Dear all I appreciate the concern some, or even many, of us have about the fee level. I wanted to add two things to the debate: first, as someone who has spent his entire academic life flying from the furthest reaches of the southern hemisphere to Europe and the UK, I have always felt that the airfare and hotel costs are far more of an issue than the conference fee cost. For example, for me to come to Sweden would cost in the order of USD$2500 for airfare and hotel. So, what the conference costs probably doesn't matter to me since the differernce between a low or high fee is going to be no more than $200 and thus less than 10% of the overall cost. second, local situations are always different and significantly affect prices. I have no idea what they are in Sweden (though suspect the tax rate throughout the country might have an effect), but in Brisbane, for example, the way that the hotel we held the conference at funded its venue hire meant some extra costs, but at the advantage of not having to sell a set number of hotel rooms (more cost, less risk). Of course, it could also be argued that holding the conference in Sweden is going to help a lot of northern European grad students and less well funded academics attend than if, say, it was held in the USA. This certainly was the reason that the conference was held in Brisbane a few years ago. It's a tricky issue. Dr Matthew Allen Associate Professor and Head of Department, Internet Studies School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts Curtin University of Technology, CRICOS 00301J Australia m.allen@curtin.edu.au http://netcrit.net <http://netcrit.net/> @netcrit +61 8 92663511 (v) +61 8 9266 3166 (f) Australian Learning and Teaching Council Fellow