There are several measures that should be instated to stop the out-of-control increase in registeration fees.
Most revolve around cutting down expenses and fiscal management and responsibility.
Examples that folks have pointed out include:
1) The profit or surplus that conferences make should be minimized. It does not have to be 20 or 30%. Some number like 10% or 5% should be fine. This alone would pass on lots of savings to the attendees.
2) There is no need that this profit or surplus go to subsidize journal publications. Other ways of subsidizing journal publications should be devised. It does not make sense that folks who go to conferences pay to subsidize journals that they may not be even subscribers of.
3) Freebies that go to senior volunteers and executives should be eliminated or minimized. It does not make sense to pay a volunteer his or her travel expenses, hotel room or suite, and free registeration. This cost is passed on to the attendees hiking the registeration fees.
A system should be placed such as: invited speakers should have free registeration but not travel. Some volunteers who are organizing the conference (namely the general chair and TPC chair)should get free registeration but that is about it. Everyone else should pay registeration fees and for their travel expenses.
It is a fact that hotels do provide a limited number of free rooms nights and one or two suites for a limited number of IEEE executives and conference volunteers as part of the negotiated package. However, in some cases, the conference still pays for additional volunteers and executives. Furthermore, their travel expenses such as airline tickets (some times business classs) and limos should not be paid by the conference. This should stop; enough is enough.
4)IEEE staff members are already paid by the IEEE. There is no need to charge the conference for their time. However, the conference should pay for their travel expenses and incidentals.
5) It makes a lot of sense to conduct meetings in research labs and universities as opposed to expensive 5 stars hotels.
6) Food functions and social events could be eliminated. A single social gathering could be sufficient.
7) The community will be much better served by focusing the number of conferences and workshops into a limited number, and end this nonsense of tens or hundreds of meetings every year. In addition to the obvious confusion, it just takes time from the IEEE professional staff and overloads them unnecessarily.
We are all suffering from huge registeration fees and the exceedingly large number of conferences. Adopting the above measures could cut down registeration fees by 25 or 30% maybe even more.
I wuld like to suggest to call upon a group of our colleagues to take a mandate from our community to the IEEE BoG and other elected volunteers to act upon our suggestions. I suggest to have some of the IEEE staff work out the exact numbers and find out how much savings would be passed on.
Prof. Ibrahim Habib
Director Advanced Networking Research Lab
Dept. of Electrical Engineering
City University of New York
>---- Original message ----
>>Date: Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:41:22 -0500
>>From: Roch Guerin <guerin@ee.upenn.edu>
>>Subject: Re: [Tccc] Cost of attendance from developing countries / in general
>>To: Joe Touch <touch@ISI.EDU>
>>Cc: habib@ccny.cuny.edu,Celia Desmond <c.desmond@sympatico.ca>,tccc@lists.cs.columbia.edu
>>
>>Joe,
>>
>>Points well-taken. On the other hand "not for profit" and "fiscal
>>responsibility" are two different concepts. I would argue that many
>>conferences could run a tighter budget and pass the savings on to attendees.
>>Let me make just one punctual and I believe representative comparison:
>>- ACM CoNEXT 2009 early registration for (ACM and SIGCOMM) members:
>>$525 (it was $525 last year - an increase of 0%, and btw so was it in 2007)
>>- IEEE INFOCOM 2010 early registration for (ComSoc) members: $750 (it
>>was $680 last year - an increase of over 10%, and it was $695 in 2008??)
>>
>>Looking just at the latest numbers, this amounts to a $225 difference
>>(about 40%) for essentially similar "services," and that cannot be
>>simply brushed aside. Someone and something is responsible for it.
>>
>>I don't want to point any finger, but conferences need to make a
>>concerted effort to minimize ancillary costs that end-up being passed
>>onto all attendees through higher registration fees. In particular,
>>some conferences have a tradition of freebies for volunteers that I
>>personally find distasteful, and that play no small role in raising
>>their costs (e.g., CoNEXT has no free registrations or travel subsidies
>>for anyone except local student helpers who receive a free student
>>registration). I believe it is time to take a hard look at what this is
>>costing all of us.
>>
>>If some conferences manage to keep their costs stable, why is it that
>>others cannot - and I'm sorry but I have run enough conferences and
>>reviewed enough conference budgets not to buy any of the excuses I have
>>heard for why this is not possible....
>>
>>My 2c,
>>
>>Roch
>>
>>Joe Touch wrote:
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>> Hash: SHA1
>>>
>>> Habib,
>>>
>>> I want to reiterate Celia's point. I've seen the budgets for the IEEE
>>> and ACM on this point. There is a 15-20% charge to meetings that goes
>>> back to the parent organization, but it's not "profit" by any means.
>>> That money goes as follows:
>>>
>>> - when conferences lose money (and they sometimes do),
>>> that money helps cover the loss
>>>
>>> - conferences receive support from the IEEE that costs
>>> money:
>>> - they negotiate contracts with the hotels and
>>> banquet sites, often getting much reduced rates
>>> because the IEEE will return soon, even though a given
>>> conference will not return for many years
>>>
>>> - they insure us. if a paper is submitted and someone
>>> decides it was handled improperly, the IEEE helps
>>> indemnify us against such suits. they also help
>>> us if/when someone is injured at a meeting
>>>
>>> - the support us via their website and advertisements
>>> e.g., including us in their list of upcoming meetings,
>>> etc
>>>
>>> - as Celia noted, in the IEEE the conferences also help support
>>> the journals. the fees for each journal do not pay the costs
>>> required to publish it
>>>
>>> I have run numerous conferences in both the IEEE and ACM. In both cases
>>> I have received substantial support from staff - staff who are
>>> full-time, who are paid employees of the IEEE.
>>>
>>> As Celia noted, if you doubt *any* of this, please look at the numbers
>>> first.
>>>
>>> Joe
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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>>> iEYEARECAAYFAksb8u0ACgkQE5f5cImnZrtoMACcC6bNNaVkTMzc9KWB9OAg0hRY
>>> pDcAoMzzmYwOqwKFjbn1bnxSrZyXNRNs
>>> =RRt+
>>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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