I understand the pain in deciding whether to spend your hard-earned money to attend a conference, which includes a collection of speakers - some of whom you've heard from before, or you may have read their books.   "Am I going to learn anything new from this?" is a legitimate question.

And we're exquisitely aware of the irony of burning quantities of fossil fuels to bring together 500 people to talk about alternatives to fossil sources, and using less fossil fuels, and climate change, among other topics.

Put this in the context of the mission of ASPO-USA.  We intend to make a difference.  Not by preaching to the choir, obviously, but by provoking a broad-based non-partisan discussion about energy policy, climate change, and personal commitment to reducing our individual impacts on the resources and climate of this planet.  Face it: most U.S. citizens only know about energy via the price of gasoline or the cost of winter heating, and they're oblivious to the myriad forces that determine that price, depletion in particular.  We need to break through that barrier and get people to understand what's happening, to start thinking about it, and finally to begin doing something about it.  We know this is a necessary prerequisite to achieving anything like a "soft landing" on the downslope of the depletion curve.

We're not deluding ourselves into thinking we're going to save the world.  But we are committed to doing what we can to raise the visibility of energy issues, to advocate for change, and to act as a credible source of information to counter some of the cornucopian proclamations like the recent statements from CERA.  If 500 to 700 people walk out of Boston University's conference center with their eyes opened and their heads filled with a lot more useful and credible information than they had before, and if they each talk to their colleagues, friends, and neighbors, and if the  conference gets some national as well as regional TV and newspaper coverage, we've begun to succeed.  It's very hard to turn the present supertanker of national policy around, the inertia is huge, but we have to push it every way we know how.

As far as presentation content and your personal enlightenment, we're working closely with presenters to ensure that each collection of talks covers the topic in as much depth as time allows, without overlap, and with new material wherever possible.  We can't cover every aspect of each topic, obviously, as we only have 20-some presentation hours to work with spread across 3 days, with non-podium time for questions, breaks, and meals.

To briefly address the financial aspect - at the risk of exposing some of the boring / unseemly / scary machinations of conference organising:

1. I'm sure you realize nobody's going to make a profit on this; BU and ASPO-USA are doing their best to break even, and if revenues don't meet expenses, it comes out of our PERSONAL pockets.  How many people would be willing to make that kind of commitment?

2. The Denver conference had expenses just north of $100K, and income matched expenses almost exactly.  Smart, or lucky? we don't speculate.  We just hope to do as well this time around.

3. Biggest expense is food - for 4 meals, plus mid-AM and mid-PM snacks, we're spending over $70 per person.  I suppose we could consider a category of attendee who pays less, and supplies all their own food - but most conference attendees expect to be fed, and it would be enormously disruptive and time-consuming for the entire audience to head out onto the streets of Boston looking for take-out lunch and returning for a lunchtime speaker.  That's a non-starter for an efficient conference.

4. Other fixed expenses obviously are travel and hotel expenses, for our speakers.  No way around this; air travel and hotels in Boston aren't cheap.  

Thanks for your considered comments and interest.

Regards,

   Dick Lawrence
   ASPO-USA