While I am not unsympathetic to the problems that international visitors face going to the USA for conferences, I think that we have to remember that no matter where the location - some people will have problems with attending - for whatever reason. Conferences outside of North America run very expensive for me as a Canadian. While I have been fortunate to have funding to attend, grants do run out. The trip to Sussex was very expensive as a Canadian graduate student. The exchange rate is ridiculous (2.38 CDN = 1 GBP). Other factors include time spent away from our work, as it is no short jaunt to Europe. Most of teach, and it's difficult to get away for conferences when they are a big distance away. I am not sure that I will be able to attend many more conferences outside of N.A. It seems to me that if we alternate between US, Canada and International countries, attendees will also be alternating their attendance. I don't think we can help that. I think it would be a bigger problem if we only held the conference in the US. Yes, we can consider the location of AoIR members, but if we want to expand membership (especially to academics outside of North America), then we need to alternate locations. If we are indeed the Internet gurus and geeks of this generation, than perhaps we can consider alternatives, such as web conferencing/presenting for those people unable to attend for whatever reason. This is contingent of course on the fact that we have the proper equipment, internet access and volunteers willing to coordinate this process. Regards, ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tracy L.M. Kennedy PhD Candidate and NetLab Research Associate Department. of Sociology University of Toronto, Ontario www.netwomen.ca/Blog tkennedy@netwomen.ca ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Message: 3 Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2004 09:31:16 +0800 From: meiwu@umac.mo Subject: Re: [Air-l] AoIR conference venues To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Message-ID: <OF0F337AB5.64ADE1B6-ON48256F24.000701D3-48256F24.0008398E@umac.mo> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
I've sided with Philipp. I'd also like to bring to your attention the new visa entry policy of the US government. It'll make any conferences held in the US unattractive to international participants.
Wu Mei University of Macau