Re: [Tccc] summary of current conference concerns

Hello all,

I've been following this email thread avidly since the 1st day and, I
believe, this is a good time for me to step in and provide some "official"
responses to some of the questions of ComSoc. I have been reluctant to
interject before because I was afraid of interrupting or diverting many of
the thoughtful responses to conference questions ... along with the quirky
and funny responses (I loved the "Gotterdammerung" line, Tony). The
discussion thread has given me much food for thought.

Who am I? Well, I've been a TCCC member since the mid-90s and have held
nearly every conference position from student volunteer to Steering Chair,
with the notable exception of TPC Chair -- a position for which I have the
utmost respect. I have also served as ComSoc's Director of Meeting and
Conferences (2006-2007) and Director of Conference Development (2008-2009).
I have also been involved in hotel conference contract negotiations for my
conference (IEEE SECON) for a couple of years. As such, I will be able to
answer some of the questions you've posed about conferences. When I can't, I
will say so and defer to others who have volunteered to help answer. They
are, in random order, ...

- Heiner Stuettgen, my successor as ComSoc Director Conference
Development (2010-2011)
- Mark Karol, ComSoc VP Conferences
- Celia Desmond, Comsoc President Emeritus who wears too many hats for me
to list. [BTW, Celia has been very active collecting answers for this list.
Thanks Celia]
- Moshe Kam, IEEE President-Elect 2010
- and others as we need to figure out answers to questions

Joe has done a nice job of keeping the discussion focused and organized, as
well as talking to me and giving me the background I needed to understand
some of the comments. Here's a recent summary of issues. Let's take them one
at a time.

1- reducing non-author presenters
ACTION: it seems like the most direct solution would be to
change the Comsoc requirements for a "full-time registration per
paper" to state that this must be a named author, and to
allow the existing rules for exceptions (at the
discretion of the chairs) to address unusual cases.

When Lars started this discussion, it was a plea to reduce the number of
non-authors presenting papers. I talked to him at Globecom and he'd hit a
case where a significant portion of presenters said something like "this
isn't my presentation, so I don't know" when asked questions after the
presentation. This seems a shame for many reasons. At the ComSoc Conferences
Council meeting at Globecom, we proposed requiring that a paper be presented
by *someone* to be included in IEEE Explore using the reasoning that
*someone* was better than a no-show presenter. Based on the many and long
responses from this list, we've since gone back to think about requiring an
*author* to be the presenter. Note that this approach is also open to abuse
(e.g. the co-author who is only contribution was his/her name), but it is a
step in the right direction. Thanks for that.

2- support for resource-challenged authors
ACTION: TCCC should identify resources for such authors
to be able to attend meetings in person, or to present
at meetings where attendance isn't possible.

In principle this seems like a worthy goal. Unfortunately to make 2010 a
balanced budget we had to cut many items, including our more conventional
student travel grants. While some of you have noted that IEEE has done
reasonably well this year, ComSoc has not (more on that later). In short,
the money for this fund would need to come from outside ComSoc. Perhaps a
simple list of potential granters for authors reference is a start here?

3- meeting costs
- cost trends
- costs associated with executive committee members
- costs associated with other free registrations
- other ways to reduce costs
- university locations
- LEAN meetings (bag lunches, etc.)
+ virtual/remote presentations
+ * (see above) reduced fees for 'research' presenters,
e.g., published/PC/exec members in past year

- pointers to conference planning information where
available
+ surplus/defecit info for specific meetings
and journals

This portion of the thread has certainly generated a great deal of
discussion and there's a fair amount of guesses going on as to how this all
works. Allow me to step back and describe ComSoc conference organization.

To begin with, each conference is run by a standing, steering, or organizing
committee committee rather than the society itself. The members of each such
committee are responsible for the overall conference, including its budget.
You can see who is on each steering committee by following the links on
webpage http://ww2.comsoc.org/conferences/portfolio-events. Go ahead, I'll
wait. Each such committee makes autonomous decisions about the conference,
adhering to a IEEE and ComSoc policies as dictated by its type. Roughly
speaking there are 3 types of conferences for the purposes of this
discussion: Conferences in which ComSoc has a majority financial interest
(e.g. ICC, Globecom, INFOCOM, NOMS/IM), conferences in which ComSoc has a
minority financial interest (e.g. MILCOM, OFC, PIMRC), and conferences which
are simply technically co-sponsored by ComSoc (e.g. Hot Interconnects).
Those conferences that are majority owned by ComSoc are most directly
controlled by the society. Those that are minority owned may or may not
adhere to ComSoc policies, although they typically do. The last group of
conferences, those that are technical co-sponsored have 3 or more ComSoc
members involved in the technical program of the conference, but are
independent conferences in every other respect. Each conference, independent
of its type, has its own goals and style. ICC and Globecom, for example, are
run by the GIMS (GLOBECOM/ICC Management and Strategy) committee. You can
find GIMS along with other ComSoc committees on website
http://ww2.comsoc.org/about/committees/standing. Talking about ComSoc
conferences as a uniform group, behaving identically is a fiction. Each
committee is (and should be) fiercely independent since each's subject
matter, audience, and organization is unique.

As others have already noted, IEEE as a whole ended the year on a positive
note. ComSoc, on the other hand, will end close to even or perhaps a little
down in 2009. Why, you ask? Conferences, Journals, electronic downloads from
IEEE Explore, the new wireless certification effort, on-line tutorials and
other efforts contribute to ComSoc's bottom line. Each year year some do
well while others lose money. This year conferences were mixed, some ending
in a deficit and others finishing below projections. In addition advertising
revenue and subscriptions were weaker than expected. IEEE insists that each
society maintain a reserve for a rainy day. This reserve or the interest it
accrues is used to get the society through bad years, such as this one. This
year, for example, the interest from the reserve has proved the difference
between running a deficit and ending on a zero budget. Can't we simply empty
the reserves and distribute it to the conferences, you ask? No actually.
There are very strict rules about how the reserve may be used. Isn't it
simply growing fatter each year then? No each year we struggle to come up
with a balanced budget for the society as a whole and maintain the proper
reserves. Do conference revenues contribute to this budget? Absolutely!
Conferences represent a little over 50% of our revenue and also a little
less than that portion of our expenses. Which leads me to my next subject.

Conference expenses at ICC/Globecom. Many of you have commented that you see
ComSoc staff members, Board of Governors (BoG) members, and TC committee
meetings at ICC and Globecom. This list seems to have the impression that
these folks are supported directly by your registration fees. In fact, we
(BoG members, TC members, etc) and the associated staff work out of a budget
that is separate from ICC/Globecom. The simplest way to think of this is
that there are 2 separate meetings coincidentally occurring in the same
hotel. The reason the BoG decided to do this ages ago is to allow the GIMS
committee the greatest possible leverage when negotiating with the hotel,
yet maintain independence of the 2 budgets. During the meeting, BoG and
committee expenses are paid out of one part of the society budget and
ICC/Globecom costs are paid out the conference budget. It is true that BoG
members may, if they wish to, attend sessions at the conference. Their
additional financial burden (CD, bag) are taken out of the society's budget,
not the conference's budget. In 2009 we spent less than we budgeted for BoG
and TC committee meetings. That money will help balance 2009's budget.

Who picks the ICC/Globecom sites anyway? The GIMS committee has the job of
site selection. The webpage that describes the process in detail is
http://cms.comsoc.org/GIMS/Content/Home/Site_Selection_.html. Groups that
wish to host an ICC/Globecom put together a bid and present it at a GIMS
meeting. The process is quite detailed and includes a number of checks and
balances to avoid significant errors. The group that organized Hawaii this
year made several presentations to GIMS before being selected.

So why are expenses so high for conferences? Where does the money go? Fair
questions. To help answer them, I've come up with a sample budget for a
100-person conference in the US with a poster/demo session, a keynote, and 2
parallel paper sessions over 3 days. To set expectations, this hypothetical
conference will occur in a city with friendly occupancy tax rates (<20%),
moderate room rates ($120-200), and moderate food and beverage charges
(~$35/person for lunch, including service charges). The fees I am using are
typical, although prices will fluctuate with market conditions. I choose the
US simply because it the market with which I am most familiar. We can do
similar examples for Asia or Europe if needed.

Hypothetical ComSoc Conference
100 Attendees
US Location
2 Parallel sessions
60 Papers Presented @ 9 pages/each
2 Panels
1 Poster session

$10,500.00 Lunch (100 @ $35/attendee X 3 days)
$4,000.00 Opening Reception (100 @ $40/attendee)
$6,000.00 Breaks (100 @ $20/each day's breaks X 3 days)
----------------
$20,500.00 Food & Beverage sub-total (note: typical f&b minimums are
$30,000 - $50,000)

$8,100.00 Proceedings, preperation, production, and shipping (600
pages @ $15/page)
$4,500.00 WiFi for 100 ($1500 X 3 days)
$4,000.00 Conference Center Rental
$3,000.00 Audio/Visual Charges (includes labor)
$3,000.00 Registration services, both on-site and pre-conference
(includes on-site labor)
$3,000.00 Bank charges (e.g. credit card charges, audit)
$2,000.00 Posterboard rental for poster session (8 posterboards @ $250
each. Includes assembly, shipping, disassembly)
$1,000.00 Final Program Production / Shipping
$1,000.00 Keynote Honoraria (1 Keynotes @ $1000 each)
$600.00 4 emails to ComSoc members
----------------
$50,700.00
$10,140.00 IEEE 20% surplus requirement
----------------
$60,840.00 Total expenses

$608.40 Attendee share of costs

Notes:
1) This budget does not include complimentary registrations for anyone, no
travel support, no upgrades.
2) The 20% surplus requirement is an IEEE-wide requirement and represents
the overhead of maintaining the legal and logistical parts of IEEE that
support conferences. It is not a contingency fee.
3) If we wish to charge students less than full members, we will need to
adjust registration fees upwards depending on the proportion of students
attending the conference. Some young conference will have a significant
portion of their audience be students, so we may need to accomodate 20% or
more of the attendees at student fees.
4) Increasingly conference attendees stay at hotels other than the
conference hotel. This means that even moderate hotels such as this one may
insist on a large food and beverage minimum (typically $30-$50K) or a
conference room rental. I have included a $4K room rental fee since food and
beverage costs are only $20K.
5) The food and beverage charges here will only support moderate food items
like basic coffee/donut service and a basic "rubber chicken" style lunch.
The reception fare will also be a simple cheese and crackers style event.
6) "Internet" in this context is likely to be a SOHO box (e.g. netgear,
d-link) plugged into a wall. These boxes only support <100 wifi clients
well.
7) Starting this year, there is a nominal charge for each email message out
to ComSoc's members.

Suppose we, the organizing committee, create this budget, and decide that
registration is too high. What can we eliminate? Let's try some scenarios
out:
1) Proceedings charges. Each IEEE conference organizer must produce a set of
proceedings suitable for distribution at the conference and in IEEE Explore.
The list of requirements is here:
http://www.ieee.org/web/conferences/organizers/pubs/conference_publications.html.
A conference organizer has 2 choices: self-serve (IEEE PDF express) or pay
for service (IEEE eXpress or Conference Publishing Services). The table
showing the differences between IEEE eXpress and IEEE PDF express is here:
http://www.ieee.org/web/publications/pubservices/confpub/compare.html. Let's
assume we choose a self-serve, reducing the production costs to $0. We find
a Pubs chair willing to take on the work outlined in the PDF express
instructions:
http://www.ieee.org/web/conferences/organizers/pubs/preparing_content.html#organizer.
(Note that other alternatives exist, but I simply wanted to present a high
and low alternative).
2) Registration services: This charge includes a person at IEEE who
personally handles registration, updates records, handles special cases, and
generates reports for the organizers. Conference registration requirements
are described in this webpage:
http://www.ieee.org/web/conferences/organizers/registration.html. An
alternative is to opt for on-line only registration with a minimum of
hand-holding. This drops the fee to around $1K, but we will need a
registration chair who must be on top of all registration details and be at
the registration desk the entire conference to handle exceptions (that's
7am-7pm every day, including the last day).
3) We could opt for bag-lunches instead of a sit-down lunch. This would
likely drop lunch charges to the $12.50/person range.
4) What about using a University site for the conference? An aside, I have
personally approached UC Berkeley, Stanford, Santa Clara University, UC
Santa Cruz, UC San Diego, and Georgia Tech for bids on an IEEE conference.
Let me assure you, Universities either (a) doesn't allow outside groups to
hold conferences there or (b) charges market rate for their space and
services (including the Internet! Yes. I was shocked too). The answer here
is that the organizing committee will need a faculty member on that campus
to sponsor that conference. (Prof Tobagi does that each for Hot
Interconnects at Stanford). A university venue sponsored by a faculty member
on that campus will likely mean the charge for the space will disappear, but
other charges (A/V, food and beverage, Internet charges, custodial, etc)
remain the same. Let us assume a University can accomodate the conference
and elimates the $4K venue rental charge.

OK. Where does this leave our hypothetical committee?

Hypothetical ComSoc Conference
100 Attendees
US Location
2 Parallel sessions
60 Papers Presented @ 9 pages/each
2 Panels
1 Poster session

$3,750.00 Lunch (100 @ $12.50/attendee X 3 days)
$4,000.00 Opening Reception (100 @ $40/attendee)
$6,000.00 Breaks (100 @ $20/each day's breaks X 3 days)
----------
$13,750.00 Food & Beverage sub-total (note: typical f&b minimums are
$30,000 - $50,000)

self-serve Proceedings, preperation, production, and shipping (600
pages @ $15/page)
$4,500.00 WiFi for 100 ($1500 X 3 days)
waived Conference Center Rental
$3,000.00 Audio/Visual Charges (includes labor)
$1,000.00 Registration services, self-serve
$3,000.00 Bank charges (e.g. credit card charges, audit)
$2,000.00 Posterboard rental for poster session (8 posterboards @ $250
each. Includes assembly, shipping, disassembly)
$1,000.00 Final Program Production / Shipping
$1,000.00 Keynote Honoraria (1 Keynotes @ $1000 each)
$600.00 4 emails to ComSoc members
----------
$29,850.00
$5,970.00 IEEE 20% surplus requirement
----------
$35,820.00 Total expenses

$358.20 Attendee share of costs

Can we lower registration fees further? Sure. It is simply a matter of what
features we, the organizing committee, deem necessary and which we consider
expendable. There is a lower bound, although I suspect it involves a
warehouse somewhere in rurual America with concrete floors, folding chairs,
instant coffee, teabags, and a styrofoam cup as a conference give-away.
Cheap, but I'm not sure anyone wants to go that low.

How easy is it to go higher? Very easy. Here is a very believable conference
budget for the same conference in a popular city downtown (think San
Francisco, New York City, or Chicago)

Hypothetical ComSoc Conference
100 Attendees
US Location
2 Parallel sessions
60 Papers Presented
2 Panels
1 Poster session

$15,000.00 Lunch (100 @ $50/attendee X 3 days)
$9,000.00 Opening Reception (100 @ $90/attendee)
$7,500.00 Breaks (100 @ $25/each day's breaks X 3 days)
--------------
$31,500.00 Food & Beverage sub-total (note: typical f&b minimums are
$30,000 - $50,000)

$8,100.00 Proceedings, preperation, production, and shipping (600
pages @ $15/page)
$3,000.00 Registration services, both on-site and pre-conference
(includes on-site labor)
$3,000.00 Audio/Visual Charges (includes labor)
$4,500.00 WiFi for 100 ($1500 X 3 days)
$3,000.00 Bank charges (e.g. credit card charges, audit)
$2,000.00 Posterboard rental for poster session (8 posterboards @ $250
each. Includes assembly, shipping, disassembly)
$1,000.00 Keynote Honoraria (1 Keynotes @ $1000 each)
$1,000.00 Final Program Production / Shipping
$600.00 4 emails to ComSoc members
--------------
$57,700.00
$11,540.00 IEEE 20% surplus requirement
----------------
$69,240.00 Total expenses

$692.40 Attendee share of costs

In this budget, we have met the minimum food and beverage requirement to
waive the room rental fee, but wind up with a much higher per attendee cost
of $692.40. We have also outsourced the bulk of registration and proceedings
preparation to the IEEE's internal services. The result is a fee at or above
$692.

Before we leave this topic, I want to point out that I recently attended a
one-day Industry conference at an attractive location, with great speakers
(many you would recognize immediately), a great Master of Ceremonies,
fantastic A/V services, a great lunch, great break menu, cheerful and
helpful staff to attend to my every need, and some great giveaways
(backpack, premium USB key, T-shirt, and a few others). Cost for this 1-day
event without a reception, dinner, and only 1-track? Around $2,000. Ouch.
Unusual? Not at all.

Is there room for improvement in other areas of the budget, for example the
cost of proceedings editing and production. Certainly. Mark Karol's group
(of which I am a part) has discussed these and other areas for improvement.
The list of improvements seems nearly endless. For example, we've been
talking about on-line alternatives for committee meetings and perhaps even
conference presentations. I was glad to see the list bring up the topic of
on-line conference participation too.

I hope that this summary of conference organization details helps sort out
some of the unknown portions of the conference process.

How can you help? As others have said before, please get involved in the
conferences you most attend. Volunteer your (and your student's) services in
areas that will both significantly improve the conference and reduce the
need for costly outside services. Strong registration and publications
chair, for example, can have a direct impact on the conference's bottom
line. And keep the good ideas coming.

Happy holidays everyone, Fred
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