SQL Server, PASS, and other data mishaps
PASS Summit Speaker Agreement revisited
Speaker Agreements… Legal, Necessary, but awfully sticky
Every year PASS asks the speakers at the Summit to agree to some relatively simple terms and conditions. I don’t consider them to be anything overly involved or overbearing. For those who haven’t seen them they basically establish that a speaker owns the content they are going to present, that the speakers act as professional as possible, don’t market their products, or their companies products, and allow PASS to record the sessions.
This year the hangup for me is related to that last tiny bit. For regular conference speakers asking them to allow recording of their 1 hour session isn’t a big ask. However where Im reevaluating what we’ve done in the past is related to the all day preconference sessions.
Last year PASS recorded the preconference sessions and offered them for sale to PASS members. Just like the preconference sessions where the speakers get a portion of the admission fee, the contract called for the speakers to get a portion of the sales from the DVD’s. At the time this seemed like a fair way to do things and I still believe that the revenue share is fair.
Drawbacks
Ive heard from several different people that if these preconference sessions are recorded that it may become more and more difficult for PASS to attract the top tier SQL Server speakers to do precons. I can appreciate the position of some speakers on this, if they are giving their best content and we are distributing it digitally for what amounts to a few hundred dollars they run the very real risk of loosing actual sales of training material, or potential clients.
Benefits
On the other side, I need to weigh the risks of potentially shrinking the pool of available speakers with the benefits to the community of being able to offer these recordings. The other benefit is of course the money PASS makes from these DVD sales. To be perfectly clear, the amount of money PASS makes off of DVD sales in general is merely a pittance in the scheme of things. Having the DVD’s available and leveraging the content however is very valuable to our members and something that I think is important enough to at least explore what can be done to hopefully find a good balance
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
The way I’m leaning on this is to leave things the way they are and see if we see an overall drop in the quality or quantity of our preconference presenters in 2011 onward. I have however thought a lot about possible ways we could create a workable model, where we allowed certain preconference speakers to opt out of recording. This could get really messy administratively, and cause some confusion/anger with attendees not knowing which sessions will be included in the recordings. The other alternative is to just stop recording preconference sessions totally, although I dont think this is a good option.
I guess what I’m trying to do here is expose an internal debate that Ive been having with myself. Ive found that often if I spend the time to write something out it helps me organize my thoughts. As a bonus occasionally, I get great comments/ideas from the 2 of you who read this.
| Print article | This entry was posted by Allen Kinsel on February 17, 2011 at 8:26 am, and is filed under SQLPASS, Summit, Syndicated. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 2 years ago
Not being a professional trainer, I’m fine with it. It’s a little extra revenue where I wouldn’t be getting any. But 1) I’ve never done a Summit Pre/Post-Con, so what the hell do I know, 2) I can see the other side of the coin.
about 2 years ago
Perhaps there is a risk that the quality of speakers will suffer (short term) but a new crop will spring up and replace them once they attained that level of expertise.
I believe if any speakers actually feel that way though, then they need to do two things 1. submit presentations/ pre-post cons for things that they don’t believe infringes on their ability for them to provide for themselves and their family. 2. To have a long think about why they are presenting in the first place. If it is simply down to self promotional reasons then they should step down right now.
The community needs to share and the community will become greater in the absence of those types of individuals (should they even exist). The DVDs are a massive help to SQL professionals of all skill levels and removing the pre/post cons from them would be a disaster in my humble opinion.
Thank you for raising this discussion and I will follow with interest what others think.
about 2 years ago
As an attendee of pre/post con sessions I find the recordings of those sessions very valuable – I generally learn alot in those sessions, but I’m human after all and can only retain so much from an 8 hour training session. I’ve refered back to the recordings several times already.
Perhaps a compromise would be to limit the pre/post con session recordings to folks that paid for and attended the pre and post con sessions.
about 2 years ago
After all of my thoughts on this subject I dont know why I didnt consider this before but, that may very well be the best compromise I’ve heard, Ill look into it this
Thanks!!
about 2 years ago
I don’t think that you’ll loose any speakers from the pre-con slots. Some speakers will be a little more selective as to which sessions that they submit, but those speakers aren’t going to not submit a session at all just because its being recorded.
As a pre-con speaker I personally want to have a copy of my session. It isn’t often that I can get a session recorded, much less an entire pre-con and it’s handy to have around. You know, once the un-corrupted version of my session gets sent out.
about 2 years ago
Thanks for all of the thoughts about this, I like the discussion (including the emails I’ve recieved) and hope it nets us a solution that works for everyone.