[Air-l] AoIR conference venues

[jeremy hunsinger]

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 at gmx.net
> Rustengasse 5/10
> A-1150 Wien, Austria
> http://www.philbu.net
> http://www.lateinamerika-studien.at
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>
Jeremy Hunsinger
Center for Digital Discourse and Culture
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