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Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

robert.ocallahan.org

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Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#71

Post by flukus »

Noseshine wrote: post #66
flukus wrote: post #31

Do we need conferences at all?

Define "need". Do you need to breathe? Only if you think you need to live, and the only reason you want to live is that you are wired that way (selection bias, all those who didn't care enough have been removed). Life isn't something objective, you can just decide on what's important to you, as long as it doesn't interfere with your ability to go on living it does not matter. Some people like cats, some people like i…

Need as in "do they offer worthwhile value", which I'm sure anyone not being overly pedantic would assume.

You don't gain anything by seeing a live talk that you wouldn't on YouTube for instance. It's weird that so many of us work from home but insist on traveling to see a stage show.

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#72

Post by widforss »

petercooper wrote: post #3
noonespecial wrote: post #2

Just the first ripples against the shore of what I expect to be a tsunami of unexpected consequences. Seems like a golden opportunity for another country to step up and become the "conference center of the world". I'd LOL extra hard if it turned out to be Mexico.

A few years ago I raised the idea (on Twitter) of Iceland being a nice "neutral" venue that's equally (in)convenient for both US and European attendees, very liberal and progressive, and, at the time, cheap for a Nordic country. I have since seen a handful of industry conferences take place there, but it hasn't really blown up (one reason, I suspect, is it's reasonably expensive to stay there now - Iceland's decline…

While it is a great location, Iceland is not "cheap for a Nordic country" anymore. They picked up, and isolation does not come for free.

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#73

Post by Noseshine »

flukus wrote: post #71
Noseshine wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "need". Do you need to breathe? Only if you think you need to live, and the only reason you want to live is that you are wired that way (selection bias, all those who didn't care enough have been removed). Life isn't something objective, you can just decide on what's important to you, as long as it doesn't interfere with your ability to go on living it does not matter. Some people like cats, some people like i…

Need as in "do they offer worthwhile value", which I'm sure anyone not being overly pedantic would assume. You don't gain anything by seeing a live talk that you wouldn't on YouTube for instance. It's weird that so many of us work from home but insist on traveling to see a stage show.

  "do they offer worthwhile value"
You merely rephrased "need", so I refer to my reply above, same response.

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#74

Post by msie »

twsted wrote: post #42
Buge wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada can require you to give up your phone password when entering. As far as I heard, the US does not require that (but can confiscate your phone). Is there possibly another country that doesn't require it?

Kidding? Ref please?

There's this show about the Canadian border services and they regularly go through people's phones: 'Border Security'

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#75

Post by gmac »

michaelt wrote: post #57
jon-wood wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the UK international students are a big chunk of a decent university's income. Tuition fees for UK residents are capped, while there's no limit to how much a good university can charge Russian oligarchs to educate their children. There are some issues around that, specifically with business departments being disproportionately well funded, but it does mean that other departments also have more money to wo…

The top few business schools can also get UK citizens to pay £51,000 for a one year MBA course [1] so I think they'd be pretty well funded even without international students. [1] https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/programmes/mba/facts-faqs/#item-4

No, because I suspect most of their students are non-UK, and you're not going to suddenly magic up a several-hundred percent increase in UK citizens wanting to do a ridiculously expensive MBA.

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#76

Post by masklinn »

The funny story is after friday's EO this is a case of "damned if you do, damned if you don't": if you hold the conference in the US, people with links to banned countries can not attend (and anyone arab-looking will get hassled), if you hold it outside US residents with links to banned countries can not attend either as there's a significant chance they would not be able to return.

I suspect the latter population is much smaller than the former, but still a shit situation for a conference organiser, no matter how you do it you will effectively prevent a fraction of possible attendees out, unless you have your conf' right on a border I guess but I doubt that's really possible.

What is the "border status" of Puerto Rico, could that be an option? Or maybe a nearby carribean island which US residents could reach by board from Puerto Rico without hassle going back?

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#77

Post by dragonzooord »

The EO is cruel and irrational and is something I'm firmly against. It makes sense to not host your conference in the USA for moral reasons.

But, on the other hand, a lot of Americans don't have passports or their employment contracts will only reimburse a number of domestic (non-international) conferences a year. The set of those people who would be excluded probably exceeds the set of attendees from the 7 countries in question. So I'm not convinced it makes sense to do this just from a conference attendance standpoint.

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#78

Post by cperciva »

Symbiote wrote: post #65
cperciva wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's just a matter of which conferences I attend, but my impression is that "conference attendees per capita" is highest for the USA, lower for Europe, and much lower for Asia. If you want to be closest to people in general you'd probably aim for somewhere around Nepal (mind you, it doesn't have very good connectivity for air travel); but being closest to conference attendees is probably going to be between the…

Asia is on the opposite side of the world from the USA. Their cost to attend is highest, when the conference is in the USA. Check the distances on a globe -- "between the USA, Europe and Asia" is actually the Middle East. If we need to account for additional attendance from North America, then somewhere in Europe is better -- and the south or east cheaper than the north or west.

Check the distances on a globe -- "between the USA, Europe and Asia" is actually the Middle East

You sure about that? Let's take Denver, Frankfurt, and Hong Kong as representatives of USA, Europe, and Asia, since they're somewhat central to the regions and have major airports.

    DEN-YEG: 1019 miles
    FRA-YEG: 4559 miles
    HKG-YEG: 6504 miles
    Total distances to Edmonton: 12531 miles

    DEN-DXB: 7771 miles
    FRA-DXB: 3012 miles
    HKG-DXB: 3684 miles
    Total distances to Dubai: 14467 miles
The most "central" point between the USA, Europe, and Asia is actually pretty close to the North Pole: http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=FRA-DEN-HKG-FRA&MS=wls&MP=p&DU=...

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#79

Post by NTDF9 »

Noseshine wrote: post #49
NTDF9 wrote: post #43

This is a great opportunity for Canadian, Australian and top European universities to step up their game. Some universities in these regions have solid reputations but lacked the star-power of top US univs. Hosting a few ACM conferences will shoot them on top of global map. Just checked, ACM is already on it: https://www.acm.org/conferences

Do universities that don't have to rely on the money they get form international students have the same incentives as US universities? From what I read that's a major consideration for US universities why they want to attract foreign students. For German universities that would only be of marginal concern, even if/when they take some money from foreign students it's just pocket change and not nearly enough to finance…

For top schools, money is secondary to building and maintaining reputation and leadership in research. Money comes as a consequence of being leaders,

Think of Carnegie Mellon Robotics professors and grad students poached by Uber. Think of top graph computer scientists who joined Facebook and Google early on.

A lot of this men and women were bright international students/professors flocking to top US univs. These bright people (directly and indirectly) invited budding geniuses from their home countries to come to these univs in the US.

A lot of countries would love to have such a concentration of bright talent (and the network effects) in their univs.

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#80

Post by obstacle1 »

flukus wrote: post #71
Noseshine wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "need". Do you need to breathe? Only if you think you need to live, and the only reason you want to live is that you are wired that way (selection bias, all those who didn't care enough have been removed). Life isn't something objective, you can just decide on what's important to you, as long as it doesn't interfere with your ability to go on living it does not matter. Some people like cats, some people like i…

Need as in "do they offer worthwhile value", which I'm sure anyone not being overly pedantic would assume. You don't gain anything by seeing a live talk that you wouldn't on YouTube for instance. It's weird that so many of us work from home but insist on traveling to see a stage show.

The value of conferences isn't in sitting through talks. Depending on whether or not you need conferences depends on how much you value networking. If you want to network, then yes, conferences are hugely valuable.
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