text: The End of Speaking – The Interconnected
  Khoi Vinh's SXSW presentation on the grid was the seminal moment that put me on the path towards UX and away from the web as I knew it. Learning I could bring visual order to context and content… it changed things. To a lesser extent, Richard Rutter's talk at the same SXSW walking through typographical vertical rhythm put me on that course, too.
  I started doing talks. I bombed. I got better. People came to my talks because I was the speaker. I felt like a D-grade celebrity, like I wasn't a big star, but people knew who I was.
  In my experience, it takes 40-100 hours of work to write, build, and practice a presentation. (Want to know why some big design celebrities tend to trot out the same three talks all the time, or write one new talk a year? That's why.)
  My standard rate when I was running my own firm was $150/hr. So if I take the minimum 40 hours out to do this work, that's $6000 in lost income. Add in travel, hotel, meals (so many dinners), taxis and transit, AND the lost time of getting to and from the conference site… I'm dropping another $1000-2000. And I haven't even mentioned the conference fees that I'm paying if I didn't get my pass comped.