CV Question

[dr. t]

If, hypothetically, a conference organizer approached the project for which a certain person is the managing editor to give a presentation at their conference, and the professor in change (executive editor?) asked that person if I'd like to do it, would there be any problems with that person putting this on his or her CV under "Invited Talks"?

 

I'm asking for a friend. 

[lewin]

I'm having a little trouble following the characters but a professor got invited to a talk and passed it to his/her graduate student? This has happened to me. I wouldn't put it as an invited talk, just a regular talk. Frankly, your friend wasn't the one invited  

Edited December 13, 2014 by lewin

[dr. t]

I'm having a little trouble following the characters but a professor got invited to a talk and passed it to his/her graduate student? This has happened to me. I wouldn't put it as an invited talk, just a regular talk. Frankly, your friend wasn't the one invited  

 

Not quite. The conference requested that someone from the project come talk, and the professor who oversees the project asked me my friend, who's in charge of the project's day-to-day operations, if he'd like to do it.

 

To put it more generally, if a group/institution is invited to give a talk and a person is chosen from that group or institution, is that person giving an invited talk?

Edited December 13, 2014 by telkanuru

[C10H12N2O]

Yes I believe that constitutes being invited

[dr. t]

Thanks! I'm sure my friend will be very excited!

[C10H12N2O]

Tell your 'friend'I say congrats

[lewin]

Thanks for clarifying, I agree with everybody else that it's invited then. But of course, you your friend could always ask your supervisor to be sure.

Edited December 14, 2014 by lewin

[dr. t]

Followup: Is $470 (student) / $690 (full) for registration at a Computer Science conference which will have its proceedings published totally absurd? Because it seems totally absurd to my poor unfunded humanities self.

[fuzzylogician]

I am now debating whether to submit an abstract to a conference that costs ~$350 in registration fees. Right now, I'm leaning towards 'no.' It's different if you're in a field where grant money covers these expenses (like CS), but to me that seems unreasonable as someone who usually attends conferences whose registration fees are in the $50-75 range. I have to say, though, that norms vary widely across fields in this respect.

[TakeruK]

Wow, that is a little higher than the rates I'm used to seeing. I'm coming from a field where registration is usually fully funded. Also, our field generally will provide free registration for invited speakers!

 

Here are some factors that would generally increase cost (i.e. if these are true then the higher cost is more justified):

 

1. How big is it? I usually see student registration fees around $300-$400 when it is a small meeting (<200 people) and student fees around $150-$200 for large meetings (>1000 people).

 

2. Where is it being held? If it's in a hotel or a convention center, then expect to pay more. If it's on a school campus then it's weird to see such high fees. Also, if it's in a nice location (e.g. Hawaii), then fees are generally higher.

 

3. Are drinks/meals included? If lunch and 2 coffee breaks + drinks at evening poster session are included, then expect to see higher costs!

 

4. Proceedings generally raise the cost by about $100-$150.

 

5. How many days? If this is not at least a Monday to Thursday conference, $470 is quite steep. Most meetings in my field are Mon-Thur or Mon-Fri.

 

6. Is this meeting independent of an academic society? Most academic societies can reduce rates for its members. Usually the most expensive meetings are the ones that are run by groups independent of the national society.

 

All of this usually means a meeting that is between 200 and 1000 people are the most expensive because it's not quite big enough to take advantage of economy of scale but too big to do cheaper things like use a University auditorium.

 

Overall, I would say that if this is a big influential CS conference, and most of the factors above apply, then $470 for student registration is fairly reasonable. I know that in CS, conference presentations/proceedings are more valuable than published papers. In my field, a published paper costs about $1000-$1500 in page charges so $470 for a presentation+proceedings publication would be considered a reasonable expense.

 

But maybe someone in the CS field can compare this rate with what they normally pay!

[dr. t]

This is the conference: http://2015.hci.international/

 

Part of the problem is that the conference is so far outside my field (I'm a humanist who does a lot of digital work) that I don't know how prestigious it is, and therefore I don't know if it's worth the $ or the effort required to scrape together the grant money.

 

Seratim:

 

1) over 3,000

2) convention center

3) one convention center reception dinner

4) 

5) It's a week long, but the first part of the week is tutorial sessions, which hold no interest for me (also I'll be in Rome)

6) No membership AFAIK.

Edited January 30, 2015 by telkanuru

[TakeruK]

Hmm okay, so the early fee is $395 (not judging you, doesn't sound like you knew about the early rate in time to make a decision about it, but I think this is the rate we should consider if it is "absurd" or not). It's too bad that it includes the banquet dinner, I almost always decline this when I register because it adds about $100 to the fee. So given that the proceedings is included, and the dinner is included, I think this rate is okay (i.e. not blatantly ripping anyone off).

 

But I agree that whether it's worth it or not depends on its prestige and maybe a CS person can answer that! Although it seems like these proceedings do get a lot of citations: http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=3&topdomainid=2&subdomainid=12&orderby=1

[rising_star]

This is funny, if only because I'm going to a conference next month that I paid $350 to register for. I think I get two lunches for that, but nothing else. I'm mostly going because it's a new conference in a relatively new field and I'm excited to meet others in it. 

[dr. t]

Hmm okay, so the early fee is $395 (not judging you, doesn't sound like you knew about the early rate in time to make a decision about it

 

Well, they only formally accepted the paper two days ago, and it's not really a thing I'd attend if I wasn't presenting. Thanks for the advice!