Posts Tagged ‘conference’

2012 Joint Mathematics Meeting

January 13th, 2012

Last week the team from the Worldwide Center of Mathematics attended the 2012 Joint Mathematics Meeting (JMM) at Hynes Convention Center in Boston. The JMM is the largest annual mathematics meeting in the world with participants ranging from students to leading researchers in mathematics as well as innovators in the field of mathematical education programs. This year the JMM had approximately 7,000 attendees; a new record. We received a larger response than ever by faculty and students looking for affordable and open source textbooks, as well as free online resources.

Conference Exhibiting: Small Companies Will Struggle to Succeed

November 30th, 2010

Being that we are a startup and trying to reduce costs in education, we are always trying to find ways to conserve money, as our savings flow directly into the pockets of students. Over the course of the past four months, we have exhibited at two of the major, annual math conferences in the US: MathFest and the AMATYC conference; what we have discovered is that it is very hard to exhibit at any conference on a tight budget. This puts small companies like us at a distinct disadvantage versus the larger corporations (Pearson, Wiley, Cengage, etc.) because these conferences are some of the best places to create awareness among faculty for your products and services. Below is a sample of what it cost us versus what it cost Pearson (estimated) at the most recent AMATYC conference in Boston, keeping in mind that we did to travel to attend and as such, we did not include that in the calculation.

Cost

WWCoM

Pearson

Booth Cost1

$600

$11,000

Table/Chair Rental2

$177

$4,000

Power Adapter3

$75

$375

Promotional Materials*

$50

$2,000

Wireless Internet Access4

$0

$3,600

Literature Rack5

$0

$378

Colored Carpet6

$0

$567

Shipping7

$0

$1,000

Free Giveaways*

$0

$3,000

Total
$902
$25,420

Obviously, Pearson was at AMATYC to exhibit more than just two books (as we were), but that being said, every time an extra booth is purchased or a free-t-shirt is given away, that is money that could be saved on behalf of the students. It is just something that we here at the Center thought people should be made aware of the next time they attend a conference.

1 Our first-time exhibitor booth cost $600 and Pearson bought 10 $1,100 booths for their display
2 Our table cost us $177 for a 3 day rental after taxes and I assumed Pearson had about 20 tables for their display at $200 a piece
3 Industrial-to-conventional power adapters cost $75 for a 3-day rental
4 Wireless internet cost $300 per day per access code granted by the hotel
5 Literature racks costs $126 per day for a 3-day rental
6 Pearson had changed the carpet to color-coordinate their booth, which was 8’ X 30’
7 Shipping cost $125 per 100 lbs so I assumed Pearson had about 400 lbs of equipment
* Pearson had many of free giveaways including T-shirts, keychains, lanyards as well as many promotional materials so these numbers are estimated at the best of my ability