“Obtain free publicity for your conference by writing a post for Daily Nous in which you get to mention it.”

That’s not really part of the post, but I have to give Craig Agule (Rutgers University-Camden) and Brian Berkey (University of Pennsylvania) credit for thinking to do this, as it does fit with what they’re talking about: how they’ve managed for a few years now to hold a “zero-budget” in-person conference.

(You can see the call for submissions for the next conference they’re putting on here.)

How (and Why) to Organize a Zero-Budget Conference
by Craig Agule and Brian Berkey

For the last three years, we’ve organized the Philadelphia Normative Philosophy Conference (PNPC), a zero-budget conference held in October at the University of Pennsylvania. In our view, the conference has been a great success, and so we thought it might be useful to describe how we’ve organized a fairly large conference without any funding. We suspect that many people might like to organize a conference but also think that funding is a necessary condition of being able to do so. The success of PNPC, we think, shows that this view is mistaken.

We also think that many of the features of a zero-budget conference are preferable to more traditional ways of organizing conferences, and so we’d like to encourage other conference organizers to consider adopting them, whether they have access to funding or not.

First, here’s a brief description of PNPC: The conference features 30 talks over two days, with three concurrent talks over five sessions each day. Talks are on topics across normative philosophy, including normative ethics, metaethics, moral psychology, political philosophy, applied ethics, feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, philosophy of law, epistemic normativity, and aesthetics. Each talk has a commentator and a chair, and we’ve aimed (almost entirely successfully) to have 90 distinct individuals on the program each year. Speakers and commentators are drawn from a call for abstracts that we put out in the latter part of the year preceding the conference, with abstracts due in April. (The call for next fall’s PNPC is here!) Chairs are drawn from those whose abstracts aren’t selected, from past attendees, and from philosophers across the Philly area and broader East Coast philosophy community.

We’re fortunate to have access to some of the things that are necessary in order to organize a zero-budget conference. The University of Pennsylvania is a great campus to host our conference. The university provides free rooms to hold the talks, and there are many places near campus where participants can get lunch and coffee on their own. Some universities lack one or both of these things, but they’re available at many others.

We also benefit from being in Philadelphia, which is easily accessible by train, bus, or car from most of the East Coast and generally more accessible than many other places. Philly also has reasonably affordable accommodations compared to other big cities, and it has excellent restaurants, coffee shops, bars, etc. Nonetheless, any college or university that’s reasonably accessible and has access to free rooms and nearby coffee and dining is a suitable place to host a zero-budget conference.

The first advantage of running a zero-budget conference is best seen from an organizing perspective. Organizing the PNPC involves much less work than organizing traditional conferences. There is, of course, a fair amount of work: we book the rooms, put out the CFA, read the abstracts, communicate verdicts to applicants, put together the program, monitor emails for cancellations, fill spots that open up along the way with alternates, and send a few email updates to all participants in the weeks leading up to the conference. We also provide attendees with information about Philly and advice regarding areas to stay in, places to eat and get coffee, etc., and do some social organizing (which we’ll describe a bit later).

What we avoid that’s often involved in organizing traditional conferences includes at least:

1. Collecting registration fees and managing the funds
2. Organizing catering, including coffee, breakfasts, lunches
3. Organizing receptions, including catering and alcohol
4. Organizing keynote talks, including booking accommodations and travel for the speakers
5. Working with university administration and expense management systems
6. Procuring things like printed name tags or perhaps swag (e.g. tote bags)

Avoiding these things makes organizing PNPC significantly less time intensive than organizing a more traditional conference. Perhaps more importantly, it allows us to avoid the most unpleasant aspects of organizing traditional conferences. We enjoy reading the submitted abstracts, which lets us get a sense of the interesting work that’s being done across areas of normative philosophy, and putting together the program and being in touch with participants is rewarding. Managing funds and organizing receptions, on the other hand, wouldn’t be.

Another advantage of having a zero-budget conference is that we get to show Philadelphia off. Because there aren’t catered meals and receptions, which can sometimes feel socially or at least financially obligatory, attendees have reason to go out and enjoy the city, rather than spending even more time in university buildings or conference hotels. If you’re going to travel to a place where you don’t typically get to spend time, it’s nice to actually get to see some of it and experience what it has to offer.

A third advantage is that attendees aren’t required to pay any registration fees. This does mean that we don’t provide coffee or a couple of drinks at a reception. But we’re confident that it’s better to check out restaurants, coffee shops, bars, etc. in town. And, importantly, not imposing a registration fee makes it easier for attendees with no or very limited research and travel budgets to attend.

We also think, perhaps a bit more controversially, that the lack of keynotes can be an advantage, and not just a concession that we make because we don’t have the funding for them. If we were offered money for the conference with no strings, we’d use it to help fund travel expenses for those who would benefit most from the funding, e.g., PhD students and those in non-tenure track positions, rather than for keynotes, which typically involve covering travel, accommodations, etc. for people who are already among the most privileged in the field.

In addition to the above, we take other steps to make PNPC a friendly and egalitarian conference, some of which are separable from the zero-budget structure, and could in principle be adopted by the organizers of any conference. For example, we don’t put institutional affiliations on the program, and we don’t provide nametags with affiliations either. So, all that attendees see about other attendees is their name and the title of the talk that they’re either giving, commenting on, or chairing. We also encourage attendees to be inclusive when forming groups for lunches and dinners, and more generally to meet new people over the course of the conference. And we model that advice ourselves by encouraging those who haven’t met us before to introduce themselves, aiming to meet as many first-time participants as possible, and including new people in our own lunch and dinner groups.

Perhaps most importantly, we pick a bar or neighborhood in Philly to gather each night after dinner, including the night before the conference starts, and invite everyone to join. We think that, in addition to encouraging people to go out in the city, this facilitates more inclusive social engagement. Often, conference dinners become a splintering point, occurring after formal receptions. Instead, we bring people together after dinner, at a place that’s likely to be their last stop for the night. Our impression has been that this tends to generate wider interaction than often happens at other conferences.

That’s our case for zero-budget conferences, and more generally for trying to make conferences as friendly and egalitarian as we can. Comments and suggestions are very welcome, (including from those who’ve attended PNPC and have thoughts about how we can improve it).