SIGCSE Community,

With submissions for the 2023 SIGCSE Technical Symposium open, the SIGCSE Technical Symposium Steering Committee would like to make the community aware of an increase in registration rates that will happen for this next symposium. Here are the rates at the early registration deadline for both in-person and virtual attendance:

• ACM/SIG Members $600
• Non-ACM/SIG Members $750
• K-12 teacher. $400
• K-12 teacher - Fri/Sat. $275
• Community College Faculty $400
• SIGCSE retirees $400
• Student Member $100

Why do we need to increase rates? Costs have increased over the last few years. Furthermore, during the pandemic, the symposium’s revenues from both attendees and supporters has suffered substantially. At this point, it is unfortunately unsustainable to offer the symposium at the prior rates.

Thinking back to the 2022 rates, you will notice that this increase affects almost every registration category. We have attempted to bias the increases slightly away from the demographic groups that can least afford the extra costs – keeping the K-12 teacher and community college faculty registrations closer to their historical costs and not increasing the student registrations at all. The SIGCSE Technical Symposium Steering Committee, the SIGCSE Board, and the current Conference Chairs and Treasurer did not take the budgeting process lightly. We held long discussions looking for places to keep costs down in order to continue to offer a symposium that is accessible to those without large travel and research budgets while considering the financial health of the symposium and the SIGCSE organization.

You will also notice that these registration rates are the same for in-person and hybrid attendance. The costs of running a hybrid conference are significant. The hybrid logistics including platform, staff, and streaming-room A/V costs, are 75% of the logistics costs and are the only way to participate virtually. The costs of providing virtual elements are comparable to the food and beverage costs which benefit the in-person attendees. All other costs for the conference are applicable to both groups of attendees equally.

If there is no savings to offering virtual attendance, why are we still offering a hybrid conference? Three reasons: • Accessibility – Many SIGCSE community members can’t travel to a conference for myriad reasons. • Affordability – Even if the registration costs are the same, virtual attendees experience significant savings by not paying for flights and hotels. • Climate Responsibility – Although there are still environmental costs to holding online meetings, these pale in comparison to the costs of intra and inter-continental travel.

You may want to consider your mode of attendance (online or in-person) as you prepare submissions for the Technical Symposium. Information about presentation modality expectations for each submission track are provided under the Tracks menu on the SIGCSE 2023 Technical Symposium website. Timely decisions about attendance modality will be required in order to help the Chairs as they plan the event. For some tracks, authors must declare their presentation modality at the time of submission and this cannot be changed.

For those planning to attend in person, the SIGCSE 2023 Technical Symposium Chairs have put together a great Participant Information page providing important details about travel to Toronto, Canada. Travellers from the United States, and other locations outside of Canada, will require a passport that is valid for 6 months beyond your departure date. Please pay attention to vaccination and testing requirements as these may change as we approach the event. Finally, for first time attendees, consider applying for a Travel Grant. The deadline for the SIGCSE 2023 Technical Symposium is November 1, 2022!

Going forward, we will reassess each year, and particularly for the 2024 symposium, to determine the appropriate registration rates for the location, what support to offer for virtual attendance (if any), and how the in-person and virtual rates should differ (or not). Our goal in all of this is a symposium that serves the CS education community both effectively and sustainably into the future.

We welcome your feedback about any aspects of the symposium by email to ts-feedback-sc@sigcse.acm.org.

SIGCSE Technical Symposium Steering Committee
Michelle Craig (Chair)
Adrienne Decker (SIGCSE Board Liaison)
Sarah Heckman
Alvaro Monge
Steve Wolfman