ksung@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Kelvin Sung) (04/25/91)
I just realize that the registration fee for Eurographics'91 is about US$600-, if one wishes to attend a tutorial or two the cost goes up to about US$900-US$1000! What surprises me is that there is no special rate for students. How can the European students afford this? Europe (or Vienna) must be a really expensive place. Consider the student registration fee for SIGGRAPH (Las Vegas) is US$130-, for Graphics Interface (Calgary) is about US$80-, and for Computer Graphics International (Boston) is US$180-. With the more expensive traveling cost (I mean from the US) I was hoping the registration fee for the conference will be lower so that I will be able to afford it. Well, guess I have to starve for a couple of month or so to attend the Eurographics ... and this is the really awful part .. this will be my first (and, hopfully not, but, probably only) visit to Vienna and I will not be able to afford to do much while I am there! Kelvin Sung University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Computer Science 1304 W. Springfield Ave. Urbana, IL 61801 ksung@cs.uiuc.edu -- Kelvin Sung University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Computer Science
edwin@cwi.nl (Edwin Blake) (04/30/91)
In article <1991Apr24.171244.16367@m.cs.uiuc.edu> ksung@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Kelvin Sung) writes: > >I just realize that the registration fee for Eurographics'91 >is about US$600-, if one wishes to attend a tutorial or two the >cost goes up to about US$900-US$1000! What surprises me is that >there is no special rate for students. How can the European students >afford this? Well nobody from Eurographics seems in a hurry to respond in public -- which is probably not such a surprise to Mr. Sung. (I think the figures may be a bit high, perhaps more like $450 for the conference and $625 - $785 with tutorials. Still far too high). Students in Europe cannot attend. I was told that I was Eurographics' first student member and in 1987 I managed to get a 60% (unadvertized) discount to Eurographics -- I did present a paper though. Today I help organize some activities for the society: so I suppose that is my qualification for commenting. It should at least be said that many of us feel the organization should become more responsive to its constituency. After some campaigning Eurographics does now provide funds to support active student participants at its workshops. The positive side is of course that Eurographics exists at all! There is a great deal of volunteer effort. I believe that the conferences are completely in the hands of the local volunteer organizers. For this conference they (the Austrians) offered scholarships to eastern european citizens -- that was their choice & their priority. The negative side is that the Eurographics "leadership" is a bit of a closed shop, getting things done involves deals that are cut in smoke filled sessions (insiders know!). Fittingly the Eurographics elections are on the basis of the candidates' social & academic standing, not on any programme of what they intend doing for members. But things might be changing. In response to pressure (and the ending of an existing contract I must add :-) I am told that the proceedings (which ordinary members who don't attend the conference do not get at the moment), will soon become part of the society journal, Computer Graphics Forum which everybody gets. (Forum by the way is a good example of what Eurographics does well -- a good journal with very fast publication -- done on a volunteer basis). The next step is properly informed contested elections. And then we should do something about that deadline for papers which is much too early: a month before SIGGRAPH and the conference is a month later. >Europe (or Vienna) must be a really expensive place. Consider the >student registration fee for SIGGRAPH (Las Vegas) is US$130-, .... >I was hoping the registration fee for the conference will be >lower so that I will be able to afford it. .... >Kelvin Sung >University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign >Department of Computer Science Your only hope is that the dollar keeps on going up -- or that you get offered a private behind the scenes deal by eurographics ... Edwin Blake, edwin@cwi.nl Phone: +31 20 5924009 Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI) Department of Interactive Systems, Kruislaan 413, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands