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How Not to Run an Academic Conference
May. 11th, 2005 05:03 pm1. Apply for funding from associated institutions. Assure your funding partners that your staff will take care of the arrangements.
2. Invite a bunch of speakers. Waffle on their honoraria. Two thousand, one thousand, whatever. They'll just be happy to get a check. Put off decisions about their travel reimbursement, but ask one of your funding partners specifically to fund expenses for them.
3. Make no plans on behalf of your speakers, besides the speeches themselves. Hotels? No worries! You can put up distinguished emeritii in unoccupied student dorms! If they balk at that, Danish mathematicians should have no trouble whatsoever making their own hotel arrangements in Seattle! The reservations clerks at the Marriott's call center in India can tell them what's close to campus! Everyone always prefers to plan their own flights (really), but no one at your organization should worry about when speakers are getting in, how long they're planning to stay, or how they're getting to and from the airport.
4. Ignore all questions concerning the budget. Insist that you just have no idea what stuff will cost. If the source of your funding presses for details, whip up an Excel sheet on which the total amount of funding is divided by the total number of speakers. Suggest that speakers who need more than their fair share should have to plead "extraordinary circumstances" and grovel for whatever the speakers on shorter trips leave behind. Congratulate yourself on a job well done.
5. Refuse to bend any rule at all. Invited speakers will have to pay to register at the conference! They'll have to lay out their own money for hotel stays and wait for reimbursement, even though three weeks in a strange city can kill anyone's credit limit! When it is suggested to you that this is rude, retort that it is convenient.
In a just universe, in step 6, you should discover that no one wants to speak at your conferences ever again, and that the admin who works for your partner organization is so incensed at being condescended to and ignored that she recommends that you not get more funding because however exciting the event is, we look like jackasses when we work with you.
*prays for justice*
(Sidebar: Grumpy fox looks just like Aggravated fox and Irate fox. If these things weren't free, I'd feel gypped. Hopeful fox is distinct, but way too cheery for my current revenge fantasies, in which we live in a not-so-just universe, and the admin at your partner institution gets permission to torture you until you come up with a complete budget.)
2. Invite a bunch of speakers. Waffle on their honoraria. Two thousand, one thousand, whatever. They'll just be happy to get a check. Put off decisions about their travel reimbursement, but ask one of your funding partners specifically to fund expenses for them.
3. Make no plans on behalf of your speakers, besides the speeches themselves. Hotels? No worries! You can put up distinguished emeritii in unoccupied student dorms! If they balk at that, Danish mathematicians should have no trouble whatsoever making their own hotel arrangements in Seattle! The reservations clerks at the Marriott's call center in India can tell them what's close to campus! Everyone always prefers to plan their own flights (really), but no one at your organization should worry about when speakers are getting in, how long they're planning to stay, or how they're getting to and from the airport.
4. Ignore all questions concerning the budget. Insist that you just have no idea what stuff will cost. If the source of your funding presses for details, whip up an Excel sheet on which the total amount of funding is divided by the total number of speakers. Suggest that speakers who need more than their fair share should have to plead "extraordinary circumstances" and grovel for whatever the speakers on shorter trips leave behind. Congratulate yourself on a job well done.
5. Refuse to bend any rule at all. Invited speakers will have to pay to register at the conference! They'll have to lay out their own money for hotel stays and wait for reimbursement, even though three weeks in a strange city can kill anyone's credit limit! When it is suggested to you that this is rude, retort that it is convenient.
In a just universe, in step 6, you should discover that no one wants to speak at your conferences ever again, and that the admin who works for your partner organization is so incensed at being condescended to and ignored that she recommends that you not get more funding because however exciting the event is, we look like jackasses when we work with you.
*prays for justice*
(Sidebar: Grumpy fox looks just like Aggravated fox and Irate fox. If these things weren't free, I'd feel gypped. Hopeful fox is distinct, but way too cheery for my current revenge fantasies, in which we live in a not-so-just universe, and the admin at your partner institution gets permission to torture you until you come up with a complete budget.)
