At the Cape Town 27Dinner event in June 2008, Jo Duxbury made a great pitch for people to attend the first Flying Solo Unconference in Cape Town and Johannesburg. I really liked the idea because it was all about sharing ideas on growing your business with like minded people. And the idea of the unconference is that unlike the traditional conference there would be more panel discussions and interaction with the audience.
Over the last 5 years I have experienced various ups and downs in my own business growth. For the most part I was self-employed as described in Robert Kiyosaki’s Cashflow Quadrant. And it’s only in the last 6 months I have taken the idea of working on my business more seriously than working inside my business. This is not something that happened over night and I have bumped my head time and time again trying different things to grow my business. Maybe the best part of the experience is that I have now figured out how to generate cash flow at will. And for the most part this has to do with being clear about my products and services that I offer.
Anyway Jo Duxbury and Pam Sykes are organising this unconference and asked for volunteers to do short presentation on their areas of expertise. I jumped at this opportunity because I get more practise as a speaker in front of a new audience. And with their feedback, I can constantly improve my material. So since the above mentioned 27Dinner event I have been reworking my business networking presentation and more importantly the way I want to deliver that to this audience. In all my other training programms I offer the delegates a free CD with resources I have collected and collated from the Internet. This ads tremendous value because they now have something specific to go through upon completing my seminar or workshop.
What turned out to be a surprise for me was this message requesting a deposit of R200 that goes toward the food and drinks for the day. I emailed Jo and Pam to ask if the speakers also had to put down this deposit – and I received ZERO response from them. I take my presentations and talks very, very seriously as a member of Toastmasters and the Professional Speakers Association. More over I also subscribe fully to the principle of Fair Exchange as advocated by Dr John Demartini in his excellent book, How To Make One Hell Of a Profit and Still Get To Heaven. At the very least I would expect any fees to be waivered for the speakers because I am forfitting my fee and paying for my own travel to Cape Town.
Oh just before I forget to mention this: I fully understand the Wild Fig restaurant is sponsoring the venue, however, forcing people to buy your food is not the way to go. What about all the people who may have wanted to bring their own picnic basket or fast good?
Anyway what do you think is fair exchange for speakers to speaker at no cost at this event or any other?
This is really a superb way to meet 
