Have you ever had a friend ask you for a favor, only to ask you for like 5 more while performing that favor? “Hey can you help me move? Oh also, I’m out of coffee; can you pick some up? Also I need to stop at the realtor’s office to get the key,” and so on. It might be an innocent mistake, but sometimes it feels like your generosity is being taken advantage of. And it’s kind of annoying.

That’s how it’s felt over the last few years with the emergence of virtual events. I’ve spoken at several, and many of them follow the same format of putting a lot of the onus on the speaker while reaping all of the benefits.

Now, a few caveats:

• I’m not talking to any one event organizer, and I’m not mad at anyone. This is true for most virtual events and I think we’d all benefit from a few changes.
• I’ve been considering hosting/organizing a virtual event myself, so this serves as a way to outline how I envision such an event going¹
• I also know that planning any event is a lot of work. I don’t think event organizers are undeserving of the benefits, financial or otherwise.

That said, I think we need to rethink our approach to having speakers at our virtual events. In my opinion, the speaker has one job: to deliver a great talk.