A sincere thank you (truly) for your interest in having me speak to your group. I appreciate the request already. I also receive over 150 requests a year. Here’s what makes me excited to say yes to some of them:

• Paid travel and stipend. Travelling from the island of Newfoundland takes one to three full days. Because I have to take leave and cover care duties while away, I am always out of pocket and falling behind in work. Money helps. My usual minimum rate for a talk starts at $1,200. I always book my own flights for reimbursement (local airports require local knowledge!).
• Conversation over broadcast. Telling people about my work is fine, but learning together is better. I tend to say yes to smaller gatherings, workshops, interview-style discussion formats, and reading groups. My favourite are talks that include a separate session of sharing works-in-progress with 2-3 colleagues. My absolute favourite are work-in-progress sessions that include fiction. I will almost always say yes to trips that allow me to meet with an existing collaborator face to face.
• Time. If it takes one to three full days of travel, staying in a place for one and a half days is difficult math. Time helps with quality of life, both intellectually and bodily. I look for stays of a few days that might include time in an archive or doing interviews for Chore Theory, Indigenous Quantitative Methods, or one of my other projects, time in discussion, and of course, time workshopping works-in-progress. Sometimes, it just means arranging flights so I can spend extra days in a new place, with or without colleagues. In that case, I pay for my extra days of accommodation.
• London. I have ongoing research and collaborators in London and the UK, and love to go. I often arrange trips so my flights travel through London with a stopover.
• Not the US. I cannot cross the US border. I hope that changes soon, since it would indicate a lot of other needed changes.
• What about online talks? Online talks require an honorarium, with some exceptions for audiences actively engaged in social movement or change work that are using the talk more as a consultation on a specific problem. Online interactions can still prioritize collaboration over broadcast, and be set up so there is more intellectual texture than speaking to 100 muted boxes. See above.

Not all of these have to be met for me to accept an invitation, but they are absolutely the cheat sheet for getting me excited.

A note on timelines: I tend to book up 6-18 months in advance. I rarely travel between December-February because most flights out of Newfoundland are cancelled or delayed at least twice in storm season.