[TYPES] online conferences should be free (was: global debriefing over our virtual experience of conferences)

[Gabriel Scherer]

Dear types-list,

Going on a tangent from Flavien's earlier post: I really think that online
conferences should be free.

Several conferences (PLDI for example) managed to run free-of-charge since
the pandemic started, and they reported broader attendance and a strong
diversity of attendants, which sounds great. I don't think we can achieve
this with for-pay online conferences.

ICFP is coming up shortly with a $100 registration price tag, and I did not
register.

I'm aware that running a large virtual conference requires computing
resources that do have a cost. For PLDI for example, the report only says
that the cost was covered by industrial sponsors. Are numbers publicly
available on the cost of running a virtual conference? Note that if we
managed to run a conference on free software, I'm sure that institutions
and volunteers could be convinced to help hosting and monitoring the
conference services during the event.