Who We Are, What We Do, and a Little about Conferences

Each ERF President has an agenda and priorities to address during her or his term. One of mine is to improve the interrelationship between the Federation as an organization and its members. As a teacher and ecologist, I am a firm believer in the idea that such interrelationships can be strengthened through better knowledge of the parts and how the parts interact.

We all have limited resources of time and money to spend on professional societies. If you are like me, you belong to some societies only for the journal (a situation that is changing with electronic and free access). But societies do more than just provide a journal and deserve support for these other activities. ERF certainly does more than publish Estuaries and Coasts. Thus, in coming Newsletters I plan on providing honest assessments of what ERF does and how it does it. My hope is that you will realize the value of what ERF does (and its limitations) and that you will want to become more active in the Federation. Membership really has both quantitative and qualitative attributes. The number of members is a vital statistic of a society, but the capabilities of the society depend strongly on the commitment of what members it has. ERF has continuously been composed of strongly committed individuals willing to move the Federation forward. But there is always room for more!

It seems fitting to begin these articles with biennial conferences. The Federation was founded as a means to bring the regional Affiliate Societies together through these conferences. The meetings have grown, as any old-timer will tell you. They have also matured in ways that make them richer in information and opportunity, but also bring greater organizational challenges and financial responsibilities.

Recently, Enrique Reyes told me that going to an ERF meeting was like going to a family reunion. As he is one of John Day's many former students, this makes perfect sense. But others of us feel the same way. In fact our meetings are the envy of other societies. This year we had over 1,460 attendees at Norfolk. This is out of a membership of only slightly more than 1,600. Most societies are lucky to have attendance approach half of their membership. This is a great testament to you our members, and to the dedication of ERF Headquarters and the many volunteers that contribute to the program.

However, there is no economy of scale for conferences at least up to our size. Small meetings of a few hundred participants can be managed by a few dedicated professors, their students and technicians and held at a university during a long weekend or break. Food can be self-catered, conference rooms may be free and dorm rooms might be used. We have outgrown that scenario and the costs of that scenario.

You largely see the costs of a conference through your registration. The costs of registration of our conferences for full members and non-members are similar to or on the high side in comparison to societies similar to ERF. We are committed to subsidizing the costs for student attendees. As is always the case at ERF conferences students received reduced registration for ERF 2005, and over 110 students received free registration in exchange for on-site work. We offered students a hotel that was less than $100 per night and that allowed four students in the room for the same price. Everyone received lunch (the first day's sandwiches are another story), and supper could be made of the food available on Sunday and Thursday night. Students who attended the career networking reception also received supper on Monday night. Thus, I doubt that you could find a better buy for students.

Keeping costs down for students is not the only challenge. Many things are handled at the planning stages that you may not have seen or thought about. Insurance and security concerns have increased in recent years and continue to grow with the size of the conference. Changes in attendees' expectations about electronic services need to be met for abstract submittal, pre-conference notifications, registration and audio visual equipment. However, there is also a lot that keeps the costs from being higher. The following is an explanation of some of the factors that contribute to and reduce the costs of our meetings.

Soliciting, reviewing, scheduling, managing, communicating about the 75 sessions and the 1,210 abstracts takes quite a bit more infrastructure than in the "good old days." Becky Deehr estimated about 1,000 hours of effort (and 1,500 to 2,000 emails) as the database manager. The graduate assistantship to pay for her time was contributed by East Carolina University. Becky was the heart and soul of program management and communication, but considerable effort was also given by a 16 person Program Committee and the co-chairs of the committee (Arnoldo Valle-Levinson and me) and co-chairs of the poster committee (Vic Kennedy and Carl Friedrichs). Additionally, the Schneider Group, our conference administration firm, had a person devoted to linking our databases to those for the conference web site and other conference publications.

The conference's scientific program is only a piece of what goes on. Linda Blum started about 7 years ago with her proposal to be Conference Chair. For a few months before this conference, Linda did little else. Joy Bartholomew and Janet Barnes at ERF Headquarters began working on the conference when Linda did, are ramping up for ERF 2007 and have already begun on ERF 2009. Headquarters and our conference administration team at the Schneider Group worked hard to minimize costs for the Norfolk conference. I managed to watch both at work to contain costs and can vouch to you that without their efforts you would have had to pay much more than you did.

But only so much can be saved. Hotels and convention centers make much of their profit through food and beverages. Did you know that we had to pay $20 for each person's lunch in Norfolk? This included 18 % for service and 13% for taxes. To give you an idea, coffee breaks in Norfolk averaged $4,000 each.

I mentioned some of the volunteer efforts. The Organizing Committee contained 32 individuals. After the conference I asked each committee member to estimate the value of their contributions given their salary and amount of time they spent. The sum of the time contributed by the Organizing Committee is estimated to be approximately $150,000. We are grateful for their outstanding service and to their institutions for supporting them.

Some of the cost of a conference comes from uncertainty. The uncertainty of our conferences is greater than for many societies because they are held biennially instead of annually. Our projections must be made from two year old data. Those projections are necessary in securing the proper number of hotel rooms, conference space, event insurance and the many details along the way including setting the registration rates and what we can afford to do with the money. These decisions set the stage for the quality conference that you have come to expect from ERF. Yet the results of those decisions are subject to such things as downturns in the economy, hurricanes, travel restrictions, and shut-downs in federal government – all events we have faced.

My take-home message to you is that, as a scientific society, ERF provides great value to our community. The biennial conferences are central to the Federation's business. It is a business, but we try hard to minimize expenses while providing the best possible product. These conferences are extremely successful because of the hard work of many individuals, including those who present their work. After all, the scientific program drives the conference; and your individual presentations drive the program.

Those of you who have made presentations - thanks! Those of you who have volunteered your time, effort, and money - thanks! Please, keep or make ERF your "home society," the one in which you are willing to invest your limited resources.