UPDATE: A few things about this were misunderstood. More on those in a second. First, I just talked with John Furrier, PodTech’s CEO, and we’ve decided not to accept the honorarium that PayPerPost offered to us for having me speak at their show. I’m very honored at the gesture, but think it’d be best to keep my speaking deal what it is for everyone else and PodTech now has a policy of not accepting these kinds of honorariums/speaker fees.

Regarding my deal. I generally still don’t like PayPerPost. They haven’t paid me to change my opinion about them. They are providing travel expenses to provide a service (a speech) and that’s it. I’ll give them every bit as good a speech as I gave at Google two years ago (where I had one of the top-rated speeches at its Zeitgeist event). PayPerPost did not have any restrictions on what I could say on stage, nor have they asked me to say anything specific (or even nice) about PayPerPost.

UPDATE2: here’s the PayPerPost blog where they tell more about “PostieCon.”

Here’s my previous unedited post:

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Next week it’ll be announced that I’m keynoting at a conference planned and sponsored by PayPerPost. This is my first speech where I’m not only having my travel and expenses paid, but they are covering my salary too. That check will not go to me, but will go, instead, to PodTech, who is paying my salary. I’m sure that the deal I got is different than from other speakers, but I think it’s important to disclose my deal and it’s important for me to disclose ANY commercial activity on my part.

I know this conference will be controversial — one way to get discussions among bloggers broiling is to bring up PayPerPost. Certainly more controversial than speaking at Gnomedex, LIFT, or Northern Voice or something like that.

Why do it then? Cause I’m a capitalist and because I think that blog advertising is something that we should talk about. Disclosure is something those of us who accept payments are figuring out how to do. I didn’t do it well last weekend. Microsoft didn’t do it well when they handed out laptops. And I’m still not that satisfied by PayPerPost’s disclosure policy either. I’m sure we’re far from seeing the last controversy here.

Anyway, I’m off to Basel by way of Frankfurt. See you at LIFT (who did pay our travel expenses too, but not my salary).

Maryam and I are bringing the ScobleShow on the road. Tomorrow morning we arrive in Frankfurt at about 10 a.m. then we’ll take a train to Basel, where we’ll hang out with my mom’s sister. On the 7th we’re taking the train to Geneva for LIFT on February 7-9. If you’d like to meet up, drop a line! I’m going to try to get as many geeks as possible on the ScobleShow. We come back on the 11th.

Obviously I can’t do my linkblog as often when I’m traveling and blogging will slow down too. But, on the other hand, I should be able to catch up with email. I’m up to a month behind there. Sigh.

I have a few new videos up on ScobleShow from new companies trying to get your attention: vFlyer is a new classified ad service, and TrailFire is a new way to group together Web sites and share those with your friends.

These companies didn’t pay to get in front of you. I provide this as a free service.

Think of it as the “Demo conference without a fee.” To either you or the participants. Appreciate Seagate for paying the bill here.

Not to mention that you can participate even if you’re in India or China and can’t afford a plane fare to an event in San Francisco.

TrailFire Demo.
TrailFire interview with founders.
vFlyer Demo.
vFlyer interview with founders.
Add to those new ones, the other demos I’ve had on the ScobleShow this week. SplashCast and VodPod and Seagate’s Dave, and if I keep this pace up we’ll have hundreds of demos every year. Not to mention all the other stuff we’ve been putting on PodTech’s home page that’s separate from ScobleShow.

Next week on ScobleShow we have scheduled demos from CFares, Wellsphere, and tours/interviews of SLAC and the Train Museum Photowalking. The week after that we have demos or interviews scheduled for Clever Homes, O’Desk, Krugle, Gigavox Media and more.  Whew, been shooting a lot lately.

Sorry, I can’t replicate the 4 a.m. chat session that I had with a group of geeks that included Brian Solis and Renee Blodget, (and many others) but then you won’t end up with a tab to pay, and you won’t be trying to catch up on your sleep for a week, either!

I’m about to hop on a plane to Frankfurt and am going to try to catch up with my email. But, in the meantime, if you want to be on the ScobleShow (I want more software developers, by the way!) just drop me a line: robertscoble@hotmail.com.