Re: [Tccc] presentations by non-authors

Vicious circle: Journal subscription revenue is down due to access to electronic libraries, fewer people, relatively speaking, are members of IEEE and ACM, and so conferences are the one remaining source of revenue. The typical "profit margin" of a society is 20% of the fee, but this is not pure profit, as it is also insurance against conferences losing money (which does happen, primarily due to unexpected circumstances). From my experience, it's the general chairs that set conference budgets and fees, and they rarely try to make money for the sponsoring society, beyond the 20% requirement, so I don't think that explains the cost increases. I can't speak for very large events like Infocom, Globecom and ICC.

There are many reasons for the increased costs, besides (maybe) greed/financial necessity. There are two not-so-obvious ones:

- People now expect lunches to be part of the conference - it helps to make it more of a community event, but a single lunch in a hotel can cost $50 (captive market...).

- Hotels (at least in the US) used to provide no-cost meeting facilities if a room block was reserved for attendees. With the help of various Internet hotel booking sites, many more attendees stay outside the conference hotel and the risk for the conference is too high, so this has become uncommon.

Universities are a good alternative for small to mid-sized events, but many universities now also charge room rental fees.

Henning

On Dec 4, 2009, at 8:29 AM, Arunabha Sen wrote:

> Can anybody explain why the registration fees for these conferences should run from $750 upwards? It seems that conferences have become money making instruments of various organizations and individuals.
>

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