Thanks for writing. I will say this phenomenon isn’t specific to EA. I used to organize a large ish non-EA event and huge numbers of people would fail to show up and others would try to register the day before. After enough iterations, we knew the fraction of people who did each, and we just planned for that. I wonder if you could do something similar for these events? But if it’s extremely variable based on year/location, that would be harder.
Also, I realized I’ve been assuming that for virtual conferences, there is essentially zero downside to being a no show. But maybe this isn’t true? Do people have to pay per swapcard profile, or some other variable cost I’m not aware of? If anyone knows, this seems relevant. For an in person conference it is a lot more obvious that money can still get spent on you if you don’t show up.
This is consistent with my experience. I agree these norms are good and make organizer’s lives easier, but there is always a drop out rate and it is possible to plan for that. Did Berkeley have an unusually high number of noshows? For EAGxPrague we worked with an estimate of about 10% which ended up being quite accurate. I don’t remember the exact number but I think we had about 450 registered and about 410 showed up (this does not include the people who actually canceled since they no longer show up as registered in the system). I think it would be possible to do a more detailed analysis of the drop out rate in time and the final number of noshows in case it’s useful for future organizers.
Thanks for writing. I will say this phenomenon isn’t specific to EA. I used to organize a large ish non-EA event and huge numbers of people would fail to show up and others would try to register the day before. After enough iterations, we knew the fraction of people who did each, and we just planned for that. I wonder if you could do something similar for these events? But if it’s extremely variable based on year/location, that would be harder.
Also, I realized I’ve been assuming that for virtual conferences, there is essentially zero downside to being a no show. But maybe this isn’t true? Do people have to pay per swapcard profile, or some other variable cost I’m not aware of? If anyone knows, this seems relevant. For an in person conference it is a lot more obvious that money can still get spent on you if you don’t show up.
Even better — there aren’t too many EAGx’s per year. Why not set up a prediction market or hold a forecasting platform question?
“What percentage of those who’ve registered for tickets at EAGx____ will not attend?”
Let people bet on the question, and use that estimate as the best-guess as to how many people will be no-shows.
This is consistent with my experience. I agree these norms are good and make organizer’s lives easier, but there is always a drop out rate and it is possible to plan for that. Did Berkeley have an unusually high number of noshows? For EAGxPrague we worked with an estimate of about 10% which ended up being quite accurate. I don’t remember the exact number but I think we had about 450 registered and about 410 showed up (this does not include the people who actually canceled since they no longer show up as registered in the system). I think it would be possible to do a more detailed analysis of the drop out rate in time and the final number of noshows in case it’s useful for future organizers.