Year after year you get the call for papers (CfP) emailed to you asking you to submit a paper which is sufficiently novel and which has not been published elsewhere. The "good conferences" get loads of submission, they go through a stringent process of review and the the committee sends out accepts and rejects. The registration of accepted paper, the travel and stay arrangements and finally the travel to the conference, presenting the paper (oral or poster), listening to the other researchers or keynote speakers and then back to work. This is an annual ritual, and if you are regular to a couple of conferences, then this turns out to be happening several times a year.
Invariably the conferences are held in "tourist cities" and in most cases the most expensive venues (read hotels), giving one more (only?) reason to attend the conference. Rightfully, you see that the attendance is generally sparse (compared to the the number of people registered for the conference - not hard to guess) and in several cases the only audience in a session are the folks who have to present their papers. And in extreme cases you also see the presenters of a session move out as soon as they finish their presentation. Again because of the venue of the conference which allows them to explore the place.
Now the question is are conferences relevant today? Or more importantly, why were conferences held in the first place. Without looking into the history of conferences, one can guess that it made sense several decades ago when people of the same expertise met once or twice a year and shared their findings with each other. There was a certain degree of anticipation as to what the other groups were doing and probably this was the only source of "new things happening in my field". And it was the only place you could actually meet and speak to folks who had worked in your field of expertise especially if you are a young researcher who has just started out in this field.
Today, when the work you do is instantly visible through your web page, arxiv there is no real newness in what you get to hear at a physical (people gathering) conference. Also there are so many conferences being held in ones area of expertise that there is a good chance of not being able to meet up a good segment of people in your area of expertise. Also most of these papers are available online and in many cases the presentation is recorded and published. Which makes the physical conference virtually available any time that you wished to visit or see or hear.
Personally I believe physical conferences have lost their charm. You rarely see the biggie’s in your area of expertise stay for the full duration of the conference, even if they did they would be tempted to tour the venue! Also there is a small chance of a young researcher and an expert being in the same hotel (mostly the venues are very expensive!) so that they can catchup informally during breakfast! Your interaction is often with people whom you have known or have worked with or .. but very rarely with a newbie or a young researcher. I have not seen many senior (thanks to their experience) folks making attempt to speak to the younger ones.
Today's conferences seem to be an occasion for a researcher to present his | her work (irrespective of the audience), look around the venue, catch up with -old- friends. This is not a place for new learning (not complaining, we already know what is cooking with most groups through the digital stream - text, audio, video). Summing it up, does not look like a great loss if you missed out or did not attend a technical physical conference.
So why do people attend? I guess it might be more to do with the "number of papers published" which is one of the criteria to judge how well you did in your work plus the fact that most conferences insist that "you must present the paper" to be able to make your work visible (implies your "n" publications become "n+1").
And why do organizers organize conferences? (May be not all of them) Because they make monies! A registration fee of "X" attended by "Y" people means an inflow of "XY" monies and a sponsorship of "S" monies. The spend, for a "k" day conference you pay "Z" monies to the venue; you probably give away "p" monies worth goodies to the "Y" people; you sponsor "n" people (read keynote addressing folks) to fly ("W") in and stay for a day ("U") at the venue. Which means a cost of "n(W+U)". Say goodies to the "l" volunteers worth "V" means a spend of "lV". Other incidental charges "Q" which could include the salary for the secretaries.
So the spend is {Q + lV+ n(W+U) + kZ + pY} as against a inflow of XY+S. Am sure the inflow is much larger than the outflow making conference organization worthwhile.
In a nutshell, conferences seem to loose out in the digital fast moving space and the only reason they seem to exist is because someone is willing to organize it for an earning and someone needs to attend because there is a count on the number of publication.
My personal (short sighted!) view. No I have nothing against the conferences, it is just that they seems to have lost their relevance. With more and more conferences coming up it only seems to aid my personal view!
Comments