Lolol humanities people are used to much lower standards. One of the things that blew me away when I got involved with new media was how much nicer things were. And how much more money there was sloshing around conferences. But partly my new media center economizes by using the very nice university venues that they can get for free or reduced rates, so there's more money to spend on things like attendee lunches. And frankly in San Francisco the assumption is that everyone is using their smartphones to find cheap meals on Yelp.
I've been on the periphery of several humanities conferences, and they are mostly NOT organized by professionals. The biggest association conferences will be planned by organization staff (such as AHA or APSA or AAS), but most academic conferences, ime, are planned by an overworked crew of professors and graduate students, or the staff of the center/department putting on the conference. Professional organizers are the domain of industry conferences, not academic ones. There really isn't the money for that, at least not on the humanities side. I'm sure sciences and medicine are totally different, but I would wager that at least a few science conferences are similar, particularly in the less well-funded disciplines, such as astronomy.
Conferences that are sufficiently large enough *do* get conference rates at hotels and convention centers. Sometimes those conference rates are still ridiculous, which is why most academics I know try to split hotel rooms at conference rate with at least one other person.
The food thing is a good point, for sure. And the cost does function as a gatekeeping mechanism, but the thing about academia is that people are just as likely to see that as a feature than as a bug.
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I've been on the periphery of several humanities conferences, and they are mostly NOT organized by professionals. The biggest association conferences will be planned by organization staff (such as AHA or APSA or AAS), but most academic conferences, ime, are planned by an overworked crew of professors and graduate students, or the staff of the center/department putting on the conference. Professional organizers are the domain of industry conferences, not academic ones. There really isn't the money for that, at least not on the humanities side. I'm sure sciences and medicine are totally different, but I would wager that at least a few science conferences are similar, particularly in the less well-funded disciplines, such as astronomy.
Conferences that are sufficiently large enough *do* get conference rates at hotels and convention centers. Sometimes those conference rates are still ridiculous, which is why most academics I know try to split hotel rooms at conference rate with at least one other person.
The food thing is a good point, for sure. And the cost does function as a gatekeeping mechanism, but the thing about academia is that people are just as likely to see that as a feature than as a bug.