[TYPES] Why are ACM conference registrations so expensive now?

[Jon Sterling]

Hi all,

I am seconding Neel's concern, and wish to thank him for bringing it up. After much agonising, I have chosen not to go to POPL at all this year despite the fact that I have ***two papers*** in the conference; I regret the appearance of snubbing my very worthy coauthors' talks, but ENOUGH IS ENOUGH — the costs are absurd, and have been increasing significantly over time rapidly. Note that it is not enough to say that the costs are coming from improvements or increased value-added to our conferences — the question is not whether the conferences are providing enough value for the cost, but rather whether it is at all tenable for individual researchers to pay these costs. If POPL were three times as good and therefore cost three times as much, that would mean that almost nobody would be able to attend it. So we must consider costs first.

I simply cannot justify burning such a large portion of my travel budget on conference travel, when I could use it for things that will actually pay dividends for both me and the community — like paying for young people to visit my institution, or sending my students on scientific visits.

In the future I will likely send students to SIGPLAN conferences when they have a paper, as it is (currently) important for their careers... But I think I will abstain from my own participation unless I see some community consensus and commitment around substantially lowering costs.

Best,
Jon



On Wed, Dec 13, 2023, at 12:03 PM, Neel Krishnaswami wrote:
> [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list ]
>
> Hi,
>
> I just registered for POPL, and the total cost was over 2000 USD. This 
> seems really high, and it seems something that has gotten a lot worse 
> over the last year or two. For example, ICFP a few months ago was 1500 
> USD, and POPL last year was 1375 USD.
>
> Does anyone know what factors have been driving up the cost of our 
> conferences up so quickly? I'm worried we're making our events 
> inaccessible to anyone but the best-funded researchers and institutions.
>
> Best,
> Neel