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

[Julia Belyakova]

To add on the topic of value for money.

On one hand, I agree that people who pay might participate more actively
and consume more of the conference content.

On the other hand, if a lot more people join a conference for free but
participate in a small number of events, that does not seem to be a
necessarily bad thing. Of course, if 1000 people register and nobody
participates in anything, that's a disaster. But if out of those 1000, you
have 100 active people at a time, it's probably no worse (or even better)
than 50 fully committed participants at all times.

--
Kind regards, Julia


вт, 25 авг. 2020 г. в 16:27, Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer at gmail.com>:

> [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list
> ]
>
> On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 4:54 PM Michael Hicks <mwh at cs.umd.edu> wrote:
>
> > 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.
> >
>
> On this point I have a simple request: could SIGPLAN release a budget
> summary for ICFP and PLDI this year? To have an informed discussion on
> online conference fees, we should know the amounts of the varied costs
> (including the "good works"), how much money comes in from sponsoring, and
> how much comes from conference fees.
>
> Since I raised the question of conference fees I have heard varied
> explanations from various people, for example the idea that PLDI was
> decided to have free registration before the actual conference-running
> costs were known, and that the $100 fee for ICFP adjusts to cover direct
> costs better. Your message rather suggests that the direct costs use only a
> modest fraction of the $100 (or maybe they can be covered entirely by
> sponsorship ?), but we cannot tell without any actual data. Others
> suggested that making the conference free was maybe doable for flagship
> conferences with an industrial presence such as ICFP or PLDI, but that this
> expectation could be problematic for more theoretical conferences with less
> sponsors. But then, FSCD and IJCAR reportedly ran fine without registration
> costs.
>
> (I don't think this is an outlandish or surprising request, for example I
> remember Adam Chlipala making exactly this request during a conference Town
> Hall a few years ago.)
>
> On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 10:07 PM Gabriel Scherer <
> gabriel.scherer at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Thanks Mike for bringing clear arguments in favor.
> >
> > There was an interesting discussion with Nicolai, Henning and Stefan on
> > the argument of registration fees helping engagement. I have some short
> > points to make on this topic:
> >
> > 1. This exact argument (price signals value) is given by some high-ranked
> > universities in the English-speaking part of the world that charge tens
> of
> > thousands of dollars of tuition fee and *could* relatively easily cover
> the
> > corresponding costs on their endowment money.
> >
> > 2. Just like for tuition fees, the slope is slippery. Mike mentioned $25
> > (for non-students) to help engagement by making the conference feel
> > valuable, but now ICFP cost $100; one could argue for POPL'21
> registration
> > fees of $1000 for non-students, to make it *very* valuable as a
> conference.
> > (As long as the people making pricing decisions are getting reimbursed
> for
> > their registration fees, I guess we could pull this off?
> >
> > However, I think that this discussion on engagement is somewhat of a
> > distraction. Having conference where people participate actively is
> > certainly a good thing, it is *nice*. But sharing our knowledge and
> results
> > in the most open way possible is *a core tenet of our duty as
> researchers*.
> > For me it is clear that we should find *other* ways to help engagement
> that
> > do not raise the barrier to entry to our conference, because the later is
> > sensibly more important than the former.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 4:54 PM Michael Hicks <mwh at cs.umd.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> 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.
> >>>
> >>> >
> >>>
> >>>
>