[Coral-List] Registration cost for 12th ICRS -some considerations on costs (M.Kulbicki)

Michel Kulbicki michel.kulbicki at ird.fr
Thu Jul 21 13:32:01 EDT 2011


Dear all,

I have been following with much interest the debate on the registration 
cost of the next ICRS. I have organized a couple of international 
conferences in the past, of course far smaller than the ICRS meeting, 
but I think I have a fair idea of where the costs are. To give an order 
of magnitude of the costs for a 300 person meeting in Noumea (New 
Caledonia) where the cost of living (meals, hotels, bus, internet ...) 
and taxes are far higher than in Cairns (and air travel also is much 
higher -- an important consideration to account for the cost of guest 
speakers) this is what I get. All prices are per person on a 5 day basis 
and given in Aus dollars to keep things comparable with Cairns:

Meals (on the basis of 2 meals/day) : daily: 40 -- 5 days: 200

Coffee breaks: daily: 8 -- 5 days : 40

Conference room (on the basis of rooms for 100 persons: 3000/day): daily 
: 30 -- 5 days : 150

Other services (internet, bus, copy machines and so on): daily : 6 -- 5 
days: 30

Guest (on the basis of one guest for 30 persons): 100

Conference bag (with book of abstracts, pencils, paper, gift and so on): 80

Organizers fee: 100

This gives a total of 700. You need to add the cost of the book of 
abstract (paper copy 100, CDrom: 10). Banquet is on top.

This is your flat rate. You need to know that for such conferences there 
are all kinds of subsidies (city, state, international, large companies 
and so on -- but it is hard work to get them) which account for at least 
-100 per person (they accounted for over 40% of our budget in the 
conferences I organized -- so I am here extremely conservative). So this 
brings it down to a very maximum of around 600. The prices above are for 
an expensive place (Noumea) and for a small number of people (300). Cost 
may decrease drastically with increasing numbers. So this already high 
value is at least 30% less than the early bird fee of the next ICRS. So 
my question is where do these 30% go (not speaking about the difference 
with later registrations and non ICRS members)??

I would love to get the true numbers for the ICRS meeting in the way 
above and not a bulk 3 million dollars which does not mean a thing.

This being said I agree with the internet conference idea for key note 
speakers and maybe a number of other sessions (at a cost for the watcher 
of course).

All the best,
Michel Kulbicki

-- 
Michel Kulbicki
UR 227 - "CoReUs"
IRD - Laboratoire Arago
BP 44 - 66651- Banyuls /mer
Tel.: (33)-(0)4-30-19-24-17 / Fax.:
e-mail: michel.kulbicki at ird.fr (michel.kulbicki at univ-perp.fr is no longer valid)




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