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

[Jeff Foster]

Thanks, everyone, for raising this concern and for the good discussion—lots
of good points have been brought up.

I think our conference organizers have been doing an exceptional job, and
I’m very grateful to them for all their hard work. So let me say a huge
thank you to Philippa and all the other organizers of SIGPLAN events!

Based on what I’ve seen, I think we are catching up to (and hopefully now
have caught up to) current costs. SIGPLAN had a couple of years of virtual
conferences due to covid. During that time, costs for in-person events were
still climbing—but we didn’t see it because everything was virtual. When we
started returning to in-person events, registration fees picked up where
they had left off before covid. Financially, that turned out to be
unsustainable—which was fine in the short term but not in the long term.
And then inflation began ramping up rapidly. And then financial constraints
in tech cut back on companies’ sponsorships. All of this led to rapid
changes in a short amount of time.

I want to add that overall inflation isn’t a great match for conferences.
The largest single cost at our conferences is food and beverage, and those
prices have been increasing very fast. This puts organizers in a tough
spot. On the one hand, cutting back on meals is the best way to save money.
On the other hand, like the “hallway track” that Adam mentioned, there’s a
huge benefit to the community from having everyone be together for
meals—the scientific discourse that happens, the networking effects, and
the community-building effects are enormous.

Another comment is about conference location, which has also been mentioned
and is another tradeoff. Having conferences in cheaper locations is another
way to save money. On the other hand, in my experience, attendance goes up
at conferences in major cities such as London compared to less popular, and
therefore cheaper, locations. So that’s another tradeoff with no optimal
solution. We tend to vary conference locations over time to try to hit a
good average.

I’ll bring the question of conference registration fees up for discussion
at the next SIGPLAN EC meeting. I don’t think there’s an easy answer, but
I’m hopeful that, with inflation moderating (e.g., the US Federal Research
just announced they’re likely to cut rates three times next year, and
inflation is down in the EU as well compared to last year), the increase in
registration fees will slow down. If you have any feedback on this that
you’d like me to bring to the EC, please send me an email.

Thanks,

Jeff Foster
SIGPLAN Chair

On Thu, Dec 14, 2023 at 1:12 PM Sam Lindley <Sam.Lindley at ed.ac.uk> wrote:

> [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list
> ]
>
> On 14/12/2023 11:52, Gabriel Scherer wrote:
> [..]
> > I think that we could do the following, from the easiest to the
> > requires-more-work:
> [..]
> > 3. Ensure that it is easy to publish at PACMPL without presenting at the
> > conference. (Then one only has to keep publication costs in check.)
>
> This is not only easy now, but a condition for a conference being allowed
> to
> affiliate with PACMPL. Because PACMPL is a journal, if a paper is accepted
> at
> any PACMPL venue then the authors are not required to attend or present at
> all.
>
> This option is often not well advertised in advance, which I guess is
> largely
> because much of the community (including me, until recently!) is unaware
> of it.
> In the interests of transparency and inclusion, I think we should do a
> better
> job of making all potential authors aware of this option before they
> submit.
>
> Sam
>
>
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