Really Wasteful Meetings - I request wasteful meetings be documented with posts here.

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Bruce Grossan

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Aug 17, 2011, 2:18:42 AM8/17/11
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Hello: 

1. Silly meeting - Keck Science Meeting?

I started thinking about this group tonight when I received notice that the next Keck Science meeting would be held in Melbourne, Australia. 
To my understanding, most of the Keck Telescope users are at the University of California, followed by Caltech, then NASA users.  To me, this means that the weighted geographic center of Users and Admin would be approximately 25 miles west of Santa Barbara, CA, which is about 2/3 as far as one could possibly be from Melbourne.  
(I also noticed that the temp. there is typically 80F, so there will be LOTS of A/C use.)

The blurb on the meeting notice says: "This inaugural workshop will bring the 'Keck family'
to Swinburne University in Australia to share their common
interests and scientific results from the world's largest optical
telescopes."

That sounds to me like someone wanted a junket to Australia, and that's about all the justification there is.  

Am I completely wrong?  Can someone set me straight here? 

Would anyone consider writing, as a group, to Keck on this? 

2.  What does one do about Really Wasteful Meetings in General? 

What can we do to prevent and cancel Really Wasteful Meetings? Most of the time, when we've heard about them already, it's way too late.  I think that is the most important strategic point - you cannot move a meeting, you have to prevent it.  

Well, OK, how? 


3. Could we give a "Golden Fleece" award every year? 
I think it's really really important that LEAstrophysics keep a high profile, let people know it's reasonable to question meetings.  I hope someone is giving another special session at the next AAS, and I hope this topic will be raised.  

One way to bring about change is to bring a little good ol fashioned shame on the organizers.  If we or members of our group would regularly point out wasteful meetings, hopefully people on organizing committees would start to realize there will be blowback, and think twice about pointless junkets in the future.  

If you don't believe this is a good idea, if you think that shame is not a good motivator, at least consider posting any especially wasteful meetings you here about, here,  for research purposes.  It might at least be good for reports of the numbers of far-flung meetings and possibly statistics. 

-Bruce

Disclaimer: I am like public enemy number one of the environment myself:  Basically, I work on three continents, and am executive super-premier frequent flyer and carbon emitter.   Ick.  Wish I knew another way!  (All I can do myself is to try and postpone as many trips as possible to try to cut a few every year.)

Benjamin Weiner

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Aug 17, 2011, 5:55:09 AM8/17/11
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Hi Bruce,

I believe that Swinburne bought into Keck as a minor partner a few
years ago, and that is why the Keck meeting is there. We can argue
about whether this is optimal, but I suspect someone thinks
it is both politically necessary and a way of developing links
to the experienced user community. Perhaps having meetings
that are not centered around a science topic is excessive, in
general; this is a question the community should take up but I
don't know if calling out specific examples will produce the
desired result.

In general, for astronomers far from the biggest centers (e.g. in
Australia, South America, South Africa, India), staying in touch with
the community involves a lot of travel, including when you host
a meeting, but the alternative of isolating those people is not
attractive.

I think a problem with public shaming and Golden-Fleece type
awards is that every meeting organizer has some reason for doing
their thing, and shaming is just going to alienate people from the
cause.

In my opinion a worthy cause is to eliminate excessive travel,
like people who fly in for one or two days of a conference. That's
annoying for other reasons also (I don't think organizers like it)
and maybe it's time we started adding a guilt-trip to the gauche
factor.

A positive example is doing things like the Spitzer TAC by
teleconference.

If we must talk about bad examples, one year of flying SOFIA
at full planned schedule (3x/week or so) is probably about the same
order of carbon load as all the people traveling to *all* the 200+
conferences on the CADC meeting list in a year.

- Ben

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--
Benjamin Weiner
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http://mingus.as.arizona.edu/~bjw/

B@LBL

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Aug 17, 2011, 1:02:40 PM8/17/11
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Thanks for your comments Ben.

If people cared about the earth, instead of moving a large number of
astronomers to Melbourne to visit a small number there, wouldn't it
make more sense to move the small number of Aussie astronomers to the
US to visit the large number there?

And WHEN will the carbon trump the politics? I hope this happens in
my lifetime.


Not sure about your objection to flying in for a day or two - I'm not
sure the planet cares whether you stay one day or ten. One point
though - if there were better telepresence tools, one would not have
to fly in just to give a talk. That would really save travel and
energy.

Thanks again for your comments,

-Bruce

UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory
Bruce_...@lbl.gov
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Bernadette Rodgers

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Aug 29, 2011, 7:08:39 PM8/29/11
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hi all,

Haven't checked this chat line in a while, so sorry for the delayed reaction.  As much as I personally like the "golden fleece" idea, I have to agree with Ben that alienating people to our cause is not the best approach (at least not yet).  First we want to make friends and influence people.  That's also (I think) why we have purposely not publicly attacked SOFIA, as much as some may want to-- taking on a political fight of that size right out of the box may do more harm than good at this stage.  There is a lot of good to be done in changing attitudes and behavior and gaining momentum before going the way of harrassment and controversial protests (IMO).

Regarding meetings...

I live in Chile and I appreciate the problem of isolating smaller, distant countries by always having meetings near the geographical center of mass.  But I also agree that carbon has to trump politics and polite gestures, and the sooner the better.  While perhaps it doesn't seem "fair" to always make the small number of distant astronomers travel, that may in fact be the reality.  The problem is compounded by restricted travel budgets in some small countries (in South America for example).  This could at least be alleviated with travel grants for distant attendees in some cases. 

Meetings should be held (when necessary at all) at places that minimize the total travel required, period.

Ben's idea of not just dropping in for a day or two also has merit.  Sure, it's the same number of air miles, but if one had to stay for the week, people might be a bit more selective about which meetings they choose to attend.  And the traveler, as well as the meeting participants, will get more out of the trip if there's enough time to interact.  That is, if the meeting is worth attending, commit the time and attend the whole thing-- and throw in a couple spinoff meetings while you're at it.  Travel less, and make each trip count more!

But in the end, improved tele presence, and the psychological paradigm shift that's needed for people to accept it, has to be the way to go.  I don't think the little astronomical community is going to sway the business strategy of google, but it wouldn't hurt to try.  Sounds like this needs to be a blog topic on the AAS sustainability page. 

cheers,
Bernadette

ps.  I used to be executive platinum, and then platinum, and now I'm just gold.  I miss the lounge, but I'm getting used to it, and I sure like the extra time at home.  I still travel-- typically 4-6 times a year-- but it's half of what it was a couple years ago, and I'm surviving.  I have an "obligatory" 2-day meeting in October, but combining the trip with a family visit and a professional training class...

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Benjamin Weiner
Assistant Astronomer, Steward Observatory
b...@as.arizona.edu
http://mingus.as.arizona.edu/~bjw/

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Mail Delivery Subsystem

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Aug 29, 2011, 7:22:31 PM8/29/11
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Hi, Folks.

Maybe this is just an area where I diverge from the majority, but I don't agree with this statement:

> Meetings should be held (when necessary at all) at places that minimize the total travel required,
> period.


Meeting locations are chosen for many reasons and to balance many concerns. Energy conservation should be a primary concern, but I don't believe that it should be _the_ primary concern. Holding a meeting (such as the one that started this thread) in Australia is hard to justify from a CO2 standpoint, but the benefits may in some cases outweigh the costs. For instance, if you can involve many of the new students and postdocs in Australia who would not be able to justify a trip to the US (and who might not even travel to a meeting in another site in Australia), and who in the future would be much more informed and be able to participate remotely (meeting people once face-to-face helps a lot in facilitating future electronic meetings, in my opinion), that would be a substantial positive. For them to meet many of the Keck staff might also help make future observations go more smoothly (which would then be done remotely). And many people (myself included) participate much less in remote meetings that are held in different time zones: the level of motivation is much higher.

There are other concerns. People may have sponsoring organizations that want to spend money locally. There actually is a point to having a meeting that people want to attend in a nice location, if you are going to have the meeting in the first place.

If we believe this whole Astronomy thing has merit, then it has costs, both monetary and environmental. [One could also say that meetings should be help in the location that minimizes the total financial cost.] We should be conscious of both of those, but setting them as absolute priorities is inflexible.

David

(And of course there is the complication that the attendance for a meeting is highly dependent on when/where it is, so knowing in advance the location

David Kaplan

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Aug 29, 2011, 7:56:34 PM8/29/11
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Sorry for the repost, but my previous mail got partially munged.

Hi, Folks.

Maybe this is just an area where I diverge from the majority, but I don't agree with this statement:

> Meetings should be held (when necessary at all) at places that minimize the total travel required,
> period.


Meeting locations are chosen for many reasons and to balance many concerns. Energy conservation should be a primary concern, but I don't believe that it should be _the_ primary concern. Holding a meeting (such as the one that started this thread) in Australia is hard to justify from a CO2 standpoint, but the benefits may in some cases outweigh the costs. For instance, if you can involve many of the new students and postdocs in Australia who would not be able to justify a trip to the US (and who might not even travel to a meeting in another site in Australia), and who in the future would be much more informed and be able to participate remotely (meeting people once face-to-face helps a lot in facilitating future electronic meetings, in my opinion), that would be a substantial positive. For them to meet many of the Keck staff might also help make future observations go more smoothly (which would then be done remotely). And many people (myself included) participate much less in remote meetings that are held in different time zones: the level of motivation is much higher.

There are other concerns. People may have sponsoring organizations that want to spend money locally. There actually is a point to having a meeting that people want to attend in a nice location, if you are going to have the meeting in the first place.

If we believe this whole Astronomy thing has merit, then it has costs, both monetary and environmental. [One could also say that meetings should be help in the location that minimizes the total financial cost.] We should be conscious of both of those, but setting them as absolute priorities is inflexible.

David

(And of course there is the complication that the attendance for a meeting is highly dependent on when/where it is, so knowing in advance the location that minimizes the total travel is hard. Plus there are issues about not all flight miles being equal...)

Phil Marshall

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Sep 3, 2011, 7:18:20 AM9/3/11
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Hi all,

Lots to agree with on all sides here - no-one said mitigating climate
change would be easy! I've tried to express my views on all this in a
physics world op-ed that will come out in October - I hope it will
resonate with all of you (or at least provoke more discussion!). I'll
ask the editor how embargoed it is...

One thing I add in that article is that the price (in dollars) of
emitting greenhouse gases *will* increase in the next few decades,
either sooner because we push for it, or later because it becomes
obvious even to the vested interests that nothing else makes economic
sense. We are in the business of climate change damage limitation -
and in that spirit, figuring out how to work carbon-efficiently is a
good investment. In a way it's depressing to have to couch it in these
terms - but I am interested in talking with *everybody* on this issue,
and there are plenty out there with hard economic noses :-)

Cheers

Phil

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