I’m sitting in Orlando International Airport and processing a lot of thoughts. Saturday, I gave my first keynote at IZEAFest which is an event that is, at it’s core, an opportunity for bloggers and online marketers to extend their reach online. My talk was about Influence and is loosely based around the 8 Traits of Highly Effective Influencers post I wrote back in March.

My goal in the keynote was to provide insights that other speakers might shy away from giving because, in general, people like to be coddled and told what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. I knew going into the session that I might ruffle some feathers, but I love the online community so much that I thought it would be a disservice to bring a message that enabled destructive behavior. We don’t need no rockstars, especially rockstars with no substance. What we do need are people who recognize the powerful principles that have made people influencers for thousands of years. There is nothing new under the sun.

I do want to expound on this concept of transparency, a topic I addressed in my keynote. Transparency is absolutely essential, but transparency only makes it easier to see inside. You have to be transparent to sell services, business and trust. However, if the content of your character sucks, then transparency only ensures that the world will see it. Transparency solves no problems if you suck as a person or your product sucks because it just does. It may be better to worry about your DNA then worry about making sure the world can see it. Just saying.

You can see some outtakes here.

There’s been a bit of buzz about the session that you can read too.

• Are you an Influencer? – from WebWorkerDaily.com
• IZEAFest 2009 in Review – from Michael Quale
• Tongue Wagging at IZEAFest – from George G. Smith, Jr.
• Fleeting influence on the web – from Amber Naslund

Of course, my new friend Missy Ward made sure I met Murray Newlands: “Oh you need to do an interview with Aaron Brazell!” – I’ll make sure that info is out and about when it happens as well.

In about a week, I’m on my way back to Las Vegas for Blog World Expo and to speak at WordCamp Las Vegas. In case you’re wondering, the topic is a bit clever – Star Wars Quotes: The WordPress Genius They Are (think Yoda’s voice) where I’ll be sharing some guiding principles around WordPress, open source and the community. So if you’re in town for the show, stop by and say hi.

Finally, regarding speaking… I have spoken 28 times in 2009. Universally, I am not paid to speak. In some cases, like with Blog World Expo and IZEAFest, expenses are covered and I’m grateful. Generally, however, they are not. Most of these events are local things and constitute no real travel time, but still impact the timeline I have available for client work, etc.

Beginning in 2010, I’ll be looking to have some sort of fee structure involved with speaking opportunities. While I will always leave the door open for unpaid opportunities where it makes sense, it makes no real sense to do 28 speaking engagements in a year and not get paid for it. I want to provide that heads up as we’re entering the final stretch of 2009 and I’m lining up opportunities for 2010. If you do want me to speak to your company, industry event, or community group, please email me at aaron@technosailor.com so we can start working those details out.

Until then, follow me elsewhere in the interwebz:

• @technosailor on Twitter
• Aaron Brazell on Facebook
• Aaron Brazell on LinkedIn

We had some technical difficulties that prevented me from using the slide deck I had prepared, but I had promised to make the deck available here. As with all presentations I do, the deck is released under Creative Commons Attribution/Non-commercial. That means use it all day long into next week as long as you credit me and aren’t making money off of it.

For commercial entities, I’m happy to come speak to your staff or clients on this or related topics. Please feel free to contact me regarding topics and rates at aaron@technosailor.com.

Here’s the video, courtesy of Mark Hopkins at Mashable:

Thank you everybody for the great feedback and Mashable for recording the uStream.

The slide deck can be viewed in the video. Enjoy and thank you.

Update: Here’s the slide deck. Though the ideas are free for anyone to use, the presentation itself is is not open source. It is for personal use, non-commercial use only.

Update 2: Lots of problems getting this slide deck into an accessible format. YouTube seems to work best.

For more information, or to RSVP visit the Buzz Bin. See you there.