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

Roch,

Yes, I agree it is not an easy sell to business -- ultimately though,
that is the goal (I would assume) -- to transition something useful to
society. We should find "best practices" to make the aspect of
demonstrating business impact in order to obtain corporate sponsorship
easier on ourselves in the future.

As far as too many conferences, I don't see a problem-- good ideas can
come from anywhere. "May the best conferences survive". [I would
definitely be opposed to artificially propping up or hindering a budding
conference--if those were the alternatives.]

Steve

________________________________

From: Roch Guerin [mailto:guerin@ee.upenn.edu]
Sent: Sunday, December 06, 2009 5:25 PM
To: Bush, Stephen F (GE, Research)
Cc: Joe Touch; Celia Desmond; tccc@lists.cs.columbia.edu;
habib@ccny.cuny.edu
Subject: Re: [Tccc] Cost of attendance from developing countries / in
general

Steve,

Having been there and just finished doing that (with others) for CoNEXT
(and having done it for other conferences in the past), I can attest
that it is not easy, although we did pretty well given the economy. How
well you do will depend in part on the quality and reputation of the
conference, which may help with the darwinistic selection that Tony
hinted at and that is indeed badly needed.

On the other hand, most of the income from corporate sponsors is
typically applied to help students attendance, primarily for students
without papers or other means of support. So I don't think we can or
should view corporate sponsorship as a means to help reduce "regular"
registration fees, at least not on the basis of the typical amounts that
can be raised.

Roch

Bush, Stephen F (GE, Research) wrote:

Can more be done to attract business sponsorship and support of
conferences to offset costs?

[IHMO more businesses/corporations would lend more support --
even in
these tough times -- if some effort went into learning to speak
their
language and present the benefits of conferences in a manner
that better
appealed to their perspective. E.g. how will it eventually
improve
*their* performance, reduce *their* costs, impact *their*
bottom-line,
etc... rather than sometimes giving the appearance of a vacation
for
academics :)]

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: tccc-bounces@lists.cs.columbia.edu
[mailto:tccc-bounces@lists.cs.columbia.edu] On Behalf Of Roch
Guerin
Sent: Sunday, December 06, 2009 4:28 PM
To: Joe Touch
Cc: Celia Desmond; tccc@lists.cs.columbia.edu;
habib@ccny.cuny.edu
Subject: Re: [Tccc] Cost of attendance from developing countries
/ in
general

Joe,

Joe Touch wrote:

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Roch Guerin wrote:
...

Well, none given out from the
conference, but there are subsidies
given out by the SIG - and that money
comes from conference
surpluses. For the SIGCOMM conference,
this includes the SIGCOMM
award winner (who is typically the
keynote), the student award
winner. There are also funds for the
GeoDiversity grants.

Sure, but as you point out, these have *nothing*
to do with the
budget of an individual conference.

They do as follows:

- - when an organization has a surplus, it can afford to
run closer to

the edge of losing money

- - when an organization has no surplus, it needs a
conference to add
to the surplus (e.g., the ACM requires that a SIG have
50% of its
yearly operating budget in surplus)

As a result, how you perceive the "overhead" tax depends
on whether
you
think:
a) you're paying into a fund that you thin you
never see

b) you're paying into a fund that already gives
back
to you this year

We are not debating these. As has been made eminently clear,
this is
not a punctual issue even if there are punctual triggers for
reopening
the debate. We are discussing the outcome of different
approaches to
running conferences, which largely manifest themselves in
differences in
registration fees.

Overhead taxes are not a question of perception, they are a
question of
checks and balances and how much visibility there is in those
checks and
balances. Having that visibility can go a long way towards
addressing
some of those issues, but it is a symptom and not a cause, i.e.,
if
conference costs were all low and consistent, we would be having
this
exchange.

As to travel to the meeting and complementary meetings,
I can speak
for myself right now, for both my roles in the ACM and
the IEEE:

You are not the issue ;-)) and I don't think anyone suggested
you were.
The question is more in terms of how many others end-up asking
for free
registration and travel support on behalf of the conference. I
am not
saying that none of these are valid, but they add-up and at a
minimum
disclosure of how they were incurred and for what purposes would
go a
long way towards either forcing greater discipline or making
people
realize the need for such expenses.

1) I have never received a free registration
EXCEPT when keynote

2) I have never received travel funds, a hotel
room, or
honoraria except as a tutorial presenter (which
is typical
in both organizations, and is part of the
separate tutorial
budget, FWIW)

3) I have no "entertainment budget", and have
never held an
organizational meeting whose expenses were
submitted for
reimbursement

4) the only other "comps" I have received were
things that
the hotel threw into the contract free, e.g.,
larger room
(for every N rooms, they give a room upgrade),
or a plate
of fruit or such

Please also keep in mind that the conference costs also
pay for the
TPC meeting (teleconference, meeting space,
lunch/dinner), and paper
management costs (EDAS fees, DOCOLOC fees, etc.). Some
groups use free

services for this (Sigcomm, e.g.); others (esp. larger
meetings) use
pay services due to issues of scale. These costs are
small, but

nonzero.

As you said, these are small and in my experience are in the
noise when
it comes to determining registration fees.

Roch
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