Like most people, I have a limited budget from which to draw in order to attend conferences annually. There are unfortunately more conferences I want to go to than that budget would allow. Here are some of the tricks I have used to make that budget stretch.

Cost to attend

  • Answer the call for papers – Just about every conference puts out an announcement 9 or 10 months ahead of time saying ‘This is our topic for this year. If you would like to speak, submit a proposal for a talk’. I’m of th belief that starting to speak at conferences is a pretty much mandatory step in a person’s career growth. It was in fact a line item requirement in HP’s technical career path when I was there. If you paper is accepted, you won’t receive payment, but you will get into the conference for free. Do it long enough and well enough to be considered for keynotes and not only do you get in for free but they do actually give you a bit of cash. And even if your paper isn’t accepted as a talk, there is often a ‘thank you for submitting a talk’ discount given to rejected papers.

Where to stay

  • Conference Rate – Hotels are expensive, but often there is a hotel associated with the conference that has reduced rates if you say you are with the conference. Book those early as there is usually a finite limit to the number available
  • Discount Hotel – Sometimes having to the walk to the conference location can be dramatically offset by the saves you can get by staying at a discount hotel. When I was in San Francisco a number of years ago, the conference rate for a hotel room was ~ $110 / night. I stayed at a Days Inn that was a 10 minute walk away for $42 / night.
  • Share a Room – Depending on the makeup of the community attending the conference and your comfort with and in it, sharing the cost of a hotel room with others might be doable. In Atlanta once we had 6 people in a room covered by the conference rate which dropped it to about $25 / night.

Getting around

  • The biggest transportation expense once you are at the host city is often getting from the airport to where you are staying. There are generally 4 modes available to you. Each with pros / cons.
    1. Towncar / Limo / Taxi – These are the most popular methods of moving around because they take no planning to utilize. You just show up with your bags at the Ground Transportation area and hop in. They are also pretty quick as you are going from your point A to your point B. You can even get dedicated airport taxis which are often Lincoln Town Cars for a more posh ride — but they cost more
    2. Shuttle Vans – Most airports have at least one shuttle van service which go around an pick different individuals up and then bring a full load to the airport (or vice versa). Because they are exploiting some economics of scale, these are often cheaper than a taxi, but they take longer to get where they are going because they might have 8 more people to pick-up / drop-off before it is your turn.
    3. Public Transit – Pretty much any airport near a conference is going to have public transport links to it. You might have to change busses a couple times and it not going to be the speediest method but when on a budget you can’t beat it for value. An example from this week. To go from the hotel to the airport would have been $31 for a shuttle, $40 for a town car or $2.25 for the bus. Incidentally, the shuttle and the bus would have been within 5 minutes of each other in time.
    4. Car Pool – Ask around if anyone has a car and is going to be going to / from the airport at approximately the same time. Even if it is an hour or two earlier than when you had intended to go, the cost savings can be huge. More and more conferences are starting to have wikis which is an ideal way to coordinate this sort of thing

Food

  • Ask the hotel desk if there are any breakfast upgrade coupons. Most hotels offer some sort of muffin/fruit/coffee ‘breakfast’ but with a coupon from the desk you can get a proper meal
  • Go shopping
    • If your room has a microwave, go to the local grocery store and get yourself some frozen dinners
    • Don’t buy pop from the vending machine, buy a case of it from the store for the price of 2 individual bottles
    • Pretty much every room has a coffee machine. If you take out the part that holds the coffee filter, you can use it to heat water for instant soups / cereals