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

[Alejandro Díaz-Caro]

Dear all,

The real costs of online conferences are much less than for physical
ones, that is clear. However, it is not free of cost. The costs may
be:
* Publication costs (for example, LIPIcs charges 60 euros per paper)
* Easychair licence
* Award prize for best paper (if the conference have this kind of award)
* Conference platform costs (Clowdr, Slack, Zoom, GatherTown, etc, all
have an associated cost).

>From these four, the first three are somehow fixed with the number of
accepted papers (which is usually similar from one year to the next).
However the last one is the more difficult to predict, since platforms
such as Clowdr, GatherTown, or Easychar's VCS charge per person
(Easychair's VCS even charges per person per day). So, even if you get
funding from the organising institution or sponsors, making it free of
charge could imply a really big amount of registrations, and you may
pay for those even if they do not show up at the conference.

The solution that we chose at FSCD this year is to make it free of
charge, unless we receive way too many requests (with "way too many"
left undefined yet), surpassing the grants we have got for the
conference. In such a case, we will ask for  a very modest amount
(less than 10 dollars), making it clear that those who cannot pay, can
participate enterally free of charge. So, we are hoping to have a
fully free of charge conference (and quite probably we will), but we
have no idea how many people will register and how much the bill at
the chosen platform may grow.

Of course there are also free platforms, but they are less reliable
and you do not have anyone to ask if things do not work as expected.

Coming from Argentina, I agree that conferences (specially virtual)
should be free of charge or as cheap as they can, as much as they can.
This allows students to participate. I also agree that the slogan "you
will pay more attention to what you have paid" should not condition
our conferences model. Paying attention to talks is a responsibility
(or a choice) of the attendee (and of the speaker to make the talk
interesting, maybe). Putting money in the middle to encourage it is
not the best practice, in my opinion, especially if that could result
in people left behind.

Best,
Alejandro


On Fri, 4 Jun 2021 at 15:28, Mehmet Oguz Derin
<mehmetoguzderin at mehmetoguzderin.com> wrote:
>
> [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list ]
>
> Outsider opinion: one good heuristic for pricing anything virtual and
> making it accessible for underprivileged individuals is localized video
> game & digital subscription prices. Companies expanding these have gone
> through many stages regarding price localization (symbolic or not)
> globally. - Oguz (Mehmet Oguz Derin)
>
> On Fri, Jun 4, 2021 at 4:18 PM Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list
> > ]
> >
> > Dear list,
> >
> > Last year I played the unfortunate role of complaining about the $100 price
> > tag on ICFP'20 registration. There were some great improvements in further
> > events, for example POPL'21 had "discounted rate: $10" as an unconditional
> > registration option, and PLDI'21 offers the same option. (I still wish that
> > there events were free, as is common with other scientific conferences like
> > FSCD'20, IJCAR'20, LICS'20 etc., but $10 is still much closer to a symbolic
> > sum than $100 for a strict subset of the world.).
> >
> > Unfortunately, it is my understanding that ICFP'21 is planning to reuse the
> > same fee structure. The details are not clear yet and possibly subject to
> > change, as registration hasn't opened; but this seems to be the current
> > plan. I wish it was possible to have a (public) discussion about this
> > choice in advance, and not just a month or two before the conference during
> > summer holidays.
> >
> > SIGPLAN has decided not to publish budget information for ICFP'20, but my
> > understanding is that the $100 registration scheme generated a strong
> > profit for the conference, to the point that, if the costs are comparable
> > to last year, last year profit would suffice to fund ICFP'21 entirely. Why
> > would we have a $100 registration fee again?
> >
> > ICFP is a flagship conference at the intersection of theoretical works and
> > practical functional programming, and it could attract a vibrant crowd of
> > people outside academia (in particular: not students), who may not have an
> > easy path to reimbursement -- this is especially important for the
> > workshops.
> >
> > (Disclaimer: I'm criticising past registration fees and prospective
> > registration fees, but not of course the people doing the hard work of
> > organizing the conference! They have all my gratitude.)
> >
> > On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 4:05 PM Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer at gmail.com
> > >
> > wrote:
> >
> > > 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.
> > >
> >



-- 
http://staff.dc.uba.ar/adiazcaro