Dear DPS Members,
We are getting ready to open up registration and you will likely have sticker shock at the increase in DPS registration fees for the 2022 London, Ontario meeting. We did too when we met to work through the meeting budget and finalized the numbers.
Some key guidelines we used in setting the registration fees:
- DPS should not plan to make a profit on the meetings but should budget for the meeting to roughly break even.
- Attendance should be assumed to reflect the historical attendance at DPS meetings.
- Virtual attendees should not subsidize in person meeting costs like food and facilities.
In building the meeting budget we looked at the actual costs of the DPS virtual meetings and DPS in person meetings the most recent of which was 4 years ago. Costs have gone up over this period. We worked with Catherine Neish (Local Organizing Committee Chair), John Moores (Scientific Organizing Committee Chair) and Tim Holt (Virtual Organizing Committee Chair) to identify what content, tools, and approaches would enable a productive science meeting for both the in person and virtual attendees in a cost-effective manner. A budget was then built from the ground up and voted on by the committee.
There are a lot of unknowns in setting the registration fees. How many people will attend total? What will be the split between in person and virtual? What are the tools/formats/approaches that will work best for a hybrid meeting? How much more work would it be to do both the in-person part of the meeting and the virtual at the same time?
We have created a working group on the future of DPS meetings with representatives from the different DPS subcommittees. This group is gathering recommendations and will make an initial presentation at the London meeting to work on a longer-term vision of what the DPS meeting of the future will look like. They will be conducting a survey in the near future to get member feedback.
We also kept the student registration as low as we could. There is support for students from the Hartmann Travel Grant. The Underrepresented Minority Communities in Planetary Science Travel Grants are also available to encourage and support participation of students, scientists, and other space professionals who are members of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. Information on applying to these funds for the 2022 meeting will be posted shortly.
I hope to see you in London which is shaping up to be a very exciting meeting!
Diana
P.S. Kevin Marvel put up a link on general AAS meetings costs that people may also find helpful. https://aas.org/posts/news/2020/12/if-its-virtual-why-does-it-cost-anything-all
July 17, 2022