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Conferences and revenue

bigwig logo.pngAfter thinking a bit more on the conference issue, and reflecting on discussions I had with Michelle Boule at Internet Librarian, there’s another piece to the revenue puzzle that is worth considering. Warning: more numbers ahead.

Let’s assume, for a moment, that everyone going to ALA Annual preregisters. Not true, but we’re looking for rough numbers here. Pre-reg pricing for ALA members is currently $175 per person. Sure, there’s a lot of student registrations ($85), but I’m betting there’s a lot of those $260 registrations as well, so let’s just use the $175 as an baseline number.

Library Journal reported 21,466 registrants and 7169 exhibitors at the 2007 Annual. Through the power of mathematics, that gives us $3,756,550 just from registration for Annual. That doesn’t take into account the exhibitors ($19.50 per square foot of floor space, plus $.50 per square foot just to fund the opening reception…$150 for each open corner of your booth, minimum booth size 10’x10′). If we just use the planning document, we get 1243 booths at a total square footage of 160,800. This means we’ve got a total revenue from the exhibit halls of about $3,135,600.

Total revenue for ALA Annual, projected: $6,892,150

This may fluctuate some, of course…Annual last year in DC was a record-breaking year, and Anaheim might not bring as many people. We’re just looking for rough numbers here.

We’ve got gross numbers. Now we need net. Here’s where we enter the realm of complete guesswork. There is a cost associated with the space for all this. Hotels need to be paid for conference rooms, food during breaks needs to be paid for, audio/visual setups are a huge expense, etc. Of each individual registration, some percentage goes to pay for these items.

What’s a fair percentage to guess? Is it…50% of the registration? It easily could be. Let’s be very, very generous to the ALA and say that 75% of the amount the average librarian pays goes directly to pay for conference services. If that’s true, $131.25 of every registration pays for actual hard costs of the event, leaving the ALA $43.75 in the black.

Let’s assume that the exhibit hall is a complete wash, and it covers itself with no profit left over.

If all of these almost-certainly-false things are true, the ALA makes just under a million dollars ($939,137.50, to be exact) in profit on ALA Annual. A million dollars isn’t, frankly, a lot of money to an organization like the ALA, but it is a hefty payday regardless. We can see why the ALA may be frightened of virtual membership cutting into this profit center.

Until, of course, we realize that in order to recoup any lost revenue from virtual memberships that don’t go to Annual, ALA only has to capture $50 from each missing attendee. If they could offer $50 worth of content to a virtual participant, charge them appropriately, they would actually make more money than they do from the attendees of the conference.

“But!”, you say to me, “What if the actual costs per person are much less to the ALA, and they actually make a much higher percentage of profit from the registration fees?”

I think that the market would bear a considerable higher cost of virtual membership, especially since there would be no secondary costs incurred by the participant (hotel charges, flights, etc). I also think it would be unwise of ALA to admit this, since otherwise it is hard to justify the cost of attendance other than through sheer greed. If the actual percentage of profit is less, then obviously the cost per virtual participant could be lowered, and the profitability maintained.

If the largest library organization can’t find a way to provide $50 worth of content on the web, I think we may all be in bigger trouble than a few numbers could solve. Hell, the BIGWIG Social Software Showcase content by itself was worth $50.

My prescription for the ALA:

  1. Get this virtual membership thing worked out. Virtual members should be just exactly like every other membership type…this is the freaking 21st century. All of your new librarians are virtual in some way all the time. The 19th century model of F2F being necessary is just broken beyond repair at this point because our tools have eliminated the need.
  2. Put together a formal method of collecting and distributing podcasts, vodcasts, and text summaries of conference happenings. It’s already being done by your constituents, you should be able to do it as well. Charge for real-time access and a one-month window (and provide back-channel communications with the presenter and panel in real-time), then open the whole bunch of content under a Creative Commons attribution-noncommercial license and let the world have it. Work out a deal with the Internet Archive for hosting and distribution.
  3. Profit.

By griffey

Jason Griffey is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he works to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise is useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of IT at the University of TN at Chattanooga.

Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently AI & Machine Learning in Libraries and Library Spaces and Smart Buildings: Technology, Metrics, and Iterative Design from 2018. His newest book, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, will be published by MIT Press in 2024.

He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.

Jason can be stalked obsessively online, and spends his free time with his daughter Eliza, reading, obsessing over gadgets, and preparing for the inevitable zombie uprising.

7 replies on “Conferences and revenue”

[…] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptConferences and revenue Jason Griffey Library Issues ALA, bigwigshowcase07, conference, library2.0 [IMG bigwig logo.png]After thinking a bit more on the conference issue, and reflecting on discussions I had with Michelle Boule at Internet Librarian, there’s another piece to the revenue puzzle that is worth considering. Warning: more numbers ahead. Let’s assume, for a moment, that everyone going to ALA Annual preregisters. Not true, but we’re looking for rough numbers here. Pre-reg pricing […]

Griffey, every member is entitled to ALA budget information. Why not ask for the real budget info? I find your argument interesting but because the numbers are speculative just not all that compelling.

ALA’s conference fees are far too low, and they are just barely gaining revenue from the conferences. Don’t forget the conferences are the only real revenue stream. Membership is a wash, and publishing is in the terlet.

That said, your conclusions are excellent. Conference material can be monetized and plowed back into the association.

In my book the real problem is that a lot of ALA policy revolves around keeping Midwinter alive. There’s no reason for Midwinter to exist, but if it doesn’t exist, that’s a lot of money. And of course we have conference contracts for five or so years into the future predicated on doing things as we’ve always done them.

Ahhhhh, I seem to be wrong that every member can get their hands on this info:

” 8.4 Council Receipt of ALA Budgets. Councilors will be provided with summary sheets of the ALA annual budget, with the understanding that any Councilor will receive the full budget upon request.”

So maybe you need a friendly councilor. It’s not classified information… but like any budget it isn’t easily interpreted, so I can understand the hesitation in not just putting it out there. I wonder what the BARC web page offers?

Griffey, every member is entitled to ALA budget information. Why not ask for the real budget info? I find your argument interesting but because the numbers are speculative just not all that compelling. ALA's conference fees are far too low, and they are just barely gaining revenue from the conferences. Don't forget the conferences are the only real revenue stream. Membership is a wash, and publishing is in the terlet.That said, your conclusions are excellent. Conference material can be monetized and plowed back into the association.In my book the real problem is that a lot of ALA policy revolves around keeping Midwinter alive. There's no reason for Midwinter to exist, but if it doesn't exist, that's a lot of money. And of course we have conference contracts for five or so years into the future predicated on doing things as we've always done them.

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