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

[Talia Ringer]

I don't know about PLDI, but there are some costs associated with online
events. For example, automatic captioning software is still not very good
(Google's always turns "proofs" into "fruits" for me). Live captioning is
really expensive! But it's also hugely important for disability
accessibility.

For students, ICFP was essentially free. I do agree that in principle,
online conferences should be free, and online components of hybrid
conferences should be free or strongly discounted. In practice, though, I
do think that will mean finding sponsors for hidden costs that really are
necessary.

On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 7:07 AM Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer at gmail.com>
wrote:

> [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list
> ]
>
> 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.
>