Ok, this makes a lot of sense! I wasn’t sure if it was even a consideration.
However, why not the US in May/June? My impression was that finals hold a lot less weight there than in the UK, and the US academic system weighs grades a lot less in general. People care a lot about exams in the UK.
It’s possible we should move the US event to May/June, though it’s not obvious to me that that’s the best move as finals still do have some weight there — I know it’s less than the UK but I don’t know that people’s behavior is going to shift that much if an exam season is worth 50% of their grade vs 100%.
The US also has more potential attendees in general than the UK, which I think counts for something here. There are also just other downsides to shifting our conference schedule around too much, and most of our attendees aren’t students anyway.
Ah, I did not realize the US ones are larger, this also makes sense.
I think my final skepticism is that US schools end much earlier than UK schools. I don’t think they have finals in late May/early June (except maybe Stanford?). So I’m skeptical that there isn’t a way to do this so that all final exams are avoided?
Ok, this makes a lot of sense! I wasn’t sure if it was even a consideration.
However, why not the US in May/June? My impression was that finals hold a lot less weight there than in the UK, and the US academic system weighs grades a lot less in general. People care a lot about exams in the UK.
It’s possible we should move the US event to May/June, though it’s not obvious to me that that’s the best move as finals still do have some weight there — I know it’s less than the UK but I don’t know that people’s behavior is going to shift that much if an exam season is worth 50% of their grade vs 100%.
The US also has more potential attendees in general than the UK, which I think counts for something here. There are also just other downsides to shifting our conference schedule around too much, and most of our attendees aren’t students anyway.
Ah, I did not realize the US ones are larger, this also makes sense.
I think my final skepticism is that US schools end much earlier than UK schools. I don’t think they have finals in late May/early June (except maybe Stanford?). So I’m skeptical that there isn’t a way to do this so that all final exams are avoided?
In Canada my final exams finished in April