Ted writes:

> I think it bears asking how much of the cost of those other meetings is
>  subsidized.  While I think that Interex's prices are high, it bears
> remembering
>  that academic institutions, business and government are all commonly
> involved subsidizing research.

While you might initially think that, it isn't generally true. In most
circumstances, the meetings are not subsidized by any outside organization or
governmental agency, except in the most indirect sense.

Perhaps the most significant exception to that statement was a meeting I
attended a year ago, but it's not greatly exceptional. The National Academies
of Science and Engineering own a truly nice, near resort-level quality
facility just off the campus of the University of California at Irvine, which
is also one of the tonier parts of Los Angeles.

This facility was built with monies donated by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman
Foundation and given to the NAS/NAE to promote the highest level scientific
research meetings. (You may not have heard of Beckman Instruments, but if you
were in chemistry or biochemistry, their name would be well-known. Beckman
Instruments was/is a smaller version of HP, did the same things, and reacted
in the same manner with their founder's wealth as have the Packard and
Hewlett Foundations).

I was quite impressed with the facilities at the Beckman Center:

      http://www4.nationalacademies.org/admin/beckman.nsf

when I was there for a four-day meeting just about this time last year. The
food was excellent, and the meeting rooms and lecture halls/auditoriums were
as nice as you would expect. Although I cannot remember the registration fee,
it was certainly nominal, something on the order of $150 for the four days.
And as I say, the food was excellent. Breakfast and lunch were included in
the registration.

Clearly there is some indirect subsidization for a meeting like that, but it
wasn't extensive by any means. However, most conferences I attend (and I go
to three, four, five or six a year) are held in pre-existing facilities and
registration costs carry the complete load. Depending on the size of the
meeting, the meetings are held either in university classrooms, corporate
facilities or small hotels (for 50 or fewer people), large hotels (less than
250 people) or convention centers (several thousand people).

In each case, as I mentioned yesterday, the prices on a per capita basis
remain surprisingly stable. We used to hold our training classes at the local
Hilton. The room we rented there was a nice conference room that seated 12
and rented for $75/day. That works out to about $6/head/day. I was also
involved at about the same time in setting up a regional scientific meeting
at the Hilton which required the use of two of the three large ballrooms. The
cost per day for those two ballrooms was $250. When split among the 100
attendees, that cost was $2.5/head/day.

Renting facilities is not nearly as expensive as people believe. A few years
ago, when we were looking for a site to assemble the World's Largest Poster,
I contacted the Los Angeles Coliseum. To rent the entire facility, which must
seat at least 60,000 people, was only $12,500 for a day. While that was a
little bit out of our price range for the poster, I thought it was very
reasonable. If you could find some reason to fill the coliseum, the cost per
head per day would only be about 25 cents per person.

Some years ago when there was a bit of a movement to create a purely
technical HP3000 meeting, without vendors and only a technical program, I
contacted our local university and rented a 150 person auditorium for two
days. The price for that rental was $250. The auditorium is at the end of the
second floor of an attractive student center, abutting a patio and surrounded
by a food court. If 100 people had attended, the price per head would have
been $1.25/day.

Almost all universities have such facilities available. New Mexico State
University's conference services web page is at:

     http://www.nmsu.edu/~confserv/

While prices in San Francisco are not in line with the rest of the country, I
doubt that the Moscone Center rents for much more than $40,000 a day for the
size of convention that is Interex. If 4,000 people attend, that's only
$10/head/day. But if I'm wrong, and it's twice as expensive, that's still
only $20/head/day, resulting in your share of a 3-1/2 day convention being
$70.

Wirt Atmar

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