[FOSS4G-Oceania] Conference Presenters and their Attendance

[Martin Tomko]

+0.5 – without the note about the session for free – we risk people coming, presenting, and leaving ( well ,that would happen with academics that sometimes only care about the publication, to be cynical), with the note from Alex ( about the monologue/dialog – that is up to the presenter). I would loath to end up with empty rooms, and speakers coming, speaking, and leaving ( and boy, have I seen this happening a lot anyway).

Just in general:
For me offering discounts to speakers would be really weird. I have NEVER been at a conference where the main expectation ( and the bulk of the audience) were not the presenters. We explicitly put this into our calls for papers in other conferences:
GIScience (melbourne this year)“Publication. In order for an accepted paper to be published in the conference proceedings (full papers, short papers) or included in the conference program (extended abstracts), at least one of the paper authors has to register by the author registration deadline above.
” (for academics, publication = participation)
ACM SIGSPATIAL: “Registration and Presentation
At least one author per accepted research, systems, industrial experience, demonstration, or vision paper must register and attend the conference to present the accepted submission. Otherwise, the accepted submission will not appear in the conference proceedings or in the ACM Digital Library version of the conference proceedings.”
Locate ( a professional conference) had somehowed discounted tickets. But I note the difference between Locate ( Speaker tickets ~850) and the other academic ones is in the cost. GIScience and ACM Sigpsatial are closer to us around 500 if I recall, no commercial inputs.

M.
From: FOSS4G-Oceania <foss4g-oceania-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> on behalf of Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday, 27 June 2018 at 9:19 am
To: Jonah Sullivan <jonahsullivan79 at gmail.com>
Cc: "foss4g-oceania at lists.osgeo.org" <foss4g-oceania at lists.osgeo.org>
Subject: Re: [FOSS4G-Oceania] Conference Presenters and their Attendance

Hi Jonah

For all the conferences I've attended, presenters have been discounted too. But this is not the tradition in the FOSS4G space, for example, the Dar Es Salaam conference has early bird discounts, but no others: https://2018.foss4g.or.tz/EventManagement/public/e/1/foss4g-2018-dar-es-salaam<https://2018.foss4g.or.tz/EventManagement/public/e/1/foss4g-2018-dar-es-salaam>

Regarding your suggestion in the wording, you're probably right that it needs tweaking.

Cheers,

On Wed, 27 Jun 2018 at 09:16 Jonah Sullivan <jonahsullivan79 at gmail.com<mailto:jonahsullivan79 at gmail.com>> wrote:
I think every conference I've presented at (a couple every year) has had reduced price tickets for presenters.

I've also always had my employer pay the fees so the discount didn't matter.

I think that having full price tickets for presenters is a break from convention.

I also think that the statement about having a "minimal distinction between presenters and attendees" is disingenuous, especially when considering the academic presentations.

Encouraging audience interaction is great, but I think that statement goes against the nature of a conference. Usually a presentation is a monologue (or even a soliloquy) where the presenter is there to transmit a message from a position of authority and the audience receives it. It would be nice if the communication was a dialogue, but that isn't really possible with this format. A dialogue is more suitable to a panel or an open discussion, rather than a presentation.

On Wed, 27 Jun. 2018, 09:04 Alex Leith, <alexgleith at gmail.com<mailto:alexgleith at gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi All

Just want to establish a policy direction on conference presenters.

My suggestion is that conference presenters are made aware that they need to register, but if they don't want to, they can attend their session and the break immediately afterwards. We can tell them something like the following:

“We are aiming for an engaging and participatory conference, with minimal distinction between presenters and attendees. While we really appreciate all our presenters and would love to provide them with a free ticket, we have opted instead to try and keep registration prices low and are asking presenters to purchase a registration. If that is not possible for a presenter, they may attend free of charge for the session they are presenting in, and the break immediately afterwards.”

Can I please have your views on this, and if we agree, I'll write it down somewhere.

Cheers,

Alex
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Alex Leith
0419 189 050
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