I've said it before and I'll say it again: I can't stand them editorially speaking but the NYT is hands-down the best paper in the world at taking advantage of modern web technology.

This shows, in almost painful detail, the bifurcation of the economy I was talking about earlier. Those of us who are college educated with a few years of experience could be excused for not knowing we are in a recession (4.3%). New graduates have it tougher (8.X%). Folks without high school diplomas are in total crisis.

(The highest unemployment rate, to the surprise of essentially no one: black men 15-24 with no degree. Its 8.5%... sorry, missed a digit, 48.5%.)

I spent 7 years helping to build one of the largest speaking bureaus in the country before leaving a couple years ago to launch an unrelated startup. Couple observations:

The business is dominated by celebrities. If you are an event planner often all you care about is getting people to show up-- so you'll pay $30k for a celebrity who is a lousy speaker over $5k for someone who is a real expert.

We made a real effort to develop some tech related speakers but it was difficult to do. It's not worth it for a large agency to book 1-2k engagements. More importantly, if you want to have a speaking career you have to be consistent in your pricing. You can't charge someone $5k for a speech and then give your next speech away for $500. Most tech speakers if you tell them they can't accept any dates less than $5k they really don't like that. Often what has gotten them recognition is giving away their content (both on the web and speaking) for free or nearly-free and so the shift is hard to make because in the short term they have to turn down free exposure.

Sadly most of the tech speakers making 10-20k are total wankers. You've probably never heard of them and they are mostly full of shit. They haven't done anything particularly remarkable but they have their pitch down and know how to sell it to bureaus and CEOs. I've seen people walk away with $15k for a one hour talk about how second life is the future of business accompanied by a walk through-- and the audience walks away with a big chubby. What a joke.

So it's a "long tail" mouse.

If you are a black man between 15-24 with no high school diploma, changing the color of your skin (to white) has more positive impact than getting that high school diploma.