Subject: Re: CCL:Speaker program, Oct 17th Poster deadline - eCheminformatics 2003 virtual conference

From: "E.L. Willighagen (Egon)" <egonw~at~sci.kun.nl>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 11:00:10 +0200

On Friday 10 October 2003 13:16, Barry Hardy wrote:
> * Speaker Program released for eCheminformatics 2003 virtual conference
>
> You can now view the eCheminformatics Speaker program with schedule,
> speaker information and Abstracts at the following links:
>
> http://conferences.metalayer.net/echeminfo/logon/default.aspx?myurl=/design
>/conference/html/program.htm

Looks like a nice program, but I think $300 is a bit expensive for an 
eConference....

Egon

-- 
PhD Molecular Representation in Chemometrics
Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry
http://www-cac.sci.kun.nl/people/egonw.html

---

From: Barry Hardy <barry.hardy~at~tiscalinet.ch>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 12:16:11 +0200

Hello Egon

Thanks for the compliment on the Cheminformatics program.  I believe that a 
good quality virtual conference requires a dedicated team and hence either 
a registration fee and/or sponsorship.  We are planning on having some 
activities on the Cheminformatics Hub which will be open to all Hub 
registrants without payment, but attendance at the full conference requires 
a reasonable fee to deliver good value to the audience and cover the costs 
of our team.  Many of the costs and resources for organising an 
e-conference are actually not lower for the conference organiser compared 
to a physical conference, especially on the technical work done to manage 
the event, and to provide access at any time to the system and presentations.

If you compare the cost of this registration fee with many pharmaceutical 
industry conference registration fees, I think I can claim that it compares 
very favourably in fee cost, not to mention the aspect of saved travel and 
hotel costs.

- The registration fee also provides a one year post-conference membership 
to the eCheminformatics Hub, access to a monthly series of Virtual Lectures 
in 2004 and all archives, community and conferencing facilities
- We are offering a $100 discount of the $300 fee to academic researchers
- We also will be endeavoring to support bursaries for example for graduate 
students who wish to present a poster on their research, if it is relevant 
to drug discovery and good quality

So in summary I am sensitive to providing good value in such a specialist 
area - we are endeavoring to keep the cost of these activities at a 
reasonable level and to also support some free-access services.

Barry Hardy
eCheminformatics Hub
+41 61 851 0170 (office)
+41 79 755 2340 (mobile)
http://conferences.metalayer.net/echeminfo/

>Looks like a nice program, but I think $300 is a bit expensive for an

Barry Hardy, PhD
+41 61 851 0170 (office)
+41 79 755 2340 (mobile)
Email: barry.hardy~at~tiscalinet.ch