To host a conference with short arrangement time
Yutaka TAKAHASHI
School of Commerce, Senshu University
2-1-1, Higashimita, Tama, Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan
Phone: +81-44-900-7988, Fax: +81-44-900-7849
takahasi@isc.senshu-u.ac.jp
Abstract
Recently, many countries and regions are trying to attract international
conference. Conference participants are generally many. Big parties or other
activities which cannot be offered to individual travellers can be held. In
addition, conference participants can use money and experience real service
and atmosphere directly. Good reputation of them can attract next
prospective visitors.
This kind of effects stimulates people to hold a conference even without
sufficient resources. International conferences naturally require various
resources. The most important and rigid resource is time. This articles
author and colleagues hosted an international conference in February 2014
with short arrangement time. Irrespective of arrangement duration, hosts
must succeed in holding conference.
This article shows the process from collecting papers to starting conference
in a system dynamics model style. Each conference in future can be
different in detailed condition: however, the model presented in this article
can show points of which hosts should be aware. In particular, the meaning
of time limit is shown by simulations. Conference hosts can be tempted to
extend deadlines in order to gather more participants; however, it defeats
its own purpose.
1. Introduction
In either developed or developing countries, national and _ local
governments are encouraging universities and companies to attract
international conferences. For example, the national government of Japan
founded Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) to help domestic
organisations to host international conference, conventions, and incentive
tours. They published guidebook for prospective host organisations how to
attract and operate international conferences (Japan National Tourism
Organization, 2012). They also provide operation supports, in particular
making technical documents and pamphlets for bidding.
There exists much research on effects to attract foreign. For example,
Mathieson and Wall (1982) and Pearce (1989) explain thoroughly effect of
tourism not only about economic but also about non-economic factors. In
particular, Copeland (1991) shows mathematical formalization of economic
effect brought by tourisms. Their pieces of research agree that tourism is an
important source of economic growth; tourism can bring about not only
increase of domestic consumption but also of export expansion. These
theories are basis of the governmental assist in holding international
conferences.
Hosting international conferences needs preparation and arrangements,
the same as hosting domestic conferences; however, tasks are more
complicated than domestic ones. Not only communication troubles caused
by language barrier but also problem about payment methods can easily
happen. The preparation includes many things: organizing operation teams,
collecting many attendees, fund raising, reservation of conference rooms,
preparation of proceedings, compiling local information, etc.
We set the central aim that collecting paper and attendees as many as
possible. Of course, presentation and paper quality is important. However,
it was the 50‘ celebration year of Japan SD; Professor Toshiro Shimada
learned SD in MIT, then he brought SD to Japan in 1963. Then, local people
hoped a festive event. Besides, such a large event was expected good effects:
to provide a debut stage to relatively new Asian SD users, to make a chance
to for Asian people to know the world class SD professional’s works, to make
a cultural and research theme exchange opportunity.
Moreover, “good season” is often limited so that arranging conference
venue is in competitive situation. Thus, hosting international conferences
needs more attention and longer preparation time.
However, some international conferences need to cope with the fact to
arrange in a short time. The reasons can be one or all of budget limits,
political pressures, and personal willingness. Irrespective of the reason,
people in charge of operations (the core team) must arrange everything on
time once a conference starts to call for papers.
The author and colleagues hosted a conference which allowed short
arrangement and preparation time (System Dynamics Society, 2013). The
original event was proposed in December 2013. However, it was really busy
season in Japan due to making tax relation document in all industries.
Then local people change the mind to hold it in “2013 academic year” which
ends in March 2014; it means three months of grace. In addition, February
is busy season in Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. Then naturally, it
should be held in March, but we found no room appropriate for conference
meeting in our reach. As a result, we decided to hold it on 224 to 24th
February 2014.
Based on this experience, this paper shows the process of conference
preparation and operation in short time with system dynamics stock flow
diagram style and the importance of time which the core team can use in
reality.
2. Model
2.1 Qualitative Analysis
First, organization committee members need to understand circumstances.
The author confirmed mental models which reflect recognitions of given
circumstances and attitude of local people with causal loop diagrams.
As described in the previous section, we hoped to gather many people. To
do it, one of important factor is schedule. Our mental model is shown in
figure 1.
functional members
and active authors
+
event t+) a
attractiveness active atmosphere
Figure 1. motivation to gather many attendees
We hoped to make a debut stage for relatively new SD users. Stimulating
new people to report their current research would raise their SD use
motivation and works’ quality. Then, we set conference fee is relatively low,
about half of international SD or related area conferences. It must lower the
barrier to join the conference. This idea is reflected in figure 2.
recognized easiness to
é come to conference
a
event A
attractiveness s+) pro sale 8D
+
Figure 2. Lowering barrier to join the conference
The conference should be a good opportunity to learn directly from top
class SD users. This is only my personal view, but SD education and use are
not very active in Japan. Regular SD course in universities are rare (one of
them is conducted by the author). Textbooks and other teaching material
are also insufficient. The education and use of SD have almost discontinued
after 1960s. Nevertheless, recently eager SD learners are appearing.
Showing “real SD” to them is significantly meaningful. This thought is
shown in figure 3.
good mentor and
+ teaching materials
SD attractiveness jek of leamers
+
excellent applications i .
mral wok = + good publications
+
Figure 3. Learning opportunity
Merits to join the conference should be bidirectional; not only new SD
users benefited but also existing SD researchers should have a merit to
bring themselves to the event. The author believed that there must be still
many topics which have never been dealt with by SD people. Developing
countries seems not to have rich SD education environment, and developing
countries do not need experience troubles with which developed countries
already coped. Developing countries would overcome such problems with
experienced SD researchers’ help. Therefore, the event should expose
various application of SD to existing researchers. It would stimulate new
research and application of SD, then existing researchers would benefit.
This though is shown in figure 4.
a
SD attractiveness t+) apingon area
variety
recognized possibility at
of application
Figure 4. Various applications of SD
attendees variety
All of causal loop diagrams expressing mental models are simply
reinforcing loops. This means that we always needed to pay attention to
things going well in right direction continuously. Once it goes wrong, the
event would fail with big damage. Fortunately, the conference succeeded
with over 40 presentations and workshops and about 100 people.
2.2 Quantitative Analysis
Holding a conference looks to start by publishing a call for papers.
However, before it, a core team, which consists of active members of
organization committee, program committee, and society’s headquarters,
needs to fix a schedule. Main dates are presentation submission deadline,
acceptance notification deadline, registration deadline, and conference days.
Each term between deadlines can be seen a small project. Project
management models exist in system dynamics history. The typical model
structures are shown in Lyneis et al. (2001) and Lyneis and Ford (2007).
The model in this paper has the similar structure in each small project.
However, this model does not basically consider about rework. This is
different from existing project management models.
In past many conferences, the conference days are decided at first because
of conference facilities arrangements or political reasons. Then, other
deadlines are set.
The registration deadline is often the same as the opening day of
conference because some societies allow registration without payment. In
this case, subscribers can wait for the time when conditions are all set. On
the other hand, this style make conference hosts worries because they
cannot count on such submissions as real participants. Therefore, societies
which can collect sufficient participant require registration with payment in
advance. The model in this paper is made on this assumption that
registration requires simultaneous payment. In this case, people who have
already registered and paid would be counted on as real participants.
Therefore, the model ends conference operating process at the registration
closing.
The presentation submission deadline can be changed after starting
submission because a conference host person needs many participants.
Unless sufficient participants gathered, the conference host would be
suffered in finance or, at least, “lose face.” Therefore, extension of the
submission deadline is not very rare.
The model in this paper contains variable “submission time” as duration to
receive paper submission. Prospective submission is given in this model,
and this number is expressed as a pulse input for submission process. Based
on the authors’ experiences, this pulse is smoothed in third order. When
submission deadline comes, remainder of prospective submissions is shut
out. After submission deadline, reviewing process starts. The speed depends
on the number of reviewers and reviewer per paper which indicate the
number a reviewer can make reviewing report per day. This story is
reflected on the model structure in figure 5 based on the though shown in
Takahashi (2008).
initial prospective : time to review per
reviewers paper
average time to
review a paper
acceptance rate
accepted papers
oe papers
ier
starting review _teviewng deciding whether
accept or not
submission end
flag review end flag
<TIME STEP>
<Time>
review end flag>
Figure 5. Submission and review processes
However, this easy submission deadline extension definitely causes the
delay of acceptance notification. In any case, reviewers need time to do their
tasks. Besides, the conference date is fixed and unchangeable. This means
that the submission deadline causes to decrease registration time. The core
team is always struggling against remainder time. This is modelled as
figure 6.
total preparation <TIME STEP>
time
<time consumed to di
<paper submission — review>
time>
start registration time spending i
a
<review end flag>
ae registration
sending acceptance - start flag
notification flag
Figure 6. Time counter of the core team
Registration time duration has significant meaning. When one needs an
official invitation letter or visa related technical documents, it takes several
days. These documents related tasks consume long time because they use
non-electronic mail and local embassies needs at least five days (Japan’s
case). Moreover, are important to avoid any mistakes because failure of visa
application causes to make one unable for long days to the country where
the conference is held. In the case of Japan, once one is rejected to issue visa,
one cannot visit Japan for six months even for other travel reasons
(Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, 2013). Thus, mistakes about
documents cause subscribers’ great inconveniences; conference core team
need sufficient time to complete these tasks. Visa related tasks are modelled
as figure 7.
time to arrange
technical documents
average time to ««——_______| secretaries for
issue visa etc invitation and
visa issues
<acceptance notified _ »- total visa ‘a
authors who need al il
<sending acceptance ae without
notification flag> — who need
<TIME STEP>
Figure 7. Visa and technical documents request and process time
As the model reflects the fact that there are people who cannot participate
the conference without visa and other technical documents, even accepted
paper authors cancels when the registration deadline is to close (figure 8).
In the base simulation, an author number per submission is two. One of
each rejected paper’s authors is supposed to join the conference.
Figure 8. Registration process
Stock flow diagrams are separately shown in figures above. However, the
variable names with brackets are copies of variables which are shown in
another figure; therefore, this model is mutually connected and can be said
that the model is one which contains connected small projects.
3. Simulation
All parameters are based on the task hosting the Asia Pacific System
Dynamics Conference (Japan Chapter of System Dynamics Society, no date).
Parameters are set based on the record of the authors.
The core team started arrangement six months before the conference.
Simulation starts on the 22 September, and unit time is a day. The
registration deadline is virtually the opening day of the conference.
The base simulation result is in figure 9.
cooco
0 18 36 54 72 90 108 126 144 162 180
People
Authors not requesting visa
Authors requesting visa
i papers
Papers under reviewing
Figure 9. Simulation result using parameters based on the record
The total registration (blue line) reaches over one hundred. Authors start
to cancel their submission when visa or other documents has not arrived
seven days before the conference opening.
As mentioned above, conference hosts are sometimes tempted to extend
submission deadlines. The base simulation (figure 9) uses 120 days as
submission time. The figure 10 is the result of submission time extension to
145 days.
ooooco
L—
0 18 36 54 72 90 108 126 144 162 180
People
Authors not requesting visa
Authors requesting visa
i apers
Papers under reviewing
Figure 10. Extended deadline effect
The reviewing process starts later than original simulation and it causes
to decrease registration time duration. Then, authors who need visa or
other documents cancellation is more than base case so that total
registration number (blue line) reaches under one hundred.
Submission time extension would seem to increase submission number;
this is a root of misunderstanding. Potential subscribers cannot be
increased by extension of submission time. Rather, keeping submission
deadline and making reviewing and making document processes quicker
are effective. Figure 11 shows the result of simulation that the number of
reviewers and document related secretaries are doubled. The final
registration number is more than original base simulation.
oooco
0 18 36 54 72 90 108 126 144 162 180
People
Authors not requesting visa
Authors requesting visa
i papers
Papers under reviewing
Figure 11. Doubling reviewers and secretaries making documents
Of course, increasing potential or prospective submissions bring about
radical change. Indeed, the registered people double when the prospective
submission doubles in this model. However, geographical, financial, and
political reasons often make it impossible. Conference hosts need to
understand that easy extension of deadlines simply decrease participants,
and it results in financial or other difficulties.
4. Conclusion
Hosting an international conference is a “big project” which must succeed
since many people’s time and efforts spends on it. However, some of such
conferences have been held without sufficient time resource. Indicators of
successfulness are various. However, the number of participants would be
one of the most important indicators not only because of budget but also
because conferences are communication opportunities. Therefore, not only
for frequent participants but also for others should it be open. Therefore,
removing bottlenecks to keep one from joining it is significantly important.
This article shows the arrangement time duration’s importance.
Submission deadline has very limited effect to increase participant because
it cannot radically increase prospective submissions. Future prospective
hosts of conferences should be aware of the significant effect of scheduling
and time management.
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