[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] The Easy, Academic life
"Frank Boumphrey" <bckman@i...> writes: > > If you're relying on self-selected people who can afford their own > > plane tickets and hotel rooms, it's no great surprise you get a > > lot of marketeers pitching products > > This is all very true. > > In academic conferences the people speaking are academics, and one > of the perks of being an academic is that the University usually > picks up the Tag. Nice try, guys, but I survived 14 years of academia from undergraduate to asst. prof. to Writing Centre Director , and that's not the way I remember it, especially not from the mid 1980's to the mid 1990's. When I was a graduate student, I received a couple of token grants (<US$300) to help me speak at the most prestigious conferences, and as an assistant professor in the English department at a bottom-of-the-first-rung-but-still-first-rung Canadian university, I had airfare and registration (but not accommodation or meals) paid for exactly one conference each year. For anything else, I would have had to get my hands on an SSHRC (federal) or similar grant and burn off some of the money, or else just pay out of pocket, as I ended up doing (at least until I had my own budget as a director). Grad students often worked the book tables to have some of their expenses paid, but I couldn't stomach that. Of course, things are probably different in the sciences, and well-endowed U.S. universities have more money to throw around everywhere, but when I was interviewing for English departments at some of the big US schools, things didn't seem that much better. At professional tech conferences, by contrast, almost anyone with a reasonable-sized employer or customer has their expenses paid even if they're not speaking (I was amazed when I went out into the private sector), and all speakers have the registration fee waived and sometimes get free lunches, at least at GCA conferences -- at academic conferences, even speakers have to pay for lunch *and* registration, as I was rudely reminded at WWW8 last year. Worthy attendees who do not have corporate backing often arrange to give workshops or tutorials, for which they receive money *in addition to* having their expenses paid. All the best, David -- David Megginson david@m... http://www.megginson.com/ *************************************************************************** This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers. To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@x...&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ ***************************************************************************
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