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

[Gabriel Scherer]

Dear list,

I'm writing with excellent news: in the last month ICFP'21 has decided to
change its fee structure, which should now include a "discounted $10"
option for the whole conference, in line with POPL'21 and PLDI'21 for
example. I think this is an excellent compromise. As far as I can tell,
thanks are due to the general chair, Sukyoung Ryu, and the ICFP steering
committee. Thanks!

On Fri, Jun 4, 2021 at 3:17 PM Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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.
>>
>