Proceedings media
We're looking into options for the conference proceedings medium.
Generally, CHI conferences have been publishing on CD-ROM and offering attendees the option to pay extra for print proceedings at the conference. Recently, some conferences have been providing the proceedings on USB sticks (IUI 2008 had a nice laser etched logo on it).
This is attractive because some laptops don't have CD-ROM drives, plus you get a potentially useful keepsake from the conference.
So, we're looking into the USB option but the cost seems too high. Sheridan printing, ACM's usual publisher, can publish on USB sticks, but the cost is even higher than paper proceedings. IUI published the USB sticks themselves, so we looked into that option. The sources we have found for laser-etched USB sticks have a price of $17.50 for a 1GB stick. We estimate about 500 copies of the proceedings for conference attendees, so the total would be about $8750. This is only slightly lower than what Sheridan would cost and does not include producing the electronic proceedings and copying them onto the sticks, which Sheridan includes and that we would have to find a source for. In contrast, CD-ROM publishing will cost about $3800, including production and copying.
CSCW has always tried to keep registration fees as low as possible, so we're reluctant to raise fees to cover this additional cost. Does anyone have a good idea for getting the cost down, while keeping production complexity to a minimum? Any other good suggestions for proceedings media?
Bo, David and Steve Voida