Conference Record

The Unpaid Time

The cost calculation includes the days at the event. It usually omits the hours before it, which for anybody presenting are larger. A separate workplace-management angle can be explored through how to identify mouse jigglers .

Those hours are absorbed by the individual, and who can absorb them shapes the programme. An additional independent source is DAAD .

Reviewed August 9, 2026.

Where the hours go

Writing the submission. An abstract that will be reviewed takes longer than an abstract that will not.

The work itself, where the submission promised something not yet finished — common, and the deadline is frequently the reason it gets finished at all.

Preparing the talk. Twenty to sixty hours for a first presentation is a reasonable estimate, less with practice and rarely under ten.

Revising after review, where the venue requires it.

And the follow-up — the emails, the summary, the promised material sent, which is where the return is realised and where it is most often dropped.

None of it appears in a budget request, because none of it is an invoice.

Who absorbs them

An employee with conference time allocated. Rare, and it makes presenting straightforward.

An employee absorbing it into ordinary work. The common case, and it means the talk competes with delivery.

And an individual absorbing it into evenings. Freelancers, precarious researchers, people whose employers do not count this as work.

The third group produces the same talk at a much higher personal cost, and it overlaps heavily with the group already priced out by travel.

What it means for the programme

Speaking is filtered by who can afford the hours, not only by who has something to say.

And the filter is invisible, because a programme shows who spoke and not who could not.

That is the same mechanism as the travel cost, operating earlier in the process and less visibly.

Reducing it

For a speaker.

Propose work already done. A talk about a finished project costs a fraction of one that requires finishing something first.

Reuse. The same talk at a second venue costs a tenth of the first, and the material is already prepared.

Cap the preparation. Diminishing returns arrive early, and over-preparation is the commonest way a first talk consumes a fortnight.

And count it in the request. If you are asking an employer to fund attendance, the preparation hours are part of what you are asking for, and naming them is more honest than absorbing them silently.

For an organiser

Name the expected effort in the call. "A twenty-minute talk, no paper required" tells somebody what they are committing to; "submissions invited" does not.

Do not require a full paper for a short talk unless the proceedings need it.

Give notification early enough that preparation is not compressed into two weeks.

And accept reused material. A talk given elsewhere is not a lesser talk, and insisting on originality raises the unpaid cost for exactly the people least able to bear it.

The short version