By Diogo Pinheiro, University of North Georgia, and Juliet Schor, Boston College
To access the full report of the Annual Meeting Redesign Committee, click here.
We are honored to have had the opportunity to co-chair a committee with a spectacular group of sociologists (Nina Bandelj, Alison Better, Derek Coates, Alfonso Latoni, Isaac Martin, Tsedale Melaku, Joya Misra, and Mignon Moore) who spent two years together focusing on the future of annual meetings. The ASA Council’s charge to the Annual Meeting Redesign Committee was to reimagine the Annual Meeting with respect to meeting delivery and distribution of time and space, with deep consideration of environmental impact, accessibility, and affordability. This charge reflects the recognition that our organization faces three intersecting challenges: a long-term decline in membership for disciplinary associations, as recognized by the 2019 ASA Taskforce on Membership; increasing barriers to meeting attendance caused by reduced university budgets, especially at public institutions; and the increasing realization of the impacts of large conferences on the environment, especially climate change.
We should start by saying that the committee recognized that the future is uncertain, including with respect to technology, climate destabilization, and the finances of higher education. Our recommendations are geared to the coming decade. At the same time, the future is here, with the emergence of virtual sessions throughout the year, online conferences, urgent pressure to reduce carbon emissions given climate crises, and cost and accessibility constraints. We understand that ongoing reflection will be a part of all future planning.
To inform our recommendations, we engaged in both original data collection and analysis of existing data. A survey was sent to everyone who had been an ASA member from 2015 to 2021 to explore motivations for attending in-person and virtual meetings as well as barriers to attendance for both types of meetings. We also asked respondents to identify the most important elements of the Annual Meeting for them and their interest in participating in activities of the Annual Meeting throughout the year. We asked about whether attendance is contingent upon securing institutional funding and what level of meeting participation is required by a respondent’s institution in order to receive funding. And we asked about respondents’ likely transportation mode for travel to meetings in LA, New York, and Chicago. We analyzed all the data by race, gender, employment sector, membership type, academic rank, and other relevant categories.
We also reviewed recent reports from the community college, membership, and first-generation and working-class sociologists task forces. We compared profiles of people who registered for the 2021 virtual meeting to the 2019 in-person meeting, reviewed the current distribution of session types, and looked at the top attended sessions for the 2021 virtual meeting, among several other inquiries. We undertook an extensive analysis of the carbon impact of our meeting, and studied analyses of other societies’ estimates of the carbon impacts of their meetings.
The committee brought eleven recommendations to the ASA Council for consideration, all of which were approved. The first five addressed the portion of our charge related to distribution of time and space, with respect to types of sessions and whether they should be part of the Annual Meeting. The remaining recommendations addressed meeting delivery. Here we summarize the relevant recommendations and the research findings that support them. To access the full report, click here.
Distribution of time and space
Our first three recommendations were about focusing the meeting primarily on intellectual content and allowing more time for networking and mentoring by moving some activities to virtual sessions held throughout the year. These changes were prompted by the member survey, which revealed that research-oriented sessions are of paramount importance. The number one motivation for attending both in-person and virtual meetings is having an opportunity to present work/ideas. A close second for virtual meetings is having an opportunity to attend sessions, and this is also among the top motivators for attending an in-person meeting. We learned that most respondents whose institutions provide travel funding must demonstrate some level of participation, typically in a research session. This further highlights the centrality of research presentations, especially for in-person meetings, and the need for ample opportunities to present.
The survey also revealed that networking and the opportunity to see friends and former colleagues are among the motivators for attendance at in-person meetings. But when we asked whether respondents would prefer formal networking events only at the Annual Meeting or spread throughout the year, 79% said no preference or preferred throughout the year. Similarly, respondents were open to participating in workshops, book forums, and programming related to the job market throughout the year.
Moving some activities to other months may also provide better value to our members, especially those who cannot always attend the meetings, and help stabilize membership. Therefore, ASA-wide governance committee meetings (not Section meetings) will be moved out of the conference and will take place virtually during the year. This has an added benefit of opening up leadership opportunities in the association to people who are unable to attend the meeting. ASA will also move some (but not all) job market activity, workshops, book forums, and formal networking/mentoring out of the meeting and continue to expand professional development opportunities outside of the Annual Meeting, which should also make these events more accessible to those who are unable to attend the Annual Meeting in person.
Our next recommendation was to encourage section organizers to include five presentations in a paper session if possible. The goal of this recommendation is to increase opportunities for people to present their work at the meeting.
Our final recommendation with respect to time and space responded to the clear desire from members to have more opportunities on the program for section sessions. Section sessions are the most popular type of session, with 76% of respondents indicating that they are among the top five most important elements of an Annual Meeting, something that echoes the findings of the 2019 Taskforce on Membership report that concluded that Section participation was key to member retention. In order to give Sections more sessions, ASA will eliminate some of the regular paper sessions that correspond with existing Sections and/or that are not receiving many submissions and will give those slots to Sections to be used for open calls. This change will not be implemented immediately as details need to be worked out. A committee for this task will be appointed in coming months.
Meeting delivery
We do not want to give up the many highly desirable things that in-person meeting participation provides. However, there are ways to retain those benefits while also increasing accessibility for many groups and reducing climate impact.
Our first set of recommendations related to meeting delivery were about expanding access to in-person meetings as much as possible. When possible, ASA will continue to offer opportunities for remote presentation, with paid registration, for people who have a disability and people who have a medical condition for which a medical professional would advise against in-person attendance. ASA will also continue to livestream the plenary sessions and make the recordings available. At the moment a hybrid model is too costly, and recent experiences of other associations suggests it does not yet work well. However, ASA will continue to evaluate hybrid options over time in the event that cost becomes less prohibitive and technology becomes more satisfactory to participants.
The remaining recommendations involved rethinking our modalities and locations to reduce carbon impact, increase accessibility, and reduce cost for attendees. ASA will begin alternating between virtual and in-person meetings, initially with a one virtual/two in-person pattern. We will have 2028 and 2031 virtual meetings, with a plan to do an evaluation after 2028 to consider whether to increase or decrease the frequency after 2031. By far, our survey respondents indicated that cost is the biggest barrier to in-person meeting attendance. We have also heard this repeatedly from the membership task force, the community college task force, the first-generation and working-class task force, and others. Virtual meetings are the only way to remove all travel-related expenses for attendees. Virtual meetings also reduce many other barriers to in-person participation such as caregiving responsibilities, health status, and accessibility. We also know that there is far less carbon impact for a virtual meeting. Scheduling fully remote meetings every third year will yield an emissions reduction of 33%. This rotation will allow us to take advantage of the best of both modalities and minimize the respective challenges.
Our next recommendation was to amend our regional rotation from East/Central/West to a lower carbon configuration such as Central/East/Central/West/Central/East/ Central/West, with virtual inserted according to the in-person/virtual pattern. Our analysis shows that the estimated carbon footprint of an ASA meeting in Los Angeles is about double that of annual meetings in Chicago or New York, given where attendees live. By combining an amended regional rotation with an every-three-years virtual rotation, we expect a 39% reduction in the carbon footprint of the Annual Meeting. Such a reduction is still below the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recommendation of a 43% reduction by 2030, but it is a big step in the right direction.
Finally, we will pilot test a virtual mini-conference we might regularly offer as an independent event and perhaps as an add-on to the in-person conference.
Our appreciation
We want to thank our committee colleagues not only for their hard work, but also for their commitment to the important values underlying this effort—broad inclusion for sociologists and environmental justice. And we would like to thank the Council for recognizing the need for this committee and for supporting our findings with action. We are proud to be members of an association that is making important efforts to represent all sociologists and taking steps to address the climate emergency.
We hope you will take some time to read the full report of the Annual Meeting Redesign Committee.
