Below you’ll find some resources that might be helpful when I’m speaking at your event.

Bio

Wes Kennedy is a Principal TME at Continuum and the Principal & Owner of thewrkgroup. Wes leads customer experience and product on-boarding/lifecycle projects for Continuum. At thewrkgroup, he focuses on Technical Marketing Consulting as well as a number of other side projects and businesses. He has a diverse background in tech from being a Virtualization Admin, Sales Engineer, to Technical Marketer. Wes lives in Columbus, Ohio with his wife, son, and doggo.

Headshots

Preferred Headshot

Wes Kennedy Album Cover Headshot

Alternate Headshot

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Travel and Engagement

If you would like me to attend or speak at your event, please reach out and we can see if it’s a good fit. I’m very passionate about the intersection of humans and tech, largely the humans who work in tech, not our experience with the tech itself. I’d love to engage with you in a productive conversation on how we can make our community a more inclusive, equitable, and happy place for people to work - or even better - have discussions on how we can use the huge amount of influence our industry has on the collective conscience to do something good for the planet and humans, instead of soley further enriching capitalistic institutions and billionaires.

I often need 3-4 months advanced notice in order to work in the time to prepare for a trip such as this and obviously more time is better. A brief introduction to your company, the event, dates, asks of me, and any other information you can provide are all extremely helpful for me to make my decision. I will personally review any request and reply directly regarding my possible attendance at an event.

I prepare all of my own speaking sessions (often using customer provided prompts or talk tracks), the talk track, and then work with my customers to review and edit.

I will often utilize my customer’s creative teams to build the presentation decks (if applicable), but also have my own creative team on retainer to perform the work if necessary.

I reserve the right to cancel my attendance and refund my fees (subtracting expenses and time invested) if an agreement cannot be made on the content of the talk itself.

I will retain the right to record audio and video of my talk and publish on the following websites:

Proper attribution will be made to the conference and company sponsoring my attendance.

Adequate transportation, accommodations, meals, and related items to your event will be organized through, paid for by, and charged back through my company, thewrkgroup. The only exception to this rule is with conference passes. It is expected that your company will handle providing a conference pass for me.

I will not represent myself as being an employee of your company, unless I am a contractor on retainer with you through thewrkgroup. For more information regarding retainers through my company, please see thewrkgroups’s website.

No attendance or talk will be given without a written and signed contract.

All contracts will be prepared, red-lined, and reviewed by my legal counsel. Once an agreement is met, I will happily begin to develop content.

The Rub

This section will likely sound harsh, but I want it to be ultimately clear on where I stand.

If you’re still reading this, then we might be a fit, please reach out. My rates can be flexible, but average around $10k-$15k for a 1-hour in-person speaking slot (plus expenses) or negotiable for remote. There is a significant amount of billable hours that go to developing a high quality talk, time spent traveling which keeps me away from my family and customers, and other costs that can’t easily be quantified (anyone that’s left a spouse at home with young children know the unquantifiable associated costs to being away from home). Unless I’ve approached your organization, there’s a close to zero chance that I will speak in-person at a conference or event for free, and no, “for the exposure” is not an acceptable answer for anyone and you should stop using that as a reason for not offering compensation for someone’s time and expertise.

Booth duty is a quick and emphatic “not a chance” from me. As an introvert, there’s nothing that sucks the life out of me faster than having the same 100-200 level, <2 min conversation, over and over again, for hours - and days on end. I do however have a price, it’s comical, but I would do it if the number is right. If you have to ask, your event probably can’t afford it. I do eventually want to retire from the tech industry, so a week at Re:invent pitching the glories of your product for a comical number, that can be done.

That said

I really, truly, don’t enjoy in-person conferences. It’s not that I don’t love seeing your beautiful faces, it’s that large groups of people are extremely exhausting for me, travel for work sucks (even when you own the company and can choose the accommodations), and the global environmental and health costs are way too high. Each and every time I’ve gone to a multi-thousand+ person conference, I get sick. Whether it’s a cold, COVID, or other. It is irresponsible to hold in-person conferences for vanity’s sake, they’re largely just networking events for vendors these days anyways, and the last thing I want to do is bring home sickness to my family.

I’ve worked in and with marketing orgs long enough to see through the hand-waving we often have to do to justify the costs of these in-person conferences vs the outcomes. Is there a six-ways from Kevin Bacon way to tag a deal in the funnel with attendance at a conference? Well then it happened. So I ask you, do we want to continue to perpetuate this?