[sigcomm] attendance policies for SIGCOMM-affiliated events

[Joe Touch]

Chiming in as requested below ;-)

Jennifer Rexford wrote:
> Larry,
> 
> Hi, good question.  The way this works now is that each conference/workshop
> decides whether to print a proceedings, and budgets the costs; they can
> decide whether to print just enough for the conference attendees (and some
> extra, e.g., for libraries, sale, etc.) or to mail to the SIG membership.
> The key issue is that each event breaks even (and budgets a small
> contingency to protect against uncertainty), and that we use SIG membership
> dues to pay for printing and mailing CCR; all members also get a copy of the
> main SIGCOMM proceedings.  A number of years ago, we used to send *all*
> proceedings to *all* members, at a cost that made us lose money on each
> member -- forcing us to use conference revenues to subsidize membership
> benefits.  That was fine, for a while...

FYI, the cost per member is around $5 each for such proceedings, and the
cost to the conference/workshop is around $15,000 to do this.

> Then, as the number of conferences and workshops started to grow in the past
> five or six years, this was getting increasingly untenable, from a cost
> perspective. 

Since the SIG membership was in the $25 range, getting CCR, IMW,
HotNets, Sigcomm, LANC, etc. ate up the entire membership revenue - and
then some. Keep in mind that the SIG expenses roughly break even with
CCR and Sigcomm being the only 'all member' publications, so these
others threw us into debt to the tune of $50K a year or more.

> Plus, with papers increasingly available online (for free,
> because of a deal the SIG negotiated with ACM), mailing all proceedings to
> all members didn't seem like the best use of funds. 

There are past studies that show that a paper copy increases citation
rates substantially; I haven't heard any new info that refutes that. We
would prefer to be able to distribute the copies that way, but it's not
financially feasible.

Sending everyone a CDROM doesn't have the same effect - it would come
out once a year, and doesn't encourage casual browsing the way a paper
copy still does.

> We looked at increasing
> the membership dues to avoid losing money on a per member basis (and making
> it up in volume!), but the increase struck us as too large, and some
> conference proceedings just wouldn't be of interest to some members.  And,
> we looked at having two classes of memberships -- with and without
> conference/workshop proceedings -- but the cost of printing a smaller run of
> each proceeding was higher on a per-proceeding basis, which almost
> completely offset the benefit.  (Joe, feel free to chime in -- I recall your
> doing a bunch of this analysis a number of years ago.)

There are costs: the cost to manage the list of who-gets-what, the
additional cost per issue (over 2x for small runs), etc. Overall,
per-meeting basis isn't feasible managerially, but 'all or ccr/sigcomm'
might be. However, we'd be talking about an additional $10 per issue or
more, on top of the current $35 SIG membership. That might mean an extra
cost of around $50 or more.

> Anyway, this is all a long-winded way of explaining why things work the way
> they do now, where each conference/workshop budgets the cost for printing
> its own proceedings, and mailing it (if they choose to mail it).  The bottom
> line is that SIG doesn't really have much of a revenue stream: membership
> dues cover member benefits, and conferences/workshops generally break even,

As a group - individually, some make, some lose.

> with the SIG covering loses when they happen and keeping profits (when they
> occur) in the bank to help when an event loses money, and occassionally to
> fund other things (like funding student travel grants, or printing and
> mailing the first couple of HotNets proceedings).  That is, the decision to
> print the first couple of HotNets proceedings in CCR was done as a way to
> help bootstrap the new event, on the SIG's nickel rather than the workshop
> budget. We use surpluses to support new events (when they are at their most
> critical time), support students, and protect against future losses (to
> allow events we sponsor to take some risk).
> 
> -- Jen
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigcomm-bounces at postel.org [mailto:sigcomm-bounces at postel.org] On
> Behalf Of Larry Peterson
> Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2005 4:30 AM
> To: Joe Touch
> Cc: sigcomm at postel.org
> Subject: Re: [sigcomm] attendance policies for SIGCOMM-affiliated events
> 
> This seems pretty important. I would be thrilled to see the
> proceedings published, augmented with notes about the discussion.
> This happened for HotNets-I. I'm pretty sure Hotnets-II papers
> were published in CCR, but I don't recall if there were any
> meeting notes. I'm pretty sure the HotNets-III papers were not
> published.
> 
> My understanding is that this is an issue of budgets, and the
> extent to which SIGCOMM can help offset CCR costs. Perhaps
> others that know more about budgets/costs can comment.
> 
> Larry
> 
> On Oct 26, 2005, at 1:04 PM, Joe Touch wrote:
> 
>> Larry Peterson wrote:
>>
>>> Joe, I disagree that it's a private meeting. The CFP is published
>>> widely, anyone can submit, and the these papers are the primary
>>> factor in deciding who can attend.
>>>
>> Private meeting. Public proceedings, public call. We may be splitting
>> hairs here, but private parties are often publicly known of a- 
>> priori and
>> publicly reported post-facto.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> sigcomm mailing list
> sigcomm at postel.org
> http://www.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/sigcomm

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 250 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://www.postel.org/pipermail/sigcomm/attachments/20051027/05477ebd/signature.bin