If I do everything the same way the industry does, my conference will be a reflection of the state of the industry. But as a curator, I have the option of designing an experience that reflects what the industry could be, rather than simply accepting what it is.”

We used to save our money for keynote speakers, but inspired by Ashe Dryden, we experimented with a different approach starting in 2016. We guarantee that every speaker will be paid to speak and that every speaker will have travel and accommodation paid. We knew that previously, some speakers were paying their own way and others were being paid by their employer. We also knew that we probably couldn’t afford to pay for everyone’s travel, accommodation and speaking fees. So we worded our policy as follows:

All speakers will receive:

Free admission to the conference

A travel compensation payment of 250 PLN for Poland-based speakers living outside of Krakow, 150 Euro for people based in Europe, and 800 Euro for non-Europeans if your travel is not paid by your employer

Accommodation for up to three nights if it is not paid by your employer

At least one speakers’ dinner

If you’re new to public speaking, we’ll be happy to assist you with preparing your presentation, rehearsing it, and making your first speaking experience as successful as possible. We are happy to accommodate the needs of speakers with disabilities and non-neurotypical cognitive styles. There’s no need to specify your requirements in the form. If you’re invited to speak based on your proposed content, we can talk about how to make the experience comfortable and successful for you. The venue is wheelchair accessible.

All speakers will be compensated for their time. We’re doing this to attract people who do not have the support of their employers but have stories and experiences to share. If your employer requires you to use holiday time or unpaid leave to speak at ACE!, you will be paid 250 Euro (net) if your talk proposal is accepted. This figure is based on average IT salaries in Europe and America (and our budget).

With this policy, we only pay speakers who aren’t already being paid by someone else to be at ACE. That’s about half of them. We give a sponsorship package to companies that support their employees, which is something we weren’t doing previously.

Since we implemented this policy, talk proposals have increased from less than a hundred to almost four hundred. We’re hearing from people who have never spoken at a conference before. We’re getting a lot more proposals from practitioners rather than just from consultants, trainers, and people hawking their latest book. And this year, without using quotas or any form of gender-based selection, we ended up with more women than men on stage.

The move from not paying speakers to promising that everyone would be paid felt really risky when we did it. The conference was barely breaking even at the time, but the policy has been hugely successful. The quality of the speaker lineup has improved, the PR has been terrific, and sponsorship is increasing as a result. Keynote speakers, when they learn that we pay everyone, generally ask to be paid the same as everyone else. Only once since 2016 have we paid a keynote speaker more than 250 Euros, and even he gave us a big discount when he learned we paid everyone.

So, that’s my experience with taking the risk to do the right thing. Like most things that scared me, it turned out to be nothing to be afraid of…[I hope sharing this story will] help convince others to pay speakers, even if they are just small, community conferences who don’t have much money. ACE only had about 200 attendees at the time that we did it.

Editor’s note: Each month, Women Talk Design sends out a monthly newsletter to event organizers. Under one section entitled “Important Conversations” we highlight articles to spark important conversations around designing inclusive events. This section in March’s newsletter focused on speaker compensation. We asked readers to send us a note to share their speaker compensation policy. The above was Paul’s response. We received permission to repost.

Rethinking Speaker Compensation was originally published in Women Talk Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Here’s a note we received from someone in our speaker community:

“What does a submission look like? Does anyone have an example of a winning one? Is it just an essay; and if the event doesn’t give any specs, is there a common guideline? There’s a call for entries with <insert conference name here>, and the event theme is <>, and then it’s just an email address.”

If you’re looking to attract great speakers (especially those who are generally under-represented on stage) a vague call for speakers isn’t going to cut it.

It’s true — there are conferences that give very little information and expect speakers to spend time applying. The good news is most Calls for Proposals are a little better than that. However, many CFPs are still missing important information speakers want to know.

If your Call for Proposals isn’t including these details, it should be.

Here’s what someone curious about speaking at your conference wants to know:

Event Details

When and where is your event? You may think this is obvious when it’s on your homepage, but don’t make your applicants go looking.

What else can you tell speakers about your event? Is there a theme? Who is your audience? How many people are you expecting to attend (or have attended in years past)?

Talk Requirements & Selection Process

What types of talks are you looking for? Do you have certain formats? Should the talks fit under a certain theme or track?

Be specific about what information needs to be included. Provide details for how you select talks and specific criteria you evaluate. Link to past talks and proposals that have been accepted in the past.

Speaker Commitment

What is the commitment you will be asking of the speaker once they’ve been selected? Are they expected to deliver their presentation in advance? Will there be any required pre-conference meetings? Is there a talk revision process?

What is your ownership policy? Will you post all talks on a video streaming service after the event?

Code of Conduct

Does your event have a Code of Conduct? Include a link to it. Speakers don’t just want to know if there is a Code of Conduct, but how it will be enforced. That information should be included in the Code of Conduct itself. This is a priority for a lot of speakers, so it should also be a priority for you.

Speaker Compensation

What will speakers receive as compensation for speaking? Do they receive a free ticket? Will you cover their travel and hotel? Do you pay your speakers? (We strongly recommend all three.)

Is there anything else you offer that you want them to know about?

Accommodations

What accommodations do you offer? Are you willing to facilitate accommodations for speakers with disabilities? Do you offer child care? Special meals for dietary restrictions? Non-alcoholic beverages at receptions?

Timeline

When does the call for speakers close? When should applicants expect to hear back?

Don’t be afraid of overwhelming a speaker with too many details. The more the better. It takes work to put together a proposal, and the more information you can provide to help a speaker decide if it’s worth their time, the better.

Kudos to conferences that do this well!

• While Clarity doesn’t have a call for speakers, they have a public page on how they select their speakers and what they offer them.
• IAC (formerly IA Summit) does a good job outlining what they look for in talks and linking to resources to create a great proposal.
• UX Australia offers a clear post on what they look for in proposal and an example of a successful submission.
• We love XOXO’s inclusion policy.

Don’t just take it from us, these speakers share what they are looking for when they decide whether or not to speak at a conference:

• Abi Jones on Twitter
• Leslie Jensen-Inman on Ladies in Tech

There’s more work to getting a diverse speaker lineup than just putting out a well-crafted Call for Proposals. Individual outreach is important; so is structuring the event to be an inclusive space underrepresented speakers want to be part of. You can check out this article on “Why Women Say No to Speaking and What Conference Organizers Can Do About It.”

A special thanks to our speaker community, including Jenny Shirey, Soumia Fares, Vanessa Colina, Jenny Shen and Sarah Fathallah, who provided input on this article and Dorothy Levin for her edits.

What information do you look for in a Call for Proposals? Do you know another event that does it well? Want help implementing these for your next Call? Please reach out: contact@womentalkdesign.com

Women Talk Design is on a mission to see more diverse speakers on stage. We elevate brilliant women and gender non-binary speakers and their talks so organizers can better discover them, provide tools, information and resources to organizers on how to design more inclusive events, and offer training, events, and community for new speakers.

Organizers, here’s what is missing from your Call for Proposals was originally published in Women Talk Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In partnership with WordPress.com, we redesigned our website!

With over 200 speakers and 500+ talks, we’re so excited for you to explore, discover and engage with our new platform. We’re highlighting brilliant diverse speakers for organizers to invite to their next event. We’re also linking to helpful articles on speaking and event organizing. You can learn more about Women Talk Design, check out our upcoming events and discover ways to get involved.

Curious about some of the site’s additions? Here’s what’s new:

Our look
We wanted our visual identity to reflect the work we do and our values. Our logo places our name within speaking quotes, highlighting the focus of our work, which is to elevate women and gender non-binary speakers. The overlapping quotes reflect the intersectional diversity we celebrate.

A robust speaker + talk directory
Browse and filter our speaker directory. You can also explore our directory of talks by those speakers. You can filter by discipline, topics, and industry. You can also search for speakers based in a certain location and explore the various experience our speakers have.

Event organizer accounts
Are you an event organizer? You can now create a FREE account on Women Talk Design. By creating an account, you can save speaker profiles and talks to view later. When you’re ready to invite a speaker to your event, you can reach out to them directly through Women Talk Design’s website. Does your conference hold a call for speakers? Send us the proposal and we’ll share with our community.

A broader look at speaking highlights
Through our directory of talks, you can view videos, slides, photos, descriptions, blog posts and more.

Ways to get involved!
Looking for ways to get involved with Women Talk Design? Find out how to partner, volunteer, and support our efforts.

Start exploring and help us spread the word. Share our website with event organizers, nominate a speaker, and help us shout it from the rooftops.

A big thank you to the WordPress.com team, Sasha Endoh Code & Design, The Label Collective, our contributors, Facebook Design, participating event organizers, our speaker community and everyone who helped make this a reality.

BIG NEWS! We have a new look and a new website. was originally published in Women Talk Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Christina started the website in 2013 as a way to highlight women speakers who give talks on design-related topics. She often spoke at design and tech conferences and was dismayed at how few women she saw on stage. She was tired of excuses from conference organizers that they couldn’t find enough women to speak at their conference. So, she created Women Talk Design to be a place she could point them — where organizers could discover women speakers and invite them to their next event. The site lived on over the years as Christina added more speakers in between the countless other things she already did.

Women Talk Design transformed last summer when over 100 generous donors gave to a GoFundMe campaign that allowed Christina to hire two student interns, Jennifer & Melissa, to research and redesign the Women Talk Design website. I joined in the fall as CEO to continue the work they started, and grow Women Talk Design into an impactful and sustainable organization.

Today, Women Talk Design is a social enterprise dedicated to getting more diverse speakers on stage. We’re elevating women and nonbinary speakers on our website, offering helpful articles and advice for conference organizers, and providing training, events and community to new speakers.

A lot has happened in the past year (thanks to volunteers, mentors and a wonderful community), and I’m excited to share what we’ve done, and what’s to come.

• In November (2017), we launched our first speaking workshop. With the support of our GoFundMe campaign, we led 13 attendees in a weekend workshop to craft a compelling talk and present with confidence. Since that first workshop, we’ve trained 60+ women and nonbinary people on public speaking.

“Women Talk Design’s weekend workshop provides the exact supportive, playful, safe space needed to prep your first talk and prepare to incorporate public speaking into your work.” — Speaking Workshop Attendee

• After our first workshop we started a private Facebook group for new and experienced speakers. The group is intended to be a safe space for women and nonbinary speakers to ask questions, offer advice and share upcoming speaking opportunities.
• In December, we hosted our first Lightning Talks event. This event gives new speakers an opportunity to practice a 5-minute version of a talk in front of a safe, supportive audience. We offer this event quarterly in San Francisco and are expanding to other cities.

“Last night was transformative! I now have the public speaking bug and will be actively pursuing speaking opportunities.” — Lightning Talk Speaker

• In February, we hosted our first event in Seattle. “Women Talk: Conferences” features local women speakers sharing their experiences speaking at events. We’ve since hosted this event in Los Angeles, Durham, Washington DC, Austin and Boston. We’ve had over 350 attendees participate in our various events (across seven cities!), that are designed to inspire and empower more women and nonbinary speakers.
• In February, we also hosted our first corporate training program. In addition to financial sponsorship, this will be an important revenue stream to keep Women Talk Design sustainable. It will also allow us to continue to provide free and low-cost programming to our community. Interested in learning more? Contact us!
• In June, we offered a new format of our speaking workshop in partnership with AIGA/SF for San Francisco Design Week. Through partnerships with groups like AIGA, Ladies that UX, seaDUXX, LAUX and more, we’ve been able to expand our programming to new communities.

“Thanks for organizing! I really enjoyed this event and it made me feel more confident public speaking.” — Event Attendee

• As of today, we have 250+ speakers on Women Talk Design. We’re continuing to grow our database and are working with dozens of organizers to make sure it can be a resource.

What are we working on?

We’re currently scheduling follow up events and trainings in those seven cities, and working with some pretty wonderful groups to expand our programming and reach.

We also have some exciting news to share about the Women Talk Design website.

After we launched the new site last fall, we heard a lot of positive feedback and also learned more about what organizers and speakers need. As we’ve expanded what Women Talk Design offers (through training, events and resources) we also want to make sure our website reflects that. We’ve been very grateful for the opportunity to work with the team at Wordpress to design and build a new version of the Women Talk Design site (with a new visual identity, thanks to our friends at The Label Collective) that we’re excited to share this fall.

Finally, we’re continuing to explore how best to support women and nonbinary speakers, and conference organizers seeking to design more inclusive events. We’re committed to constantly improving and we look forward to speaking with you, our community, to incorporate your diverse experiences and thoughtful input into what we’re doing.

Thanks to everyone who has (and will) become part of this community.

A special thank you to our partners at Facebook Design, whose ongoing support has enabled us to continue to grow.

We can’t wait to share more soon.

Danielle

CEO, Women Talk Design

One Year of Women Talk Design was originally published in Women Talk Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.