[Coral-List] ICRS registration deadlines

[Hajime Kayanne]

Dear listers,

As a secretariat general 10ICRS, I would like to express my sincere apology 
to someone feeling uncomfortable to the process.

Now, we have received "1419" submissions for oral/poster presentations.
The program committee has arranged this large number of submissions into 
the most appropriate framework, and the submitted abstracts are now being 
sent to the conveners for programing.
The decision for the submissions to be oral or poster is put on the 
conveners, and thus please ask to your conveners about your situation.

I am sorry we have not distributed this process of acceptance and 
oral/poster determination.
The number of submissions we received was the largest among all the ICRS, 
even larger than expected, and it took time to determine the ratio of 
oral/poster within the constraints shown below.

Since the 8th symposium in Panama 1996, the number of submissions has 
crossed over 500 with more than 1000 participants. The symposium has 
changed from a medium-sized meeting to a large event (remember we had about 
450 submissions at Townsville 1988 and Guam 1992).

At the planning stage, we surveyed complaints of the participants at the 
previous symposiums and found that they want to see the program well before 
the symposium (in some previous ones, we only saw it on site), they do not 
want so many parallel sessions nor so many cancellations of talks. The 
process of early registration was set to answer their wishes, and to better 
manage the increasing number of submissions. It is a trade-off between 
smooth progress of the symposium and rigid process of programming 1419 
submissions.

We are sorry for the inconvenience in this process, in particular, 
acquisition of travel funds.
But we ran the process a little more humanly than larger meetings such as 
AGU, which treats submissions just automatically.
You may contact with secretariat <icrs at plando.co.jp>, if you have any 
individual situations. She/he/I may never cancel your submission as far as 
you confirm to come to Okinawa, which I could not announce formally as we 
cannot treat more than 100 individual situations.

Sorry again for your inconvenience and frustration. But I wish you could 
understand this situation.
And we wish you all to join and enjoy this big event.

Hajime


At 12:07 +0200 04.2.23, David Glassom wrote:
>Dear Coral Listers
>
>I wonder if I am the only person feeling frustrated by the early registration
>deadline for this year's ICRS in Japan? Especially in view of the lack of
>formal notification of which abstracts have been accepted for oral / poster
>presentations.
>For many researchers, funding for international conferences must be 
>applied for
>as each conference approaches. Often funding depends on confirmation in 
>writing
>that the researcher will present a paper at the conference. It usually takes
>several weeks to a couple of months to hear whether funding has been 
>granted or
>not. Under these circumstances, meeting the registration deadline for 10ICRS
>was extremely difficult - impossible, in my case. I suspect the same is true
>for many other coral researchers, especially young researchers without large
>research grants and those from developing countries, to whom the registration
>fee, converted to local currencies, is a substantial sum.
>Funding issues aside, the early registration deadline also denies researchers
>the chance to consider their attendance if their submissions
>  are accepted as poster presentations rather than talks, which are often
>preferred.  This is especially pertinent since each researcher is limited to
>submission of only 1 oral presentation.
>
>No doubt the early deadline will ensure that the program will run more 
>smoothly
>than in Bali, with fewer late withdrawals. But if the price of a better 
>program
>is a less inclusive conference, will it have been worth it? I doubt it, but am
>interested in what other coral reef scientists think.
>
>David Glassom
>
>


-- 
---- Hajime KAYANNE ----
Department of Earth & Planetary Science,
University of Tokyo
Hongo, Tokyo 113-0033 Japan
Tel: 81-3-5841-4573
Tel & Fax: 81-3-3814-6358