Re: COLD2012 Cost

Dear Hugh, dear all

I can sympathize with the general feeling that this seems like a steep price for a one day workshop. What needs to be understood, however, is that conferences and workshops do not exist in isolation but are strongly intertwined. As a consequence visiting them does come in a bundle.

First, it is important to note that conferences heavily subsidize the workshops. The 100$ COLD fee does not even approach covering the costs the workshop generates. If we would do full cost accounting one would get closer to a 500$ fee for the day. Also, you may want to think about the fact that the conference organizers carry no financial risk at all. This alone is worth a lot, as more workshops need to be canceled than you might think.

Second, workshops profit from both the marketing and reputation of the conference as well as the fact that many people would not travel to a one day event - but a multi-day event may make the trip worthwhile. So the conference actually increases the potential audience, which comes at a great benefit.

I could go on, but would much rather invite you to stay for the whole conference. ISWC will have a great number of highly exciting papers - quite a few will touch upon the exact subjects that COLD will cover as well. In addition, this year's conference will feature a panel on processing large number of triples, which should be exactly down your alley. Also, our keynotes seem highly relevant to the subject.

In summary, I hope you understand that workshops do not live in isolation but are part of a greater context. Taking advantage of that benefit will result in many highly exciting encounters and ideas - all for the bargain price of 250$/day.

If during ISWC you are unhappy, please come and talk to me. I will be there and happy to listen to your thoughts on how to improve ISWC, its workshop organization, or anything. Alternatively, I invite you to come to the town hall meeting we will be holding on Wednesday, November 14 at 5:45pm

Whatever the outcome, I wish you a successful and stimulating COLD 2012


Best

Avi Bernstein
ISWC General Chair


On 11.09.2012, at 14:08, Hugh Glaser wrote:

> Sigh, same again.
> Early registration is $1050 for COLD2012.
> 
> (As the site says: *The Sunday and Monday workshops/tutorials are only available to those registered for the full conference.)
> 
> That's about $100 a paper.
> 

-----------------------------------------------------------------
|  Professor Abraham Bernstein, PhD
|  University of Zürich, Department of Informatics
|  web: http://www.ifi.uzh.ch/ddis/bernstein.html