Thread by @NicoleBarbaro

Great question! What’s going on behind the scenes? I’ve been on the board of an academic society for 5+ years and hosted an online conference last year for 600 attendees.

Some insights as to what *might* be going on🧵

https://twitter.com/jings_9/status/1494159729995796488

1. I presume most societies are paying a LOT for fancy conference app licensing fees, like Whova for instance. Especially with big conferences 1000+ people, this can get expensive. You’re also paying for labor of those that are monitoring for tech issues, customization, etc.

BUT there are amazing start-ups out there too! @HumBehEvoSoc used @ohyayco last year and we had an amazing experience and our members loved it.

2. Big societies have lots of costs. Societies like SPSP for example have actual staff salaries that they pay.

There are also website hosting costs, other tech to be paid for (eg. Mailing list programs) etc. registration fees pay for this.

BUT most conferences don’t actually make that much profit. Conferences can cost 100s of thousands of $$. Registration fees cover that plus a but extra.

3. Whats the extra go to? Subsidizing student travel, yearly grant funding awards, survey research by the society, etc. Many of the “perks” of membership are paid for by conference $$ surplus.

4. Now in 2022 HYBRID is the main desire.

Guess what folks: hybrid conferences are MORE EXPENSIVE to run than either in person only or online only.

So there needs to be a balance of registration to cover these extra costs. So online still $$

@HumBehEvoSoc (see pinned tweet) decided to do online only this year rather than hybrid bc it would have cost $100k to run a hybrid with fewer members in person. It was not feasible for us to do that as a smallish society.

In conclusion: online only is cheaper than in person but most society budgets assume revenue from conferences (and journal dividends) to operate in the way we all expect. Hybrid (for now at least) is more expensive.

Hope this helps explain why online is still costly.