Just to clarify, in case there is any misunderstanding, as I understand
it neither the AEA nor the ASCE offer lunch boxes, or organise events in
campus (please see links). The ASCE seems to offer even more meals than
the typical ComSoc event and by the cost of the extra tickets, $35-$50,
(for spouses, guests, etc) it seems they are high quality meals
comparable to ComSoc's (besides, ASCE seems to extend same meal
privileges to everyone, even students paying $85 registration, see links).
What AEA does is to offer a basic meal-less registration ($35-$75), and
the possibility of buying tickets for specific meals separately. Please,
do keep in mind that US economists (as well as US civil engineers) are
relatively well-off people, so one can assume their meetings to have
reasonably high quality-of-life standards. To my knowledge, the very top
people do attend the AEA events... anyone in Atlanta 3-5 January is
encouraged to pay the $75 entry fee and check it out. Chances are s/he
will meet several Nobel-prise winners... at least 2008 winner Prof.Paul
Krugman (Princeton Univ.) will be there for sure talking about
"Globalization and the Crisis".
Explaining endowment differences through membership size is in principle
reasonable. One would still need some sort of theory explaining how it
grows somewhat linearly with membership. It is often argued that member
dues are relatively low and hence are insufficient to increase the
endowment (or even maintain it, other things being equal).
From the present discussion and the IEEE own report it would seem that
the main contributor to the IEEE endowment is the academic sector by:
(1) paying a premium for attending conferences that the academic sector
itself organises under the IEEE "brand" -- the comparative conference
data, while preliminary and imperfect, at least suggests that the IEEE
premium nearly doubles the registration fee (even adjusting for meals) --
(2) paying a substantial amount of money to access the IEL which the
academic sector itself produces nearly in its entirety (academics write
the papers, review them, accept/reject them, and even typeset them).
Standards may perhaps also contribute to the endowment but, again, as
far as I know, mostly academic and industry researchers produce them.
Wmbr,
Virgilio
Petri Mähönen wrote:
>
> Mishca: Thanks for numbers. Very credible. And yes, if we start to
> have lunch boxes only in the university
> campus, for many people outside of academia it might get unattractive.
>
> Virgilio: You have to be careful on comparing different entities. And
> just as an example AEA has a
> membership of 17,096 (2008: plus 3726 "subscribers"). IEEE has a
> membership of 382,400 members.
> ACM has 89,000 members (and 22,500 student members). So even in the
> membership sense
> IEEE is 22,5 times larger than AEA. So 13M x 22,5 = 292,5 M.
> Hmm...looks like "endowment" scales
> even with the membership. And no, it is not anomaly, many other
> learned societies have large net
> assets (APS ca. 80M, ACS 337M, ..., IET (UK,Group Total Funds): 83M GBD).
>
> Petri
>
>> Hi, Mischa:
>>
>> Thank you for bringing to our attention the VERY valuable AEA auditors
>> report. It has a wealth of relevant information. In encourage anyone
>> interested in the workings of a prestigious, seemingly highly efficient,
>> and to a degree "rich" professional association to take a good look at
>> it (it is relatively short and non-technical), and learn as much as
>> possible.
>>
>> Can you help me understand why you believe that the AEA is subsidising
>> its annual meetings from the society's general income?
>> What I see on page 4 is Annual meetings REVENUE of
>> $73K and $98K "(net of associated costs of $834,799 and $959,971
>> respectively)".
>> To me this means that the last 2 meetings cost about 900K, but received
>> revenues a bit higher, leaving a seemingly modest average surplus of
>> ca. $85K.
>>
>> Do you not see it that way?
>>
>> On the other hand, the AEA auditor's report indicates total net assets
>> ("reserves") of a mere 13M (decreased from $18M in the previous year for
>> the same global reasons most endowments, including the IEEE's, lost
>> value). This supports my earlier statement that the IEEE 168M endowment
>> is atypical (even if the ACM is also). Economists are not particularly
>> "poor" with respect to engineers, at least not in the US. The fact that
>> the endowment of the AEA seems to be LESS THAN 10% of the IEEE's is
>> certainly thought-provoking. It seems that if any professional society
>> could subsidise meetings is actually the IEEE.
>>
>> On a related note, I commend you for releasing some information about
>> the finances of PIMRC-Cannes.
>> I also noticed that IEEE seems to have an external auditors policy for
>> its large events: http://www.ieee.org/web/conferences/organizers/audit.html
>> Would it be possible for you (or appropriate individual) to release such
>> auditors report concerning the event you mention, preferably with the
>> corresponding line-by-line revenue/cost "spreadsheet" (even with certain
>> items blanked if justifiable)? It could help us a lot to understand the
>> situation. It is also somewhat ironic that we are discussing an auditors
>> report of another society and not one of our own event.
>>
>> Thanks again.
>>
>> Virgilio
>>
>> Mischa Dohler wrote:
>>
>>> Virgilio, all,
>>>
>>> If you look at their audit reports under
>>> http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AEA/PDF_files/2009AuditReport.pdf, you
>>> understand that the conferences costs are subsidized by the society's
>>> general income. There is no way you can get such a low registration fee
>>> at these conference sites.
>>>
>>> I also used to think that IEEE is wasting a lot of money ... until I had
>>> to do a budget myself. For last year's PIMRC in Cannes (which is not so
>>> much more expensive than other places on this planet), about 35% of the
>>> costs went to the site (venue, security, chairs, and all those items Joe
>>> mentioned). A little less than 20% went to all the conference related
>>> staff support before, during and after the conference, which you really
>>> need. About 17% went to the morning coffee/lunch/afternoon coffee and
>>> another 10% went to the social program. The remaining 18% are for issues
>>> like bags, CDROM, etc, etc. The budged was built on a surplus
>>> arrangement of 10% only, to which Comsoc had agreed to!
>>>
>>> We could follow Henning's proposition and go to universities to save the
>>> site costs, ie drive registration down by 35%. We could follow your
>>> suggestion of not providing any beverages and lunch, nor social event,
>>> likely saving us another 30%. Registration fee would hence be down by
>>> more than half. (But then I am thinking, would all these gentlemen in
>>> ties and suite usually attending Globecom really want to go to
>>> university and crunch refectory meals? The majority sees conferences as
>>> a networking event - you could say, a form of "engineering wedding".)
>>>
>>> Another way is to use the society's general budget to subsidize
>>> conferences but I guess that the bookkeepers at the IEEE have done this
>>> exercise and decided that this is not the way to go.
>>>
>>> To conclude, there is no magic. The numbers need to add up. The
>>> registration fees were low in previous years because there was *a lot
>>> of* sponsorship support, which has very much dried out in recent years.
>>>
>>> Mischa.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Virgilio wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> hgs@cs.columbia.edu <mailto:hgs@cs.columbia.edu> writes:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> First, I think it's fine to say "IEEE should run a leaner ship" - as long
>>>>> as the suggestions are concrete and realistic, rather than vague
>>>>> generalities - ....
>>>>> Those dissatisfied with the current society sponsorship model (as opposed
>>>>> to simply wanting to improve it) are also welcome to organize their own
>>>>> events, and to make it more reputable and cheaper than the existing
>>>>> alternatives.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Dear all:
>>>> Concerning above suggestions by Prof. Schulzrinne, and considering lack of
>>>> essential data (spreadsheet), I have made some simple inquiries, and
>>>> arrived at some potentially useful information/ideas:
>>>>
>>>> I checked out websites of a couple of major conferences organised by major
>>>> US professional societies, to see how they do things. I took a quick look
>>>> at the website of the Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association
>>>> to be held in a few weeks. This is a major professional society, of
>>>> world-class standing which I think is fair to compare against the IEEE. I
>>>> did find some rather striking facts:
>>>> a) Their registration fee is only USD75 for NON-members (a bit less for
>>>> members).
>>>> b) Meals not included of course, but luncheon-type meals available for ca.
>>>> USD50 each (To compare to typical ComSoc events, 3 lunches and reception
>>>> would add about $200, for a total registration of... $275 for
>>>> NON-members).
>>>> c) Headquarter hotel, a Marriot property, only $99/ singles, $119doubles,
>>>> and plenty others offered at the similar rates.
>>>> D) All this in downtown of a major US city (easy/cheap transport): Atlanta.
>>>> Unreal?:
>>>> http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AEA/Annual_Meeting/pdfs/Registration_Form_2010.pdf
>>>> http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AEA/Annual_Meeting/pdfs/Housing_Rates_2010.pdf
>>>> By comparison, Globecom'09 registration ranged from $600 (Lmtd. ComSoc
>>>> members) up to $1220 (late NON-members). Headquaters hotel started at
>>>> $189.00
>>>> The most recent major IEEE- ComSoc event held in Atlanta seems to be
>>>> WCNC'04. Even back then, registration ranged $625-$875 and Headquarters
>>>> hotel started at $189.
>>>>
>>>> Now, some might say that because this society is outside engineering its
>>>> costs are not relevant. I do not see why, but still looked at the website
>>>> of the 2009 annual meeting of the ASCE (civil engineering) recently held
>>>> in Kansas City Marriott Downtown:
>>>> http://content.asce.org/conferences/annual2009/registration.html
>>>> Registration started at $445 for regular members (including 1 recept, 2
>>>> breakfasts, 2 luncheons), but only at $225 for "younger members" (recent
>>>> grads?) and $85 for students (apparently ALL enjoyed same meal privileges)
>>>> -- probably younger members and students were the vast majority, so the
>>>> average registration paid may have been close to that paid by the
>>>> economists! -- . A dinner ($95) and a "theme party" ($15 to $45) were
>>>> optional.
>>>>
>>>> Considering the above, and inspired by Prof. Schulzrinne's comments I
>>>> propose the following "challenge" to everyone:
>>>>
>>>> "reverse-engineer" Globecom '10!!
>>>>
>>>> By this I mean that each tries to propose a budget to re-do Globecom'10.
>>>> The locaton, if not Hawaii, should be as similar as possible, and the
>>>> total cost of attendance should be considered (flight from a nearby major
>>>> hub, expected accommodation costs, etc). I suppose 10 days to come up with
>>>> the "fantasy" budget would be reasonable, and then the community somehow
>>>> chooses a "winner" (prise? collective admiration!). Do you agree that this
>>>> exercise would be interesting and valuable (and very much in accordance
>>>> with the quoted suggestions above)?
>>>>
>>>> Wmbr,
>>>>
>>>> Virgilio
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Tccc mailing list
>>>> Tccc@lists.cs.columbia.edu <mailto:Tccc@lists.cs.columbia.edu>
>>>> https://lists.cs.columbia.edu/cucslists/listinfo/tccc
>>>>
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Tccc mailing list
>>> Tccc@lists.cs.columbia.edu <mailto:Tccc@lists.cs.columbia.edu>
>>> https://lists.cs.columbia.edu/cucslists/listinfo/tccc
>>>
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Tccc mailing list
>> Tccc@lists.cs.columbia.edu <mailto:Tccc@lists.cs.columbia.edu>
>> https://lists.cs.columbia.edu/cucslists/listinfo/tccc
>>
_______________________________________________
Tccc mailing list
Tccc@lists.cs.columbia.edu
https://lists.cs.columbia.edu/cucslists/listinfo/tccc
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment