From: Robin Hollands <R.Hollands@sheffield.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: MISC: New faces at conferences -- please!
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 11:53:47 +0100
Message-ID: <31C92DBB.DF6@shef.ac.uk>
Organization: Automatic Control & Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield 


Farrell McGovern wrote:

>         One of the big things that has kept *me* from attending any VR
> oriented conferences is the cost. Considering much of the real work
> being done is by students, as well as those "hackers' with more MIPS
> than megabucks, the conferences should consider...are they hthey there
> to make money, or to build community?

 When we formed UK VR-SIG a few years ago, we had both of these things
in mind. We are about to hold our third one-day conference, all of
which have been free to attend. The trouble with inviting the same old
faces, is that they either have to sell you something to cover their
expenses, or require that the conference organisers pay, which of
course is passed onto the delegates. We use our conferences as a forum
for new and interesting work to be formally presented. Incidentally,
we also distribute the proceedings of these conferences free over the
Internet, rather than selling them as a book and making even more
money!

BTW, one of the UK's local groups, the London Virtual Reality Group
(LVRG) has been doing a sterling job at arranging bi-monthly meetings
which combine a social gathering with 3 or so formal presentation from
a variety of VR workers - and that's free to attend also!

For more information of UK VR-SIG look at 
http://www.crg.cs.nott.ac.uk/ukvrsig

There should be a link through the London group in our pages, or Net 
search under LVRG (I've forgotten their Web address!)

Cheers,

Robin
(UK VR-SIG Chairman)