[ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list ]
Dear types-list, Going on a tangent from Flavien's earlier post: I really think that online conferences should be free. Several conferences (PLDI for example) managed to run free-of-charge since the pandemic started, and they reported broader attendance and a strong diversity of attendants, which sounds great. I don't think we can achieve this with for-pay online conferences. ICFP is coming up shortly with a $100 registration price tag, and I did not register. I'm aware that running a large virtual conference requires computing resources that do have a cost. For PLDI for example, the report only says that the cost was covered by industrial sponsors. Are numbers publicly available on the cost of running a virtual conference? Note that if we managed to run a conference on free software, I'm sure that institutions and volunteers could be convinced to help hosting and monitoring the conference services during the event.
