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

[Nicolai Kraus]

Interesting discussion, and definitely very important!
My opinion is:

(1) Registration costs should not stop anyone from attending a/an [online]
conference. I guess that's obvious and solutions for this were implemented
for physical conferences.

(2) I accept Mike's point about free things not being valued as highly as
paid things. But I think even a small symbolic fee could potentially be a
hurdle for some people. The issue is that the value of $25 (or €25 or £25
or whatever) is very subjective. For those senior people who are important
for the conference and who are the ones that junior members want to meet,
$25 is likely to be negligible. For the junior participants, it might not
be. This is just the wrong way round since the junior participants probably
benefit most from the meeting and don't need this sort of encouragement. Of
course, the perceived value of $25 will also greatly depend on whether
someone has access to academic travel budget. Finally, we shouldn't forget
that a significant part of the world population (online sources say 25%, no
idea how accurate this is) has no access to a bank account which makes even
a fee of $0.01 a problem. Someone with this background could not attend a
physical conference, but they might have access to the internet. I don't
know whether we will actually have such participants, but we (we = the
privileged inhabitants of developed countries) would be ignorant if we
dismissed the possibility.

(3) I'm against relying on industrial sponsors. How much advertisement at
conferences is acceptable? It's hard to draw a line, and this could get out
of hand. Moreover, this route of funding might not be available for some
more theory-focussed conferences, and I assume it would in general benefit
large/prestigious conferences much more than small/new meetings.

(4) I actually liked the model that LICS used. Participants could choose
between free registration and paid registration, with the condition that
each paper came with one paid registration to cover the publication costs.
I believe we could instead simply say that people with access to travel
budget are kindly asked to opt for the paid registration. I do think that
this would quite easily cover the costs for the conference.

Best,
Nicolai

On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 3:58 PM Michael Hicks <mwh at cs.umd.edu> wrote:

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