Comments on: 2011 Patristics Conference, Oxford http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=3544 Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, and more Sun, 05 Sep 2010 07:51:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Roger Pearse http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=3544&cpage=1#comment-21574 Roger Pearse Thu, 27 May 2010 11:51:43 +0000 http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=3544#comment-21574 Thanks for the note! I've heard quite a bit of grumbling -- even I, who am hardly on the gossip circuit -- and it's really nice to hear the other side. If the last conference didn't break even, no wonder the price has gone up. I suppose the main cost is the use of the schools, which is more or less unavoidable. The other aspect is the provision of accomodation in colleges. We have to recognise that using these makes an appeal to many people that gathering in a TravelInn on the M4 somewhere might not! These are fundamentally fixed costs, then, not really under the control of the organisers unless the conference is moved to another town; and that also is not what people really want. I don't know what the answer is, I admit. Thanks for the note! I’ve heard quite a bit of grumbling — even I, who am hardly on the gossip circuit — and it’s really nice to hear the other side. If the last conference didn’t break even, no wonder the price has gone up.

I suppose the main cost is the use of the schools, which is more or less unavoidable. The other aspect is the provision of accomodation in colleges. We have to recognise that using these makes an appeal to many people that gathering in a TravelInn on the M4 somewhere might not! These are fundamentally fixed costs, then, not really under the control of the organisers unless the conference is moved to another town; and that also is not what people really want.

I don’t know what the answer is, I admit.

]]> By: Markus Vinzent http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=3544&cpage=1#comment-21572 Markus Vinzent Thu, 27 May 2010 10:43:29 +0000 http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=3544#comment-21572 Dear Roger, thanks for this annoucement - and I have full sympathy with what you say regarding fees and parking. The problem with Oxford is that the city has only the colleges as conference venues, and the Directors of this conference are nothing but similarly humble clients as anyone who attends. Hence we suffer from the prices set by the colleges (and the last conference did not fully pay its way), and so it is with parking. Worse than during communist times when the Berlin Academy of science had over 250 drivers to pick up scholars from home and drive them to work and conferences ... the directors of the conference will be there without cars, parking spaces as foot passengers as anybody else, yours Markus Dear Roger,
thanks for this annoucement – and I have full sympathy with what you say regarding fees and parking. The problem with Oxford is that the city has only the colleges as conference venues, and the Directors of this conference are nothing but similarly humble clients as anyone who attends. Hence we suffer from the prices set by the colleges (and the last conference did not fully pay its way), and so it is with parking. Worse than during communist times when the Berlin Academy of science had over 250 drivers to pick up scholars from home and drive them to work and conferences … the directors of the conference will be there without cars, parking spaces as foot passengers as anybody else,
yours Markus

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