ASLH Annual Meeting FAQs

FAQs about the ASLH Annual Meeting

 How do we pick sites for our meetings? 

• • •  Members of the Standing Committee on the Annual Meeting discuss possible cities that would be relatively easy to travel to, that would bring the meeting to different parts of the country, and that have institutions that might be willing to sponsor some part of our meeting.  
    • Once we’ve tentatively settled on a city, we ask local institutions to host and/or help sponsor a future annual meeting. We’re enormously grateful to the colleges and universities who provide financial support and use of their facilities, and thus make this conference possible. 
    • Once we’ve obtained the necessary financial support, we look for a hotel that can provide the many meeting rooms and sleeping rooms we need, at a reasonable price. We consider the nightly rates for sleeping rooms, the cost of meeting rooms, and the food and beverage minimums and try to keep all of these as low as possible for attendees and for the Society. After site visits and committee discussion, ASLH signs a contract for our meeting hotel (usually a few years before the meeting itself).   

Wouldn’t it be cheaper to hold the whole conference at a local institution instead of a hotel?

• • • Maybe! But this would be almost impossible in October and November, when we traditionally meet. During the school year, classroom space is always in high demand and dormitories are full. And it’s rare to have a hotel within walking distance of campus that could hold all of our attendees at the same time. All that said, if you think this could work at your institution, please get in touch with the chair of the Standing Committee on the Annual Meeting; we’d be happy to consider it.

 Why do we ask you to stay at the conference hotel? Why do the rooms sell out before you can get one?

• • • In the hotel contract, we reserve a certain number of sleeping rooms, and agree to pay a penalty if the contracted rooms are not sold. We base this number on prior years’ demand; we try to make sure everyone who wants to stay at the hotel at the conference rate can get a room, while also trying to avoid booking more rooms than we think we’ll need. To protect the Society, we try to be somewhat conservative in our estimation, which is why sometimes the rooms sell out.

Why are there no hybrid or online options? Why can’t I run a slideshow?

• • • It’s currently cost prohibitive. The hotels generally require us to use their AV provider for electronic and technological operations, and these costs are extremely high. We pay a significant amount simply to have a single microphone in each room; we do this in order to maximize accessibility, but each additional piece of equipment is expensive.  

 Where does my registration fee go?  

• • • Registration covers conference food and beverage (the costs of which are  dictated by our hotel contract), AV fees, transportation to venues, printing, and other administrative costs. We also provide limited funding for early career scholars and cover the lodging for participants in the Student Research Colloquium. The Annual Meeting does not produce revenue for the Society. It is run as a revenue-neutral event. It is also the Society’s greatest annual financial risk.