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

[Fritz Henglein]

On Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 5:55 PM Caleb Stanford <cdstanford at ucdavis.edu>
wrote:

>
> Appendix B:
> POPL '21: The 48th Annual ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on ATTENDANCE: 432 945
> SIGLOG  0.00
> Principles of Programming Languages INCOME: $91,050.00 $168,255.00 SIGACT
>  0.00
> EXPENSE: $78,108.50 $77,952.23 SIGPLAN   100.00
> SURPLUS/LOSS: $12,941.50 $90,302.77
>

POPL 2021 is not a good reference here. It was moved from Copenhagen to
online due to COVID-19.  There were luckily zero venue costs then.  (We had
fortunately a zero-cost late cancelation clause in our venue contract.)

On that note, we are very much aware of concerns over rising registration
costs and are working hard on keeping venue costs for PLDI 2024, which
takes place in Copenhagen at a great conference hotel close to both the
airport and the city center (Radisson Blu Scandinavia Copenhagen Hotel) June
24-28, 2024, near or even below USD 120/day/participant, excluding
accommodation; we've secured and are still working on relatively affordable
accommodation deals (relatively affordable since June is a generally an
attractive and sought-after time to visit Copenhagen, which puts price
pressure on both hotel and AirBnB space).

Even though Copenhagen is not exactly a low cost location, it seems London,
along with New York, Paris and other great cities, has moved into a cost
category of its own.

Fritz
Local arrangements chair, POPL 2021
Local arrangements co-chair, PLDI 2024

PS: The above is including 25% Danish VAT.  VAT is refundable, so
participants from universities and companies are entitled to get it
refunded.  Alas, most institutions, both EU and non-EU are in practice
unfortunately not set up to request/get the VAT refunds.

On Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 7:34 AM Ingle, Apoorv N <apoorv-ingle at uiowa.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > [ The Types Forum,
> http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list
> > ]
> >
> > Hi Neel,
> >
> > I do not have a direct answer to your question but here are some annual
> > reports for SIG conferences:
> >
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.acm.org/special-interest-groups/volunteer-resources/sgb/annual-reports/sig-governing-board-fy-2021-annual-reports__;!!IBzWLUs!SCtZuJ5QntVpimNjdxW0dTZ0K59McBLY-BI2dAymobUC4WVUjRhhRzZsblwz_8qdO3XNZ_0IlJ_VEBr7FCs-BnKC6MSv6r77GAg$
> > that put out some numbers on the over all expenses of the conferences.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Apoorv
> >
> > > On Dec 13, 2023, at 06:03, Neel Krishnaswami <nk480 at cl.cam.ac.uk>
> 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
> > >
> >
> >
>