[Air-l] venues

[T Kennedy]

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 at netwomen.ca
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

>
> Message: 3
> Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2004 09:31:16 +0800
> From: meiwu at umac.mo
> Subject: Re: [Air-l] AoIR conference venues
> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Message-ID:
> <OF0F337AB5.64ADE1B6-ON48256F24.000701D3-48256F24.0008398E at 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
>
>