News

Hybrid Meetings: What Do They Really Cost?

November 4, 2024

Laptop screen with images of many participants in a virtual session.

Credit: Chris Montgomery, Unsplash

By Antoinette WinklerPrins, AAG Council Treasurer

This is the second of a short series of perspectives by 2024-2026 Council Treasurer Antoinette WinklerPrins—a series designed to help illuminate some of the financial challenges a professional organization such as the AAG faces. In this column, she offers information about the costs of managing a hybrid annual meeting, such as the one AAG has supported since 2023. Read the first installment.

When the pandemic started, we all learned quickly how to use virtual meeting tools to continue to do knowledge work, and to connect socially. COVID-related social distancing forced us into the virtual meeting space, yet we soon realized that virtual access created opportunities for participation and engagement that had not been available before—a very positive outcome of a disruptive global event. Since we emerged from the pandemic, the expectation for a virtual option for any meetings is more prevalent, and organizations are responding in varied ways. AAG is one of the relatively few professional organizations that remains committed to a synchronous hybrid annual meeting.

We are making this commitment to make sure this important professional event is accessible to those who cannot travel or who make a personal choice to not travel. At a larger scale, we are also committed to lowering the carbon footprint of our meetings. (We are on track to reduce meeting-related emissions by 45% by 2030.)

Members are sometimes surprised that the virtual option does not result in a lower cost for the meeting, including registration. After all, a virtual meeting seems to be less complicated than traveling in person. Isn’t it less costly, too?

Unfortunately, no. Let me explain.

Two Words: Tech and Labor

While the participation and engagement components of virtual or hybrid meetings are positive, lower cost is not one of the benefits. The benefits of virtual or hybrid meetings come at a cost, chiefly for technology and in labor.

Tech: The ability to hold a virtual or hybrid meeting depends on technology and IT support to ensure that all functions smoothly. AAG carefully researches and combines the most complementary and budget-friendly services and platforms possible to support its hybrid meetings, from the platform that hosts meeting submissions and all video-streamed sessions to integrations with meeting software onsite. In addition, hardware is needed: up-to-date computers, video screens, microphones, and equipment with recording capabilities for room set up. There are also critical aspects of a hybrid meeting that are easy to overlook but need a modest financial investment, notably online helpdesk software to approximate in-person responses to questions at registration.

Labor: Qualified people need to be available to run it all, at a scale serving many thousands of participants simultaneously. Both on- and offsite IT assistance is needed, and must be staffed by people who are adept at monitoring and troubleshooting for live gatherings simultaneously with livestreaming for virtual guests. Skilled labor is the single most important expenditure for a meeting, and is also the most direct way for AAG’s economic activity to benefit people, be it our local host location or offsite locations. Paying fair wages for this expertise is critical: meeting rooms with a hybrid component are a complex visual and aural experience. Virtual meetings, too, are not as simple as “plug and play.” These rooms must be monitored in case of a variety of challenges, from technical issues to participant safety and security. Virtual and hybrid sessions raise the possibility of having to troubleshoot with participants using older versions of applications and programs; this can take a lot of time. Onsite, coordinating with hotels and conference center staff can also add to the cost of labor to support a hybrid meeting.

Cost Proportions for Hybrid Meetings

Nainoa Thompson, AAG Honorary Geographer, speaking at AAG 2024 in Honolulu. — AAG’s 2024 Honorary Geographer plenary with Nainoa Thompson in Honolulu was a hybrid session.

On the basis of AAG’s 2023 and 2024 meetings, we’ve found that registrations for the virtual option cover roughly one-half of its costs. Virtual registration fees contributed about 12% of meeting revenues at the 2023 Annual Meeting, while virtual services accounted for 24% of total meeting costs. In Honolulu, the proportion was similar: 9% revenue to 18% of costs.

The costs above don’t just represent the sessions that occur online. Also included are the costs of live-streaming in-person sessions and providing meeting presenters with the opportunity to hold hybrid sessions (virtual presenter in a streamed in-person session). Since major keynotes and panels are live-streamed, these are the events that make a hybrid conference feel like one conference, instead of two parallel and unequal experiences in-person and online.

We believe the value of maintaining a hybrid and virtual option for the annual meeting transcends the bottom line. Hybrid is the best possible way to make sure the meeting is accessible, not only for those who can register at in-person rates and travel, but for members who cannot travel or wish to reduce their climate impact. It also contributes significantly to AAG’s efforts to shrink our carbon footprint, combined with supportive innovations such as the development of regional nodes that connect with the main meeting.

The annual meeting means a lot to all of us: a time to gather, share knowledge, network, and grow the discipline. When we set new registration fees, we were careful not to do so in a “one size fits all” way. We set the new fees for a proportional cost sharing, rather than trying to pass on all costs to members. We hope this creates the best possible value for our members at a financially sustainable cost. For all of us.

Please feel free to reach out to me or Gary Langham, AAG’s ED with questions, comments, or concerns. Send your comments and questions with the subject line “Treasurer’s Corner” to helloworld@aag.org.

News

Where We Stand: AAG’s Current Finances

September 26, 2024

Two people review and discuss financial documents

By Antoinette WinklerPrins, AAG Council Treasurer

This is the first of a short series of perspectives by 2024-2026 Council Treasurer Antoinette WinklerPrins. In this first column, she offers the overview of AAG’s recovery and lessons from the hard hits of COVID-19 and annual meeting cancellations. Future columns will look at topics from a member’s perspective—Have you ever wondered why having a conference hotel is so important? What the costs for a hybrid or virtual meeting are? Dr. WinklerPrins will take up those questions in future issues of the Newsletter.

When I stepped up to become AAG’s Council Treasurer this year, I had already been a devoted member of AAG for more than 25 years, and had served on the AAG Council since 2023, and as East Lakes Regional Councilor from 2009-2012. Now I am fulfilling the position of Treasurer, learning more every day about what it entails. It is teaching me valuable lessons that I’d like to share with you about how I and the rest of the AAG Council can serve you, the AAG members. Becoming Treasurer has also given me a sense of purpose to explain aspects of AAG’s budgetary and fiscal responsibilities that help provide context for AAG’s decisions on members’ behalf.

In my professional life, I am a geographer serving as the Deputy Division Director of the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences at the U.S. National Science Foundation. I served as a Program Director in the Geography and Spatial Science/Human-Environmental and Geographical Sciences prior to becoming a Deputy Division Director. I have served on the faculty of Michigan State University and retain an adjunct appointment at the Johns Hopkins University’s Environmental Sciences and Policy Program.

As a member of AAG, I already understood that the governing body of the AAG, the AAG Council, has fiduciary responsibility for the organization. As Treasurer, I have come to appreciate the considerable time that the Council devotes to reviewing the state of AAG financials during each of its meetings. I have learned how to work closely with the AAG Executive Director and Director of Finance and Accounting, and how to head the AAG Finance Committee.

When I joined Council in July 2023, AAG was emerging from the worst of the pandemic and absorbing the costs of cancelling three in-person meetings in a row. Along with that loss came significant investment in hosting virtual meetings. Because the Annual Meeting has long been the AAG’s main source of revenue, these three years of cancelled meetings were very hard on the financial wellbeing of the organization.

One of the major shifts AAG made soon after the pandemic was not only fiscally sound but in line with its climate goals: the move to a new headquarters that is LEED Gold and highly rated for accessibility and walkability. AAG’s staff work hybrid schedules to reduce trips, and the move resulted in a significant rainy day fund from the sale of the old headquarters.

In 2023, Council approved several more steps to stabilize AAG:

Membership dues were increased on July 1, after a six-week campaign to make sure current members had the chance to renew at existing rates and take advantage of multi-year membership for up to three years. AAG had not increased membership dues since 2008, even though inflation-linked incremental increases are the norm in many organizations such as the AAG. This adjustment has aligned dues with current costs for member services—and AAG added two discounted membership categories for faculty and staff of Minority-Serving Institutions and K-12 teachers.
AAG has adopted a break-even model for registration pricing for its annual meeting, opting to retain the hybrid option for maximum choices for all members. To reflect the true costs of a hybrid option while protecting discounted rates as much as possible, AAG raised registration rates, but not uniformly across all categories. Additional discount categories were added here, also.
AAG reluctantly undertook a staff reduction last summer to reduce fixed costs, and has sought other cost-cutting opportunities in its operating expenses.
Because many of AAG’s fiscal measures will take time to have full effect, the Association has needed to use money from Council-restricted reserves to make up the shortfalls. Now, AAG must shift emphasis and rebuild these reserves. Therefore, September, Council voted to prioritize building up our reserves and endowment again before embarking on costly or risky initiatives.
As part of its work to diversify revenue beyond the annual meeting, AAG has embarked on a major internal effort to seek and secure grants. Two projects—the Convening of Care and the new GAIA project—have already received funding from the National Science Foundation, with eight more proposals currently in play.

I am confident in the management of AAG and can assure you that the decisions the Council has made recently are stabilizing AAG’s financials, ensuring the organization’s continued viability. Plans for prudent fiscal management for the next few years are critical to helping the organization build up future reserves so that it can sustain its important work supporting its members and the discipline of geography. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we rebuild. Please feel free to reach out to me or Gary Langham, AAG’s ED with questions, comments, or concerns. Send your comments and questions with the subject line “Treasurer’s Corner” to helloworld@aag.org.

Post

How Not to Get a DDRI Award

June 16, 2015

Editor’s Note: The Fall deadline for submission of full Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (DDRI) proposals to the Geography and Spatial Sciences (GSS) Program is the second Thursday in August each year (August 13, 2015). Learn more.

1) Construct a narrowly focused case study of process in a small community in a faraway land, emphasizing its uniqueness. The case will be of interest to a few others who work in the same area.

An acronym has been developed for these projects, “WISC” (Wallowing in a Specific Case). The GSS program and NSF in general does not prioritize support for WISCy proposals as it needs to support research that generates new knowledge more broadly and with relevance to US society.

2) Provide a clear statement about what the proposal is about only deep within the Project Description because the background is really important and the objective of the study can’t be understood until that background is provided.

Realize that many DDRI reviewers are reading 12-18 proposals and are often reading proposals late at night. You need to grab them right away, in the opening paragraph, to tell them what the project is about and why it is important. Then you can provide the background and literature review before focusing in on methods and data analysis.

3) Write a jargon-filled dense proposal, steeped in the latest theory from your most recent graduate seminar that is only understandable to the few people out there who are within your narrow subfield.

Review panels consist of well-rounded geographers and spatial scientists some of whom may be from your narrow area well. NSF does its best to have your proposal be reviewed by people who know your area; however the reality is that most reviewers will more likely not be directly from your subfield. This makes it really important that you write a proposal that is readable to a broad audience as well as attending to adequate detail for experts. In order to prepare for this, share drafts with people from both within and outside your subfield so ensure comprehension.

4) Provide an excessively long list of research questions and/or sub-questions or hypotheses to be tested just to be sure you are covering all bases.

It is best to focus on a limited and tight set of research questions or hypotheses. This, especially when tightly integrated with methods and analysis, provides reviewers with much greater confidence that the project is feasible.

5) Take the “everything including the kitchen-sink” approach to methods to be used without any indication of how the various strands of data will be integrated or how all that data will be analyzed in order to answer research questions.

The selection of methods needs to be carefully thought-through as to how and why those are the best methods to answer the stated research questions or test the posed hypotheses. Justify your chosen methods and provide citations for them.

6) Spend only a paragraph or two on data analysis and declare that your data analysis will consist of entering field notes into NVivo or that you will perform some statistical analysis.

Most proposals are declined because insufficient information is provided on data analysis. Many proposals spend a lot of space on literature review, theoretical framing, and, sometimes, on methods, but much too little on analysis. Don’t do this. Competitive proposals develop a comprehensive data analysis plan in which statistical analyses are specified and details provided on coding mechanisms to be used in NVivo or other software package. Also be sure to tie the data analysis back to your research questions or hypotheses.

7) Include language specific to Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts in the Project Summary but then not discuss Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts in the Project Description.

Note that Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts are the basis of review criteria at NSF and these are the aspects that reviewers/panelists are asked to evaluate your work by. Become familiar with what NSF means by these and address how your proposal addresses both these in the project description as well as the summary.

8) Ignore Broader Impacts, especially in the way that NSF sees these.

Your advisor might have said “don’t bother with Broader Impacts, they don’t matter” and that might have been the case in the past, however, this has changed a lot, and you need to read carefully about what is meant by Broader Impacts, and think creatively about how your research might contribute to society. Recall that NSF is a US taxpayer funded federal agency and is overseen by Congress; therefore, where possible, find a way to highlight how your research and findings might have some impact on or relevance to US society. It does not mean that you have to do this in the project, but you need to think of how the new knowledge generated in your project could be used to benefit society.

9) If submitting a proposal for the second time, don’t pay any attention to suggestions that reviewers made because it is clear that the reviewers simply didn’t understand your fabulous project.

Even though a resubmitted proposal is treated as a new proposal, some reviewers who read it before will read it again and remember, and might note that you did not respond to suggestions from the last time. Realize that reviewers provide feedback to let you craft a stronger proposal. Despite this, for GSS it is generally best to avoid including a statement explaining what you did, just do it, and use the space for more important information.

10) Include a sloppy, incomplete, poorly, and inconsistently formatted References Cited section figuring that reviewers don’t look at it.

Many reviewers turn first to the references cited section to know, at a glance, what the literature is that you are drawing from. Also, it simply does not look good if you have left out key references, or if these are referenced poorly. Attention to the detail of an accurate References Cited section reflects well on your ability to be attentive to detail, which helps assure reviewers that you are capable of executing the project.

11) Ignore your own positionality in research in which this might affect access to certain populations and how it might impact the research process itself.

It is important to note this if relevant. Reviewers need to assess the viability of your project and this is a component that might affect that.

12) Declare that your project is the first ever to research what it is you are doing.

You may believe so given your literature review that is mostly internet-based, however buried somewhere in a dusty library might be something similar. It is best to emphasize what is new and fresh about your work, not that it is the first ever.

13) Include a cute title that tells you little about what the proposal is about and is better used for a presentation or manuscript title.

You might be surprised at how many decisions about your proposal are made that rely only on the title. It is best to use a clear declarative title.

14) Provide poorly rendered maps and figures that are so small that that they are illegible.

Many maps included in proposals are quickly generated using a GIS and are almost meaningless. You are submitting to the Geography and Spatial Sciences Program, so consider proper cartographic conventions and design. Only include legible figures and only if they add to the narrative.

15) Use the smallest and densest font available, and leave no spare lines of white spaces in order to cram as many words and sentences into the 10 pages of the project description.

Do pay attention to the look and flow of the proposal; ‘style’ matters. You want to draw the reviewer’s eyes to the key points, without cluttering their view with too much bold and underlining. Definitely include spaces between sections so that you proposal breathes. Recall that reviewers are often reading these late at night when they are tired and you don’t want to irritate them by making the reading hard.

16) Provide a Data Management Plan (DMP) that does not follow the current NSF format and does not indicate clear plans for long-term data access and archiving plans using institutional data repositories.

DMPs are a relatively newer additional to the proposal and many advisors remain unaware of their importance and the need to comply with the format. Publicly funded research, such as that by NSF, needs to have data generated with its funds to be made available to the public (that which is not projected under IRB). Careful attention to this demonstrates that you are careful with details and follow directions. Note – keeping data on a “secure hard-drive” and stating that “data will be made available upon request from the co-PI” are no longer adequate. Inquire with your institution as to what they have available for long term data storage and curation.

17) Use a hypotheses-testing research design when a research question approach is more than adequate.

Do not force your research into a hypothesis-testing format if this is not necessary for your research design. Much research funded by NSF does not involve testing hypotheses, but you do need to clearly construct a set of research questions and then provide clear methods and data analysis to answer these.

18) Propose doing research in a country in which you will need to speak another language and have no evidence of having learned that language or propose no plans (or budget) for the use of translators.

Preparation for fieldwork needs to be demonstrated via preliminary or other means. Do not be afraid to discuss how you have achieved cultural competency to work in a foreign place. This provides reviewers with assurance that the project is viable. If you need to use translators, be sure to budget for these and address the challenges of the need to work with them.

19) Use whatever indirect rate your institution’s Sponsored Research Office (SPO) tells you must be used.

If your proposed research is to be conducted away from the main location of your university, be sure to inquire if there is an “off-campus” indirect rate that can be applied to your proposal’s budget. This rate is usually lower and would provide more money for the actual research. Busy budget people sometimes forget to consider this.

20) Use language such as “I will explore the such and so in place xyz.”

The verb “to explore” comes across as too preliminary for some reviewers. For NSF better verbs to use are action verbs such as “to analyze” or “to investigate.”

21) Avoid dealing with alternative scenarios regarding the viability of your data collection plans.

Many DDRI applicants are doing research in foreign places with groups and individuals that may or may not be open and accessible to planned data collection when it is actually tried. Outlining a Plan B, i.e. alternative ways of accessing data you need in order to answer you research questions, shows that you have really thought through your research design and have tempered your plans with a dose of realism.

22) Rely on your advisor for all answers to your technical questions about NSF GSS proposal submission.

Advisors may know the answers, but many things change at NSF, including due dates and necessary parts to proposals. Do not rely on old habits that may no longer be current practice. Be sure to read carefully through the website and the solicitation for GSS DDRI proposals yourself. Also do not hesitate to contact the program officers; they can answer any questions you might have. Use this handy email address, gss-info [at] nsf [dot] gov.

— Antoinette WinklerPrins
Johns Hopkins University
antoinette [at] jhu [dot] edu

DOI:10.14433/2015.0016

The opinions expressed in this document are those of a former Geography and Spatial Sciences Program Director at NSF who is not working at the agency at the time of writing. Any opinion, finding, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (U.S.A.).