actually, this is one of the executives most talked about issue of late:) It is my understanding that everyone really wants to have more international conferences. it is actually very hard to ensure one thing, that the conference will not lose money. The conferences are self-funded, and one major loss could ruin us, so that means that in my opinion we have to have high attendance, somewhat high fees, and have to be very real about money(exchange rates affect percentage profit or loss). also, in my opinion, have a responsibility to our paid members, which sustain the organization, and the majority of those are in North America and Europe. To me, this means that we have to have the majority of our conferences where they have easy access. as global membership rises, this changes. as for language, I believe we voted on this two years ago. the conference will be in English, primarily because we don't have translation capability because it costs too much, and secondarily because when we did try to do it, it did not work well at all. I'm sure that once aoir is on firm financial footing, locations such as Cairo, Budapest, or Sao Paolo, will be attempted, our theoretical timeline for this is about 5 years out, remember of course that aoir is still a smallish organization, with about 400-500 members, so it takes time for the organization to build and grow, especially in terms of fiscal capacity. On Oct 4, 2004, at 5:33 AM, Philipp Budka wrote:
Dear AoIR list members,
I am participating on the list for about three years. In this period the AoIR conference took place in the Netherlands (2002), in Canada (2003), in England (2004) and will take place in the US (2005). These venues have at least two things in common: they are all countries of the north, and, apart from Holland, they are all English speaking countries. I can imagine that it is very hard to find a conference venue with the proper infrastructure, academic and financial background, etc. But wouldn't it be real international to look at Asia, Southeast Europe or Latin America for conference venues. I would love to attend an AoIR conference in Sao Paulo, Cairo or Budapest. I am sure this would send real international signals to the global internet interested community. Greetings from Vienna,
Philipp
-- Philipp Budka philbu@gmx.net Rustengasse 5/10 A-1150 Wien, Austria http://www.philbu.net http://www.lateinamerika-studien.at --
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