Re: [Tccc] Cost of attendance from developing countries / in general

A few comments regarding the costs:

1. The cheapest room at Globecom in Hawai was 215 USD with the tax. This
means mostly invited guests and corporate people can stay at the
conference venue. With respect to the regulations for public employees
in Lower Saxony in Germany, I am not even allowed to pay 215 USD per
night (unless that is the only hotel in Hawaii).

2. Hawaii is not exactly a cheap destination. It costs 1000 Euro to fly
to Hawaii from Germany (sorry for being EU centric).

3. Many people need a visa to enter the USA. This includes many EU
citizens such as from Poland, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria etc. The visa
costs 131 USD. If you need to travel to apply for visa, it can cost as
much as 200 Euro to get it. There is no guarantee that you get it.

We are looking at min. 2500 Euro (3750 USD) per head in costs. How many
PUBLIC research institutions can afford to pay 2500 Euro per head and,
at the same time, to send several people to the conference so that any
questions relevant to a presentation can be well answered?

Martin Drozda

Joe Touch wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> FWIW, none of my points were US-specific. In fact, they're based on
> meetings held at universities in Europe:
>
> a) students are out of their dorms only 2-3 summer months
>
> b) when students are out of their room, they're not around to interact with
>
> b) universities charge for setup/cleaning
>
> c) food costs dominate
>
> Yes, I gave Cornell as one example of where a large university dominates
> a town where when the school closes for the summer adjacent businesses
> do too. This is somewhat less noticeable in the EU, because those summer
> businesses are often shut down for about 1/3-1/2 of the summer anyway
> (speaking as one who has wandered areas of Oslo in specific looking for
> a restaurant or museum, only to find out that even the parrot homed with
> the Kon-Tiki was "away on holiday").
>
> Joe
>
> Waltenegus Dargie wrote:
>> It is just funny,
>>
>> The whole time these discussions are made, the implicit assumption is
>> that the conferences are taking place in the US, though the initial
>> question, if I am not mistaken, was made by someone from Norway...
>>
>> Walteneguss:
>>
>> Joe Touch schrieb:
>>
>>
>> Miroslav Skoric wrote:
>>
>>>>> Ruay-Shiung Chang wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> Please see the following Letter-to-the-editor in the October issue
>>>>>> of IEEE Computer magazine.
>>>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>>
>>>>>> To rectify the situation, conferences should be returned to
>>>>>> university campuses where there are many classrooms that could be
>>>>>> used as conference rooms. The professors and students could help
>>>>>> organize and provide services for the conferences. Lodgings around
>>>>>> universities typically are relatively inexpensive. It would be
>>>>>> possible to reduce the budget for holding conferences and decrease
>>>>>> the attendance fees.
>>>>>>
>> A few points on this:
>>
>> - assuming this were viable, this would push all our conferences in the
>> June - mid-August timeframe
>>
>>
>>>>> In addition, when lunches and/or conference banquets are provided
>>>>> (either included in registration or offered for a small fee) within
>>>>> the campuses - the more chances to feel academic lifestyle and mingle
>>>>> with students in a foreign educational institution.
>>>>>
>> - you can't mingle with students and stay in their rooms at the same
>> time. I.e., whenever the rooms are available, it's because the students
>> are gone
>>
>> - not only are the students gone, but many campus services shut down as
>> a result. at universities homed in small towns (Cornell being one I have
>> experience with), this shutdown spreads out to the surrounding town,
>> i.e, some restaurants are closed
>>
>> The final point is that what universities contribute doesn't help the
>> bottom line that much. Food still costs money, and dominates the overall
>> fees. The only way to substantially reduce meeting costs is to:
>>
>> - do not provide lunch ($35-40/day)
>> - do not provide breakfast ($25/day)
>> - do not provide coffee breaks ($25/day)
>> - do not provide a reception ($40-50)
>> - do not provide a banquet ($80-100)
>>
>> Skip all these on a three day meeting and your overall costs will drop
>> by $400 or so. Even if university costs drop *all* of these by 25%
>> (which would be a lot, and would mean every event was at the
>> university), that only saves $100.
>>
>> Joe
> _______________________________________________
> Tccc mailing list
> Tccc@lists.cs.columbia.edu
> https://lists.cs.columbia.edu/cucslists/listinfo/tccc
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32)
>
> iEYEARECAAYFAksaujgACgkQE5f5cImnZru6/gCgm++GBc2P02PRY1St+zM/FTDs
> gn4An3MZqh7OBtGQlyQ0a7J5jH8t5Hvj
> =AMGx
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> Tccc mailing list
> 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