I am not the only one to have noticed, however, that many conferences serve younger professionals poorly. Graduate students and recent postdocs—the people who have the most to gain from attending a conference—often must overcome an array of organizational impediments and social obstacles before they can participate and benefit fully. The very structure of many conferences seems designed to separate the insiders from those not yet on the inside.
For example, one significant impediment is the high cost of getting to and registering for a conference. Travel expenses, especially for international conferences, are not trivial. While the expenses of a senior scientist will likely be picked up by his or her institution, graduate students must fend for themselves. Most of us did that in our time. But the price of participating in science conferences is escalating steadily, beyond the budgets of senior scientists (see Alexander Kohn, “Science Meetings’ Five-Star Prices,” ...
