The subject line might make this seem like a really obvious post. Of course, regardless of financial pressures, one should try to keep as many budget line items as possible and therefore not sacrifice the travel/conference budget. We never want to cut anything right?
However, both after the dot com bubble burst and then the beginning of the Great Recession, I’ve seen departments slash these budgets first. The very first thing to go is travel and suddenly no one goes anywhere. It’s just accepted as a luxury that cannot be afforded anymore without much discussion.
I argue that this should be one of the last things you cut. That you should fight for this vigorously in a budget defense and even to the point where you sacrifice other services in order to maintain that allocation. Of course, what you really should do is energetically and critically analyze your overall service portfolio, find things that can be cut and/or increase efficiency and keep that travel budget. I would never advocate for abolishing any existing service without careful thought just for the sake of being able to attend a conference. But I am certain that there is something that can be cut if you look closely enough. And make hard decisions.
At the least, cutting travel budgets should be just as hard a decision as eliminating an existing (core?) service. It shouldn’t be an automatic decision when budgets get tight.
This isn’t really about the need to network, meet in person, etc. Truth be told, while I value the opportunities to meet with people, I am fully aware that we can create and maintain very strong professional relationships – and exchanges of information – without meeting in person. We can take it as far as the occasional video conference to really get things together and understood properly. You don’t have to meet in person.
This is about professional development, and connection to the community that helps foster that development. And accomplishing the former via the latter is only viable if you maintain a presence and set of relationships that grow from consistent attendance at certain conferences. You attend often enough to get invested, and you go again and again, and become more and more involved. This becomes an investment from your department in you, and you in your development.
I put forth my “path” to core committee involvement for the 2012 SIGUCCS Conference. This is held annually and brings about 300-325 (topped out at 450 but 2008 wiped the slate clean, almost) people in higher education IT together. These attendees range from executive to line level, from CIO’s to Help Desk Managers and even a few software developers. SIGUCCS is part of the Association of Computing Machines, the main benefits of which are the requirement to write a formal, standards-compliant paper on one’s presentation topic (if you want to present, you have to write a 4 page paper. Now that will make people decide if they are really willing to get involved or not even at the speaker level) and the inclusion of that paper in the ACM Digital Library. I’ve done only 3 papers and they’re fairly old, but I’ve been cited a few times and yes, it’s on my resume/CV. (I’d link to the papers but you have to be a SIGUCCS or ACM member to view them).
Every time I have attended SIGUCCS, I have increased my network through in-person meetings and chats. But I’ve also become more and more invested in the organization, and I think I have developed as a professional as a result.
I look at my path to where I am today vis-a-vis SIGUCCS.
- Attended Fall 2005 Technical Conference (age 27)
- Presented (twice) at the Fall 2006 Technical Conference (age 28)
- Missed 2007 as I changed jobs, and the nature of my new job made the 2008 Technical Conference no longer completely appropriate
- Was grant winner and attended 2009 Spring Management Symposium (age 30)
- Attended and presented at 2010 Spring Management Symposium (age 31)
- Attended and was track chair for 2011 Spring Management Symposium (age 32)
- Attended 2011 Combined Conference (first time merged together) (age 33)
- Treasurer and presenter for 2012 Combined Conference (age 34)
- Will be treasurer for 2013 Combined Conference (age 35)
I realize that you can add from year to year. But notice that except for a small gap in 2007-2008, when I went through a rather significant career change, I moved from attendee at the Technical Conference to attendee and then involvement in the program for the Spring Management Symposium (so this is more aspiring leaders than line staff) to actual conference core planning committee for 2012 (and invited to repeat role in 2013).
I’m not saying that people around the country are saying “oh, Allan Chen? Yeah, he’s that guy from SIGUCCS!” But I can tell you that if you said “Brad Wheeler” I’d say “that visionary CIO from Indiana University that I read about in Educause all the time.” SIGUCCS is not Educause, but then again it would take me a lot longer to gain this level of involvement with Educause (especially because Educause is so big that organization of conferences is generally through its own existing mechanisms – not volunteers. I’d have to be writing articles and whatnot to reach any level of notoriety).
I am invested in SIGUCCS. The people whom I meet at SIGUCCS Conference – even those whose budgets have been slashed and only come every other year – are ones that I consider consulting when I run into various problems. In the exact same way that I’d think about calling someone over at Central IT or perhaps up the road at Stanford. And I have developed professionally, which is a benefit to the department and yes, to myself in the long term should I look to other professional opportunities.
And all of this is because I have fought for the travel budget. Because we stopped offering staffed video recordings in non-automated rooms (something we’d been wanting to do for a long time anyway – we’re putting our energy towards lobbying to automate the rooms instead), because we cut back on a ambitious cloud-storage pilot (let’s find 50 committed users rather than 50+50 occasional users), and because we continue to look critically at our budget and service portfolio, we have maintained our travel budget. And my web developer gets to go to the one conference per year that is the conference for people in his field. My Systems Manager has been able to go to a couple of intensive virtualization briefings or trainings, and I can bring one of my Support Team folks to SIGUCCS as well. In the past I’ve attended Educause, too (though now it conflicts too much with SIGUCCS).
So think twice before you cut that budget. Or perhaps take another look. It’s an investment in your team to be able to send them to conference. It’s an investment for an attendee in the conference itself and the community thereof. And it’s an investment for almost everyone professionally. And if we don’t care about our level of investment in our jobs, our careers, and the quality of our work…are we in the right field?