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

[Michael Hicks]

Thanks for raising this issue. Just a few points about the other side of
the argument:

It’s well known that things that are free are not valued (by humans) as
much as those that cost something, even a small amount. For example, see
Dan Ariely’s “Predictably Irrational” which presents the results of several
experiments that demonstrate this. As a relevant case: Free MOOCs tended to
have lots of “sign ups” but far fewer attendees, and even fewer completers.

As such, if the goal is to have engaged attendees, trying to come closer to
the experience of traditional conferences, it might make sense to charge
something, even a small amount like $25, for at least some of the
population. This population might be people who have lots of social capital
already, and are generally busy, so they are more likely to blow off the
conference if they paid nothing for signing up. Such people might be those
that more junior attendees wish to meet.

I note that engaged attendance was a goal when we had in-person
conferences, so I don’t see why we’d want to drop it now. Indeed, if people
don’t want to be engaged the videos will be available for free, afterward.

Beyond the modest fees to run an online conference, which Talia mentions,
conference registration payments serve other purposes. Any surplus goes to
SIGPLAN, which turns around this surplus as good works, e.g., paying the
open access fees for PACMPL, which ICFP benefits from. It also makes
donations to CRA-W, OPLSS, etc. and provides scholarships for PLMW.

Corporate sponsors can indeed pay some costs, but they also have downsides.
We are finding that many sponsors are not interested in necessarily giving
that much, and some are starting to make demands on how the conference is
run for their modest donation. This is a slippery slope that the SIGPLAN EC
is trying to avoid.

Given that PLDI was completely free and ICFP followed a progressive fee
schedule, I’ll be curious to compare the ICFP outbrief with that of PLDI’s,
to see how the registration fee affected attendance.

Thanks,
-Mike

On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 10:25 AM Talia Ringer <tringer at cs.washington.edu>
wrote:

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