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Ann Nonymous is now seeking training to help support all those hats she
wears <g>:
<<I'd like to ask those of you who are FTE/captive employees, either
consulting or otherwise, whether your management allows you paid time off
when you have been asked or accepted to speak at a professional
conference.>>
If I've been approved to attend the conference for its own sake, then
speaking at the conference is not an issue. (For example, my big training
opportunity this year will be attending STC in Chicago, and I plan to
participate in one "progression" and some of the special-interest luncheons
while I'm there.) If I haven't been approved for the conference, then
approval requires that I make a strong sales pitch to persuade them. For
example, I'm currently trying to negotiate a deal with my boss that would
let me attend an upcoming WinWriters conference where I've been invited to
speak. Because WinWriters pays its speakers, FERIC obviously won't want to
pay me to go somewhere else to earn a living. <g> That being the case, the
logic I'm using is that my speaker's fee will cover most of my expenses, and
in exchange for a minor amount of money, FERIC will get ca. US$1000 worth of
free training for me since the conference also waives the attendance fee for
speakers. We'll be discussing this in the new year, but if the scheduling
works out, the prospects are good that they'll accept.
<<At my company, we each have one training opportunity a year... In order to
speak at a professional conference outside of that one time, even while
positing myself as a senior leader in my field and a representative of my
company, I must take vacation time. I was not asking for travel or lodging,
just time (yes, I know that's money). My company sees no value to itself in
its employees speaking at a conference.>>
To succeed, you should modify the approach I've proposed above, and convince
the company that your attendance is both good for you and won't harm them.
That is, persuade them that they'll get enough value from the training you
receive at the conference to justify the lost time while you're away. Start
by listing the specific requirements of your current job that you don't know
how to do or need to learn to do better (e.g., you're a WinHelp ace, but
know nothing about HTMLHelp), and specify how the conference will address
those needs. Conclude your sales pitch by listing the reasons why the
company thinks you can't attend the conference, and what you propose to do
to remove these obstacles (e.g., if there's a deadline the same week as the
conference, you'll work overtime in the weeks beforehand to ensure the
deadline is met).
"I vowed [that] if I complained about things more than three times, I had to
do something about it."--Jon Shear
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