Quick thought that I expect if you accounted for non-financial costs, especially the time spent by attendees that would otherwise have been spent on other impact-focused activities, then the cost-effectiveness would go down substantially.
A weekend at a virtual conference vs an in-person conference probably takes like 50% as much time per attendee? If that’s right, by a measure of cost-effectiveness that more like “connections made per hour of work lost”, EAGx virtual and EAGx would be roughly equally cost-effective?
I’m not quite sure I understand. EAGxVirtual is unusually cost-effective because:
Organising costs are >>2x lower (no catering, no venue, no AV etc.)
The time for attendees is considerably lower (~2x lower seems right, maybe more)
But the impact seems to be ~2x lower.
It seems like you’re missing the organising costs in your last two questions? Or perhaps we disagree about the difference in the value of organising costs and attendee time?
Ah yeah I think I wasn’t counting organising costs.
I meant that if you measure cost-effectiveness in terms of impact per $, then EAGx looks way better , but if you measure cost-effectiveness in terms of impact per hour of (attendee) time, then EAGx looks similar. So there’s a ‘regression to the mean’ type effect when you consider additional metrics.
But you’re right I wasn’t considering organiser time. Apologies for the “quick thought” comment ending up being confusing rather than helpful.
Quick thought that I expect if you accounted for non-financial costs, especially the time spent by attendees that would otherwise have been spent on other impact-focused activities, then the cost-effectiveness would go down substantially.
A weekend at a virtual conference vs an in-person conference probably takes like 50% as much time per attendee? If that’s right, by a measure of cost-effectiveness that more like “connections made per hour of work lost”, EAGx virtual and EAGx would be roughly equally cost-effective?
I’m not quite sure I understand. EAGxVirtual is unusually cost-effective because:
Organising costs are >>2x lower (no catering, no venue, no AV etc.)
The time for attendees is considerably lower (~2x lower seems right, maybe more)
But the impact seems to be ~2x lower.
It seems like you’re missing the organising costs in your last two questions? Or perhaps we disagree about the difference in the value of organising costs and attendee time?
Ah yeah I think I wasn’t counting organising costs.
I meant that if you measure cost-effectiveness in terms of impact per $, then EAGx looks way better , but if you measure cost-effectiveness in terms of impact per hour of (attendee) time, then EAGx looks similar. So there’s a ‘regression to the mean’ type effect when you consider additional metrics.
But you’re right I wasn’t considering organiser time. Apologies for the “quick thought” comment ending up being confusing rather than helpful.
No worries at all! I think always good to poke at this stuff, and I agree that per attendee hour, EAGxVirtual is less cost-effective than per $ spent.